A trip to the Fairyland Zoo.....

William was absently watching the Griffin, perched atop a rock in its enclosure, when a six year old female voice interrupted his musings. “Daddy? Daddy!? Daddy!! “ He looked down into his daughters face. “What’s he doing?” She pointed, frowning, off to their right.

William followed her finger, over to the zombies in their reinforced enclosure. Ten of the slow moving un-dead were lounging about, looking perfectly at home among the mock collapsed houses and wrecked cars. But one of them – incongruously wearing new looking, black rimmed, glasses – had stood up and was knocking ponderously on the bulletproof glass.  

It’s impressive, William thought, how much work the zoo puts into recreating every monster’s natural environment. The standing zombie caught his stare and groaned, hopefully: “BRRAAAIIINNNS?”

William tousled his daughter's curly blonde hair. “Don’t worry about it sweety, he's just hungry.”

A handful of the other zombies shambled over to the glass. “Huuungrryyyyy!” Called a skeletal blonde in a voice like ancient despair.

Rebecca regarded the walking corpses with concern. “Don’t they feed them daddy?”

William called up the zoos feeding schedule on his i-phone. “They should be feeding them around now honey. Let's go and ask.” He led Rebecca over to a blue uniformed Visitor Assistant.

“Excuse me?”

The young woman smiled politely. “Yes Sir?”

“Hi…” She was very pretty, he realised, and not afraid to meet his eyes. “….Uh, we were wondering… when will the Zombies get fed? It’s just that they seem to be getting a bit agitated…. well, agitated for Zombies…”

A dozen or so of the creatures were now at the glass, and were variously pounding, patting, or drooling on the barrier.

The VA caught the frown of dissaproval Rebecca was wearing at the Zombies discomfort, and leaned down to explain: “The Zombie meals have to be driven over from the warehouse, and the van’s broken down.”  She smiled. “Don’t worry, we won’t let them go hungry.”

Rebecca chewed on her hair for a moment, then her frown softened. “Thank you, I'm sure you won't." The six year old hesitated. "You’re very pretty.” .

“Thanks little lady, it’s nice to meet you.”

William smiled, slightly embarrassed. “We should be going…..” he began. But the VA wasn’t there – she’d moved across to the Zombie enclosure with a surprising turn of speed, and was banging on the glass herself: “Martin! Martin stop that! Leave Helen alone!”

A tall, thinnish, Zombie (presumably Martin) was trying and bite into the skull of the blonde zombie.  He turned to the humans watching through the glass: “Huuunngrrryyyy!”

“Supper is coming! Now be quiet and play with your broken cars!” William and the assistant both looked around in surprise: The stern tone had come from Rebecca.

Looking slightly shamefaced (as much as a Zombie ever does), Martin let the blonde’s head go and shuffled away.

The assistant looked over at Rebecca, grinning. “Well done young lady! We’ll have to get you a job as a Zombie trainer!”

“Thank you Amanda” beamed Rebecca back. “I’d love to be a Zombie trainer, and you have a very nice name badge.”  William hadn’t looked at the name tag on the assistants blouse, for fear of his eye line being misinterpreted.

So his face coloured instantly when Rebecca continued: “Daddy would like your phone number!”

END.