It is tough being the head chef of a Zombie restaurant. The clients are much pickier that you would think. Sure all they can do is moan if they do not like the meal, but if they do not come back, you lose valuable revenue and cash flow. It is not like there are billions of Zombies running loose. You have to cater to their needs to keep the business a float.
Zombies love meat of course. No veggie Zombies in this area. I have heard tale of a few in California that only eat grains, but not around here. Meat is what is on the menu and lots of it. Dripping with juice and falling off the bone. Extra rare. But that is the problem, Zombies want human flesh and it is a real PITA to get hold of, legally.
You would think that all the people dying would create a perfect market for human meat. Some Zombies were doing their best to take a bite from living flesh anytime they were not being watched. People were taking extreme measures and in the beginning hospitals were doing amputations by the dozens, but none would sell any of the body parts. My Investors were not happy about the lack of product. These are the types of investors you do not disappoint.
Earthquakes, Zombies, diseases, people dropping all the time but no product. This would not due, not legally. Apparently the government thinks it should be illegal to sell human meat, they just are not keeping up with the times. My investors could go around the legal side of things, but I did not want to get involved in that kind of business. Feeding Zombies was just good old fashioned capitalism. Filling a need and making profit, the American way. No need to break the law, if it could be avoided.
It took a while but I found the answer, in the weirdest of places, next door. Living in NYC has its advantages; in this case my neighbor was part of a project that was cloning historic trees in the city. We hit the bars from time to time and he was talking about his work, I never talk about my work at least in public places. His work with cloning the trees was kind of cool, but boring until I got to thinking about the problem with my meat supply. Perfect, a little cloned meat would do the trick!
The investors liked the idea and already had chemistry people on their payroll. It did not take long for one of their chemistry gurus to cook up a method of cloning human meat.
While the chemics were working, I was looking to find recipes. Unfortunately I had to do more than find chicken recipes and substitute the meat. The cloned meat was very dry and basically protein strands lumped together. It made for a great pulled meat sandwich, but not much else, and the test Zombies had no interest in it and the only living person I could find to give it a try was a large homeless man in bib overalls and funny looking teeth. He liked it well enough, even after I told him it was cloned human meat. He ended up eating the entire first batch of test product as I tried different recipes to make it more appealing to the Zombies. He said it tasted very much like Dog, but didn’t ask how he knew that.
My homeless subject was not to be found for a while, I am sure it was not because of a problem with the product. When he returned he could not say much, it was just gibberish. I think he had a stroke or some problem that blocked his ability to speak, but I did make out a few words and that gave me inspiration. He clearly said "pork", yes that would fix it. Mix in a little pork DNA with the human. I talked to the chemics and they said it would not be a problem. They even said that they could do it the other way around and breed pigs that had human DNA. Eureka. That would keep the EPA off my back as well. "No sir it is really pork with a tasty human flavor, haha!"
This was going to work, tasty human flesh with the meat dripping off the bone. Zombies and other freaks of nature were going to love it. I was finally going to be in business. Now for a theme to the restaurant.
One room would be Donner Party themed. Covered wagon, open pit BBQ, western items on the walls. Another would be based on the Uruguayan soccer team. Tables from plane parts, bowls made from human heads, this was going to be great! Oh yeh, an Alferd Packer room with gold prospecting items on the walls and a Sagawa room with a Japanese theme. A few talks with horrified interior decorators and I was on a role.
I remember the first Zombie I ever saw, for real. It was in the city near the 911 memorial. I didn't pay any attention at first, just another bum. But this one was worth a second look. I really through it was all a scam, maybe some marketing campaign by some religion or other big corporation, but no, it was real. The dude was a real Zombie, just lumbering around the streets of the city. No one was paying much attention at first, people never do. Then a lady screamed and the cops came. Many people really started to freak out. The cops shot him in the head, cold dead in the street, but he kept twitching and tried to stand up. Eventually the cops emptied enough rounds into the street that a few were are on target enough for the head came off and the twitching stop. The dude was not even bitey or anything, just wondering. We didn’t know how they worked back then and everyone was playing it safe, so we thought.
2% was the magic number. 2% of the population was subject to the Zombie plague that was all. All the doctors amputating limbs, all the cops shooting people, it was all useless. The cops were making it worse by spreading the infection into the air with all the shootings. Sure we know now, but then everyone was guessing and playing like they were in a movie. A few scientists stopped panicking and figured out it was a new version of Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis that had mutated to be airborne and resistant to all anti-biotics. They theorized that an HIV patient got infected with a new leprosy strain and somehow mixed the genetic code of the bacteria with the virus. It was nasty but not overly infectious.
People still have rights, even undead Zombie people. Right? Some would disagree and just keep up with the killings, but not me and many others. They do not make people sick or infect anyone that has not already been exposed by now. Live and let unlive, I say. But that does not mean that I have to pass up on profit opportunity. Many people believe in Zombie rights and have found ways for them to be valuable members of society. For instance, many of my lunch crowd works at the DMV. Apparently they are just as capable as any other DMV employee, but not as many work at the IRS as you would imagine. I even have a few bussing tables. They do not do so good with the register, just keep hitting it and loosing fingers in the cash drawer by accident. I guess there will always be jobs for the living. Zombies work cheap but you can't outsource everything to the undead.
