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So who listens to this music? “Well,” says Kramer, “I would think that there’s been ‘horror music’ since folks started banging on logs and telling stories to entertain other people. One need only look for biblical inspiration to know that bad news sells papers—and ultimately, record albums as well. Since the advent of the 20th century—feel free to point to the blues, rockabilly, rock and roll, heavy metal, punk, gangsta rap or the scapegoat of your choice for infernal inspiration.” He adds, with a wicked grin, “At this point I would say that fans of zombies, horror and death metal are about as intertwined culturally as they will ever be. They all end up meeting when the entrails go stale.”
ZOMBIE TOYS
Zombies are everywhere…your kids may even cuddle up with one at night. Well, that is if your kids are kind of strange. Zombie toys are the new big thing and leading the pack is the wonderfully imaginative Teddy Scares. I met with Joe DiDomenico, creator of Teddy Scares, to ask him how these adorable zombie dolls came into being.
“Teddy Scares are a group of unloved teddy bears that were discarded by their owners and now they have returned from the ‘dead.’ They reside in a trash dump and wish for the days to be loved again. The bears were a combination of my love of toys and horror and mixed them into an adorable package. Teddy Scares was something that I would want as a fan of horror and I thought others would like it as well.”
Currently the product consists of 12” bears (Series 1 and 2), 6” bears (Morgue Minis), Graphic Novels (by Ape Entertainment), women’s fashion tees (Headline) and Calendars (Universe Publishing). We hope to extend out to many more product lines in 2008!”
But…why zombies?
“I believe people can relate to zombies because they are us except they lack a conscience. I see it almost as though there is a level of ‘realism’ about the undead that isn’t there with say vampires or werewolves.”
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David F. Kramer’s Top Ten Zombie Songs of All Time
1. “Night of the Living Dead”—The Misfits—from the EP Night of the Living Dead (1979)
2. “Revenge of the Zombie”—Six Feet Under—from the album Warpath (1997)
3. “Doomed by the Living Dead”—Mercyful15 Fate—from the EP Nuns Have No Fun (1984)
4. “Now I’m Feeling Zombified”—Alien Sex Fiend—from the album Curse (1990).
5. “Black Juju”—Alice Cooper—from the album Love It to Death (1971)
6. “Pit of Zombies”—Cannibal Corpse—from the album Gore Obsessed (2002)
7. “Zombie Ritual”—Death—from the album Scream Bloody Gore (1987)
8. “Haunting the Chapel”—Slayer—from the EP Haunting the Chapel (1984)
9. “Death Metal”—Possessed—from the album Seven Churches (1985)
10. “Surfin’ Dead”—The Cramps—from The Return of the Living Dead Soundtrack (1985)
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BIG OLD WEB O’ ZOMBIES
Do a Google search on zombies. You will get more than thirty million hits. That’s a lot of online references to our shambling friends. Granted not all of them refer to the zombies as we’re defining them here, but even shaving off the references to Haitian culture, P-zombies, and colloquial uses of the word you’re still left with millions of sites, including tens of thousands of MySpace pages.16
Teddy Scares
Teddy Scares, created by Joe DiDomenico and Phil Nannay…these should rock your kids to sleep at night.
Some of these sites (like the Zombie WorldNews mentioned elsewhere in this book) are devoted to establishing a higher standard of information and to providing the most reliable and accurate zombie data on all aspects of the genre.
One such site is Revenant Magazine (www.revenantmagazine.com), run by editor-in-chief Geoff Brough. I asked Brough to tell us about his ezine. “Revenant Magazine was established as the premiere online zombie magazine. There are some great horror publications out there that we really admire but we wanted to pay tribute to our favorite ‘monster’ by giving them the spotlight. We established our presence in an online format by covering all aspects of the zombie sub-genre, from books, film, comics, events, fiction, collectibles, etc. If it’s about the walking dead, we’re covering it. We hope to endeavor into a print format very soon.”
Though Revenant covers all aspects of zombie pop culture, there is a definite sense of homage to Romero. I asked Brough to comment on that: “George Romero has lived in some pretty turbulent times. He’s seen a lot of change in the world from the treatment of people in our country, wars, the civil rights movement, and assassinations, corrupt political figures…a lot of really crazy events. He’s one of the first to utilize the undead as a reflection of our societal behavior. His social commentary on racism and the treatment of African Americans in Night of the Living Dead was eye-opening and shocking. The anti-consumerism stance in Dawn is widely talked about and blatantly obvious. His films bring a scope of realism in a rather unconventional way but it works so incredibly well. It’s filmmakers like George Romero that not only keep the zombie film ‘alive’ but keep us on our toes about circumstances and events that shape our existence.”
Another site chockfull of good zombie info is Dead-Central.com, which contains some of the best interviews with Romero cast members (from all his films) on the web; it’s informative and has plenty of video, images, and fan forums.
Other popular undead sites include blogs: http://zombie-agogo.blogspot.com, http://zombiebloggers.blogspot.com, http://hungryzombie.blogspot.com; game sites: Undead Games (www.undeadgames.com), Kill the Zombies (www.killthezombies.com), Urban Dead (www.urbandead.com); general zombie pop culture sites: Eat My Brains (www.eatmybrains.com), Zombie Rama (www.zombierama.com), I Love Zombies (www.zombiejuice.com/zombies.htm), All Things Zombie (www.allthingszombie.com); toys: My Pet Zombies (www.mypetzombies.com); zombie apocalypse preparedness sites: Zombie Squad (www.zombiehunters.org), Zombie Defense (www.zombiedefense.org), The Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency (www.fvza.org), Zombies Outside (www.zombiesoutside.com), Dead-Central (www.dead-central.com); how-to sites for turning yourself into a zombie: (www.zombiemaker.com); zombie pumpkin carving sites: (www.zombiepumpkins.com); zombie warning devices: (www.loris.net/zombie).
ZOMBIE GAMES
Resident Evil is the king of zombie games, but it’s in no way the only game in town. Zombie games, ranging from first-person shooters to RPGs ( role-playing games) are vastly popular worldwide.
I asked Michael Tresca, author of Blood & Brains: The Zombie Hunter’s Guide, a supplement for the d2017 modern role-playing game, to comment on why zombie games are so incredibly popular. “Zombies are hilarious. They’re dead, they lurch, they moan—it’s hard to take them too seriously. Even in the undead hierarchy they’re pretty ridiculous, well below ghosts and vampires. What other sub-genre of horror can be so disturbing and amusing at the same time?”
He talked about creating his zombie guide for gamers: “Beyond my love for Evil Dead, I decided that if I was going to write a book about zombies, I’d better become better versed in the zombie genre. My Netflix account got a lot of use. I bought as many books on zombies as I could find and read a lot on the Internet. And thus I discovered all kinds of zombies I didn’t know about. Templar zombies, Nazi zombies, astro zombies, alien zombies, video zombies…there are endless varieties of zombies that scientists are creating even as we speak! Then it was just a matter of putting it all down in PDF format. The artist, John Longenbaugh, perfectly captured the style I was looking for. I added in my short story, ‘Robots vs. Zombies,’ about two geeks who defend a hardware store against cryogenic zombies. Chris Davis provided the green and red template and brickwork design that established just the right gritty feel.”
Blood and Brains cover art by Jeremy Simmons
“What other sub-genre of horror can be so disturbing and amusing at the same time?”—Michael Tresca, author of Blood and Brains: The Zombie Hunter’s Guide
David Jack Bell, author of The C
ondemned, 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.
WITHER NOW, ZOMBIE?
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
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Art of the Dead—Shawn Conn
Zombies Worldwide
“I’d like to see zombies being able to somewhat inherit certain special abilities from the unfortunate humans they feast upon. Maybe not exactly become superheroes per se, but like say for instance a bodybuilder gets taken down by a zombie and gets devoured…that particular zombie then gains the upper advantage of gaining that bodybuilder’s extra strength that lasts until the zombie is killed.”
* * *
“More Big Picture, more global. We’ve got plenty of ‘micro-horror’, individual or group stories. I want to see how an entire country survives.”
—Max Brooks
“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
THE FINAL VERDICT: ZOMBIES FOREVER
“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.”
12
Closing Arguments
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.”
Here 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.
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Eau de Zombie