I miss the zombies. It’s
been almost two months, and I miss their plodding gait, their gurgling moans
and their unwavering quest for feasting on all things living. The
Walking Dead, the greatest hour of zombie-themed televised entertainment in
the history of the world, is in mid-season hiatus, not to return until February,
and I can’t take the waiting. Based on a
series of graphic novels of the same title, The
Walking Dead concerns the misadventures of Sheriff Rick Grimes and his
ever-dwindling band of stressed-out survivors.
They’ve stuck together in the searing heat of the Georgia summers while
hordes of virus-infected fellow citizens make their lives miserable. Rick and crew have endured lies, deception,
double-crosses, infidelity, abandonment, spousal abuse, matricide, lack of food,
water, gas, bullets and sleep and, of course, non-stop harassment from their
former neighbors, families, co-workers and friends who are determined to eat
them.
Everything’s
better with zombies. Transform any
boring situation into a laugh-riot in a snap by just inserting a simple
word! Consider the following
paragraph: “I went to the hospital the
other day to visit my cousin Gina, who just gave birth to a baby. I took the bus home and sat next to a
vegan. He seemed lonely.” Add “zombie,” and you have the start of a
compelling story. “I went to the
hospital the other day to visit my cousin Gina, who just gave birth to a zombie
baby. I took the bus home and sat next
to a vegan zombie. He seemed
lonely.” Thrusting zombie-ness into
everyday life means instant danger!
Except if the zombie waiting for his cross-town transfer refuses to wear
leather or eat meat, dairy or eggs.
There’s nothing lonelier than a vegan zombie on a public bus.
There
are countless zombie-themed films to help me wait it out like a holed-up
survivor of an apocalyptic attack, but the catalogue is vast. For every 28
Days Later and Dawn of the Dead,
there are so many others, like Shaun of
the Dead, Dead Clowns, Dead Summer, Fast Zombies with Guns, Redneck
Zombies, Zombieland, the aptly
named They Must Eat, and the closest
the genre comes to documentary, the fabled 1959 classic Teenage Zombies.
Or I
could skip the cinema and hunker down in the Xbox bunker to satiate my hunger
for zombie tomfoolery, playing endless hours of Left 4 Dead 2, Burn Zombie
Burn! or Lollipop Chainsaw (“An action game which stars a
chainsaw-wielding cheerleader who must rid her high school of zombies”) until
Rick and his winnowed band of survivors returns to my Sunday night TV screen,
welcoming me with entrail-soaked arms and sad faces.
Perhaps
I’m being too low-brow with these ghoulish distractions and a good book’s what
I need. There too I can find a book
mobile’s worth of zombie novels, everything from Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z to acclaimed novelist Colson
Whitehead’s Zone One, where the
protagonist, Mark Spitz, balances his zombie-killing duties with the ennui that
comes with any post-societal collapse at the mouths of those who want to dine
on his flesh. And if I finish those,
there’s always Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies, the 2009 novel that’s exactly as it’s described, right down to the
Bennett sisters slashing a roomful of corseted attackers to death (again) with
razor-sharp knives.
I can’t
explain my obsession with zombies, much less everyone else’s. Our culture’s so saturated that even
dilettantes of the living dead know that A) zombies can infect you with a
single bite, B) you’ll die from that bite and reanimate as a zombie, C) you’ll cast
off any concern for personal hygiene once this happens, and D) you will be really,
really slow, like your older sister who hasn’t owned sneakers since Reagan’s
second term slow. There are examples of
running zombies, like the ones chasing Will Smith and his dog across
zombie-infected Manhattan in I Am Legend. Fast zombies upset the natural order of
things, like when old people buy family planning supplies. Slower zombies and celibate gammies are
better.
Maybe
we conjure so many zombie stories as a way to tackle our fear of humankind’s haphazard
advancement (aka, zombies a result of government scientists goofing around on
our dime) to distrust of technology or even fear of socialism (comrades, like
the zombies on the front lawn, don’t go to church or care about our freedoms). Or maybe it’s a manifestation of our deep-seated
desire to live without rules. If you survive
the first wave of flesh-eating monsters, like Rick and his desperate cohorts,
your only rule is to STAY ALIVE so why not liberate that Mustang for a spin or
eat Mallomars for breakfast or burn your AP History textbook or IRS audit
notice to keep warm. We live under a
pretty strict social order and need an excuse to throw it all away –outlasting undead
throngs is as good a reason as any.
I’m not
sure which is nerdier – proclaiming my love of zombie culture or sounding like
Dr. Joyce Brothers while doing it. But I
don’t care. In just a few weeks, Rick,
Glen, Michonne, Merle, Maggie and the rest of them will be back, and I’ll be
taking notes. Because if (when) the
zombies come for me, I’ll be ready, even for the vegan ones.
(email Tim at timcoshea@gmail.com)
