Zombie CSU (61 page)

David Jack Bell, author of
The Condemned
, thinks that the current upsurge in zombie popularity owes a lot to zombie video games. “I think video games are the biggest contributor to the modern resurgence of zombies in popular culture. Before that, the home video cassette market was a major contributor, because zombie movies were relatively cheap to make. In the era previous to home video and game consoles, zombie stories were an underground culture phenomena. In the old days, which I will call the 1980’s; you had to look hard to find any sort of zombie literature. The only place it could be found was in comic shops and independent book stores that would carry the small press zines that were friendly to zombies and horror in general. One of the major breakthroughs into mainstream culture at this time was Skipp and Spector’s
Book of the Dead
anthologies. But before those anthologies, only the die-hard fans would take time to search for this type of material. But now, zombie movies and games can be found virtually anywhere, and the ease of availability has attracted more people to the zombie genre in all its forms.”

There are mass market big-ticket zombie games, and small underground games; there are licensed games and bootlegs, there are high-tech and low-tech games. There are a lot of games. Apparently a lot of folks want to shoot zombies.

W
ITHER
N
OW
, Z
OMBIE
?

I asked a bunch of zombie pop-culture folks what they’d like to see next in zombie storytelling, which avenues they think should be pursued. Here’s a sampler of their replies:

“I’d like a great storyline about dysfunctional zombie families and their issues, how they cope with the day-to-day stress of being zombies.” Cathy Buburuz, editor of
Champagne Shivers

“In the dystopian novel
Noir
by K. W. Jeter, anyone who dies in debt is reanimated as a Zombie, forced to keep working until they have paid off their debts. I like the idea of forced redemption—the possibilities are endless.” Amy Grech, author of
Cold Comfort
(Naked Snake Press) and over one hundred short stories

“I’m always up for the survival aspect. I don’t really buy the end of the world thing—I think people are too smart to be completely exterminated by the dead. Bottom line: they’re
dead
. They rot, they melt (ewwww), and eventually they can’t even shamble after you.”—Yvonne Navarro

“I grew up with the traditional voodoo zombie in the horror comics and movies I loved, so in my mind zombies are magical creatures. There are too many problems to overcome when telling stories about science-based zombies—how do they move with rotting muscles, where do they get the energy to move if they can’t eat and digest food? They’re closed systems, and they should cease functioning in a short time, a few days at the most. You don’t have those sorts of problems with magical zombies. Plus, magic comes from the shadowy realm of the unknown, where science belongs to the world of cold hard facts. Magic—the dark kind found in supernatural horror—has a greater potential to be scary in fiction.”—Tim Waggoner

“An intelligent explanation that gives rise to the dead. Give me science!”—Steve Alten

“Well, I’m not a huge fan of the socially aware zombie but it will be interesting to see how far that goes before the zombie-ism is lost. If zombies can exist on Earth surely they can exist in space/alien cultures? It may also be time to return the socio-political commentary Romero did so well.”—Rocky Wood

“I wouldn’t nudge it at all—because I’m doing what I would want everyone to do and I’d rather not have the competition. I just hate it when the stories end, so I’d want more long-term explorations of the world and the characters. I think there’s a wealth of story potential in following a group of characters five, ten or twenty years into the end of the world…that’s why I’m doing it with The Walking Dead.”—Robert Kirkman

“Sexuality during the apocalypse is seldom if ever touched upon, and I’m just the guy to touch it.”—Bob Fingerman

T
HE
F
INAL
V
ERDICT
: Z
OMBIES
F
OREVER

“It certainly would be fun to see how our bickering leaders and the politically correct media would handle a zombie crisis,” muses screenwriter Andy Bark. “I recall the oil and petrol blockades in England a few years ago when a group, angry at fuel prices, blocked the tankers from leaving the depots. Things soon got quite surreal and I really got the feeling that it wouldn’t take much for society to go over the edge. Who knows what would happen if the dead started returning? Against an ever growing army of contagious flesh eaters, unless the army got a grip on the situation fast, we’d be doomed. Anarchy would erupt on the streets and fuel and food stocks would vanish in a matter of hours. People would barricade themselves away, financial institutes would collapse making money worthless; in fact Romero probably got it right in
Dawn of the Dead
. Yep we’d be toast.”

The Walking Dead
by Nelson Robles

“Slow zombies would be contained I would think, of course it would be like any plague and continue to pop up in sporadic cases. Fast zombies would be the end of the world.”

H
ere are some points to consider based on what we’ve learned from our experts.

The most logical scenario for a zombie uprising would be a plague. Not radiation, not demonic possession. Plagues start from a source and then spread outward, and this kind of thing would not—indeed
could
not—spread quietly.

In a post-9/11 world we are more prepared and we are
looking
for trouble to rear its head. Homeland, FEMA (the post-Katrina version), the various intelligence communities, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, NATO…there are a lot of organizations ready and able to counter the spread of a new plague. Yes, there would be losses; but an apocalypse isn’t likely.

Zombies are not going to overwhelm the cops. One-on-one they’re no match; and it would take a fair number of them to overwhelm a police officer who can call for backup, can drive away, is trained to fall back in the presence of overwhelming threat, and has a variety of tools (OC spray, baton, shotgun with beanbag rounds, a Taser, and a sidearm).

If there was a zombie in the neighborhood, the cops would find it. Coordinated searches using helicopters, radios, K-9 dogs, and lots of backup would just overwhelm the zombie.

Zombies are also not going to overwhelm the military. They’re not armed enemy combatants, and they’re not secretive insurgents. They’re brainless, organic-eating machines who don’t have the sense to duck when someone shoots at them.

The idea that zombies would disregard gunfire flies in the face of physics. Whether a gunshot does fatal damage to the motor cortex or not, the impact of the shot is going to knock the unsteady zombie down or back, which allows for a second and possibly a third shot. With so many officers training with “failure drills”—two to the body and one to the head—the body shots will slow the attacker so that the third shot will flip the switch. The rise in the use of personal body armor has made everyone a bit better at head shots these days.

A zombie brought to a hospital is going to be restrained and a mouth guard will prevent biting. As its symptoms are assessed and the threat level recognized, any victim of the zombie will likewise be quarantined; and again we have protocols that will contain the spread of the infection.

The collection of forensic evidence, though generally used for legal issues, will aid scientists and doctors in the exploration of this new disease. Information sharing is more common these days, especially when dealing with medical crises; and computers and the Internet put vast resources at the disposal of forensics experts, medical professionals, and the police.

Even if no cure was discovered—which is dishearteningly likely if the disease turned out to be prion based—the infected would be quarantined and sterilization procedures would be put in place. Most likely all infected would be transported to ultrasterile and highly contained testing facilities for further study.

Any research from the medical research facility that inadvertently caused the plague would be subpoenaed or seized outright. Perhaps these materials might lead to solutions. If the threat were taken seriously enough, huge amounts of research monies would be granted to institutions investigating the plague. In time answers would be found.

From all the experts with whom I spoke during the research for this book—more than two hundred of them—not one of them believed that a plague of this kind would result in the end of humanity. Most doubted it would ever become a pandemic, largely because of the sensational nature of the plague. Society does not crumble that easily, and sometimes we do prove that we’ve learned from past mishandling of disasters. It might we be that we are better prepared at this moment to face a zombie uprising than we have ever been. It’s probably the only useful side effect of global terrorism and global warming. We’ve seen the worst storms of our species’ history in events like the World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Christmas day tsunami and other tragedies. As wake-up calls go…those seem to have been pretty effective.

Will a disease like this ever happen?

Probably not. Well…maybe not. But anything’s possible.

I just like to rest in the thought that if the dead rose up…then so would we.