Zombies will do that, you see.
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Ellen Datlow Picks the Best Zombie Short Stories
Ellen Datlow, editor of some of the best anthologies of genre fiction, including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin’s) and Omni Best Science Fiction (Zebra), shares her picks for some of the best short zombie fiction of recent years.
“The Hortlak” by Kelly Link
“A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned” by Edward Bryant
“Zora and the Zombie” by Andy Duncan
“Hunting Meth Zombies in the Great Nebraskan Wasteland” by John Farris
“Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” by Poppy Z. Brite
“On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Beautiful Stuff” by Susan Palwick
“Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David J. Schow
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THE FINAL VERDICT: PREDATOR AND PREY
Nature adores a predator. It’s a key component to the survival of the fittest rule, and we see it in ourselves. We humans are a predator species. We are naturally violent, naturally aggressive. The growth of “civilization” has not been geared toward removing our predatory natures, but to either controlling it or focusing it. Sure, there are people of peace like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama…but look at what happened there: Two of the three were murdered, and the last one had to flee the armed takeover of his country.
Does that mean that the violent and vicious outnumber the peace-loving? I sure as hell hope not.
If we are not on the battle lines, we try to become less violent, to focus on growth and values and the cultivation of civilized behavior, and a lot of people do succeed. They’re well apart from the hard and gritty world of pain and damage. They’re antiwar and antiviolence. And then a 9/11 happens.
Like most people, I remember where I was on that morning and what I was doing. I was still working a nine-to-five job then, doing graphic design for a law firm. When the second tower was hit, a bunch of us gathered in a conference room and watched in horror as the towers began to burn. All around me were shocked and terrified faces—the faces of people whose lives had become so disconnected from violence that its presence, even on TV, was as real to them as if someone had struck them each a physical blow. These were people to whom violence was not—or, perhaps, no longer—part of their daily lives.
The next day, when I came to work and we all stood around and talked about how we felt when we watched the TV footage of the towers collapsing, and how we felt when we heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon, and the one that went down in a Pennsylvania field, I saw on each face the civilized mask begin to slide away. I saw anger, rage. I saw hatred. I heard people—good, gentle people—say how they wished we could just kill everyone responsible; how we should find them and bomb them back to the stone age. These were people who were not particularly hawkish, people who weren’t necessarily right-wing. These were just people; and they had been hurt. Someone had struck them—however much it was via the surrogates of the victims of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; they were feeling it as each one of them had been hurt. And when humans are hurt, they lash out and strike back. Even babies do it.
It is in our nature. It is a decidedly uncivilized response, and it’s knee-jerk, and many of those people who screamed for revenge later, when the intensity of the moment cooled, backed off from their desire to see a blood-for-blood form of redress. That’s fine, that’s part of the civilizing process; but in the moment, if you had put guns in their hands or handed them a remote detonator, they might have killed. Many would. Not all, of course; but many more than you or I might have previously guessed. Perhaps you would have; perhaps me as well.
We are a predator species.
In times of great conflict, it is the heart and the mind that takes the gravest wounds. If the dead rose to attack us, we would go to war with them. I believe—as do the overwhelming majority of my experts—that we would win. We would be vicious about it, too. It would become a kind of ethnic cleansing: our species against theirs. It would be genocide. So, yeah, we would win…but we would lose, too, because you cannot go from being a nonviolent person to being a violent person and then go completely back again. Ask anyone who has ever been in combat. You may find peace again, you may be able to willingly put down your gun and walk away from war, but you cannot ever forget that it happened, and you cannot ever remove all of the marks it leaves.
We would fight. We would get tougher by becoming more of what we naturally are: the most successful predator species to ever hold the lease on planet earth. We would not yield it to the dead. And once the last of the dead are truly dead, and once we have adapted our society to make sure the dead stay in their place, we would go back to the process of trying to evolve into nonviolent and civilized beings. We would not, however, be the same people we once were. The world will have changed for us, just as it changed on 9/11. We are marked by that event and always will be. If the dead rise and we win that war, we will be a new version of humanity. Who knows what shape it will take, or what paths social evolution will thereafter take? Probably the only thing that you could place hard money on with a guarantee of a win is to bet that no matter what happens that man, the superior predator, will never be too far beneath the surface.
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Why Zombies?
“I think that now, more so than any other time in history, people believe they are powerless to control their own fates, and so feel like they’re living by rote: get up, move around, eat to stay alive, repeat.”—Gary A. Braunbeck, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning short story “We Now Pause for Station Identification.”
“On a metaphorical level, zombies represent the freedom from restraint and the breaking of ultimate taboos, i.e., breaking the bonds of life and death and indulging in cannibalism. On a personal level, it’s a great way to see your ex-lovers and exbosses get consumed without having to do jail time.”—Scott Nicholson, author of They Hunger (Pinnacle Books, 2007).
“Because hell is full, right? Zombies combine a universal fear of death along with a disturbing loss of humanity and reason. We see ourselves in zombies, since they began as human beings, but they are a moral insult to life and the living, no more than repugnant, decomposing flesh driven by senseless and insatiable hunger. Familiar yet completely alien.”—John Passarella, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Kindred Spirit (Pocket Star, 2006).
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Drop Dead
Police, Military, and Civilian Tactics for Destroying Zombies
SWAT by Jonathan Maberry
“Zoms fought the law and the law won.”
Forensics and medical science have shown that there are qualities of the living dead that will identify them as such and send up all the appropriate flags. Now we need to discuss how police will stop a zombie.
Zombies don’t flee.
Zombies attack.
As soon as the zombie is able to detect the presence of a human, it will invariably turn and pursue that human, and when it’s in range it will attack. If the human is a frail older person, a child, or someone with absolutely no sense of how to manage the rudiments of defense (parry a grab and run like hell), then the zombie’s attack will very likely result in the spread of its infection. That victim, once dead, will reanimate after a period of time, and now we’ll have two zombies. Each person they attack continues the infection, and we are left with a geometric spread.
In this chapter we’ll explore the methods used by law enforcement to arrest and detain a violent suspect. We’ll also go a step further to discuss what officers would do if that suspect was more than ordinarily difficult to control; and then go further up the line to discuss armed responses and the use of deadly force. We’ll even call in a SWAT team.
JUST THE FACTS
Arrest and Detain
If the human the zombie attacks is a police officer—even a single officer—the outcome is going to be
a lot different. Modern police are not only very well trained in the skills of controlling violent or even irrational suspects, they have a variety of tools and weapons at their disposal that will allow them to respond with appropriate force.
In many of the zombie films and books, the officers who respond to a zombie attack are usually overwhelmed very quickly. Too quickly, in my opinion. Granted, verbal commands, threats, and harsh language are not likely to deter a zombie from attacking; but on the whole cops are a lot more effective, careful, and controlled than they are portrayed. A police officer is not just going to stand there with bug-eyes and a gaping mouth while a zombie rushes him or her. At most the officer will assume the person is whacked out on drugs or mentally disturbed. Remember, cops are taught to maintain a safe distance when confronting a possible suspect, and they always—always—prepare for the possibility of a violent attack.
Expert Witness
“Officer presence and verbal commands would be tried first,” says Detective Joseph Sciscio of the Bensalem Police Department. “Though if we’re talking zombies I assume we would see a very quick progression through the use of force. Considering the likelihood the officers would or could be getting seriously hurt, I would expect deadly force to be deployed at some point.”
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Zombie Nonfiction Books
Between Books’ store owner Greg Schauer shares his choices for the best zombie nonfiction books:
Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema by Jamie Russell (FAB, 2005)
Eaten Alive!: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies, second Edition by Jay Slater (Plexus Publishing, 2006)
Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth by Kim Paffenroth (Baylor University Press, 2006)
The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead by Tony Williams (Wallflower Press, 2003)
The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless edited by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad (Open Court, 2006)
The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia by Peter Dendle (McFarland & Co., 2000)
The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh: The Films of George A. Romero by Paul R. Gagne (Dodd Mead, 1987)
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According to retired NYPD officer Jerome Wilson, “I’ve seen all those living dead films a hundred times and they state pretty clearly that individually the zombies are not that strong, not even as strong as a normal man. If one of the slow zombies came at an officer and tried to bite him, the officer would first adjust distance to allow himself time to manage the situation, and to give him more time to try verbal commands. If that failed, he has lots of things to fall back on—OC spray, baton, and nowadays a lot of departments have TASERs.”
The question remains, though, as to what would happen if the zombie was able to get close enough to grapple and tried to bite. Wilson doesn’t see that happening, even when the officers are attempting to put the face shield in place. “Damn, you know how people are when someone tries to bite. It’s like when someone tries to kick you in the balls. People move at warp speed. It’s our natural reaction, our basis instinct, a primal thing. We don’t let people bite us—there’s a fear reaction that amps up evasion and resistance. Now, consider the combatants in the situation. You have a slow zombie who is unsteady on his feet and a police officer who is trained for close combat, who is probably wearing a vest, who has a belt filled with tools, and who can tell that this suspect is not acting rationally. He’s not going to just grapple with the zombie and let himself get bit. No way.”
Dennis Miller, a former sergeant with the LAPD, agrees. “I worked riots in LA and there was all kind of fighting going on there. Things got pretty crazy as you may remember following the Rodney King verdict. Point is, there were some serious tussles and those officers involved in one-to-ones were not fighting mindless ghouls, they were fighting street kids and adults who were very tough, very fast, and very experienced street fighters. I’ll put any kid over the age of fifteen who comes from South Central up against a zombie anytime, and that zombie is going down. Cops are even tougher. Get bit by something like they have in Night of the Living Dead? No, I just can’t see that happening.”
This is a topic on which the author is also going to speak out as an expert because when I’m not writing books about monsters I am a chief instructor of COPSafe, Inc., a company that provides cuff and control workshops for law enforcement. Along with my colleagues—former Philadelphia Police Department attorney Jeffrey Scott and martial arts instructors Jim Winterbottom and David Pantano, I’ve given workshops to all levels of police officers, from raw recruits straight out of the academy to chiefs of police, and that includes a number of SWAT and SERT1 officers.
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Why Zombies?
“The living dead are low maintenance. They don’t talk back, have simple needs, and have wisely given up the rat race for something much simpler. On the downside, they don’t smell very good, and they want to eat us. But I’d still prefer hanging out with zombies than most of my extended family.”—J. A. Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour (Hyperion, 2004) and the zombie short story “In Cold Flesh.”
“There is just something extremely creepy about a creature that moves at a snail’s pace but is still able to catch and eat you. Every piece of logic screams that you should be able to escape the slow-moving critters…but you can’t. I think the ‘creep’ factor is why I like slow moving zombies. BUT, on the other hand, a rapidly-approaching piece of dead flesh that’s coming to rip your head off is equally as terrifying but in a very different way. I think it’s the ‘threat’ factor that makes me like fast moving zombies. So, there ya have it…A non-answer! Why? Because zombies are cool no matter if they’re moving fast of slow. Either way, they’re gonna get ya!”—Jim O’Rear, actor, stuntman, and haunted attraction consultant.
“Zombies blur the line between here and there, dead and not dead, and take away the finality of things. The walking dead, in any form, haunts the mortal mind, I think.”—L. A. Banks, bestselling author of the Vampire Huntress series.
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In our COPSafe workshops we teach officers how to control the most aggressive and violent suspects, including those who are acting irrationally due to mental instability or drug use. The techniques in these workshops is based on martial arts: distancing, deflection, redirection, joint manipulation, and pain compliance. Granted pain compliance won’t work on zombies, so any time one tactic doesn’t work, the officer adjusts and upgrades his or her response.
We teach a technique used to respond to an aggressive rush, and with it even a female officer or small male officer can put a three-hundred pound PCP-cooked man down on his chest and in cuffs. It’s not muscle, and it’s not magic; it’s applications of basic principles of physics and some common sense. Turning the hips creates, torsion which is an incredible power source (just ask any home-run hitter). When an attacker lunges, no matter how much control he exerts, he is still subject to the dynamics of mass in motion. And gravity is always there, and it’s always useful to a smart fighter.
When a zombie lunges, the officer can sidestep or shift, or ideally step into the rush but with his main body mass shifted out of the line of impact. Using a simple parry-and-grab, an extended leg, and hip torsion, the attacker can be yanked into the pull of gravity and down hard on his chest. The effect on the attacker is like lunging hard to open a heavy door with rusted hinges and finding that it’s made of balsa wood and the hinges are well-oiled. Down goes the attacker—human or zombie. It’s a science thing…zombies wouldn’t understand.
As soon as the attacker hits the deck, the officer can use his arm to steer his body mass and control his ability to resist, turn, or bite; and on go the cuffs. The whole thing takes about half a second. Any single officer can do this; a pair can do it more easily.
The Zombie Factor
The biggest danger in an arrest comes once the zombie is cuffed, because in some situations the officer may relax the pinning pressure and try to pull the at
tacker to his feet. That’s when a bite is most possible. Even so, the officer is expecting trouble, and if the suspect makes a sudden and violent move, the officer—who would be maintaining a grip on the suspect’s arm—could easily trip him, shove him away, or otherwise distance himself from the bite. At that point, the officer would likely resort to more and different methods of control.
Police Arrest and Control Practice photo by John West
Many police departments bring in specialists to offer additional training for their officers, like this advanced Cuff & Control workshop.
According to San Antonio PD detective Joe McKinney, “Biters and spitters are usually secured with a hood, much like that used by beekeepers. Of course, patrol officers are going to use anything at their disposal to protect themselves, and if a hood isn’t available, then they’re probably going to toss the suspect into the back of a paddy wagon, or transport him in a patrol vehicle equipped with a prisoner transport cage.”