We Hate Zombies

Scenario:
It’s that time of year where all the little boys and girls in the world have butterflies in their stomach as they try in vane to go to sleep. They are waiting for Santa to come to their house, break into their home, steal their cookies and milk in exchange for presents of varying quality depending on how good they have been. Their cheeks are rosy and their noses are snotty. Ahhh… You’ve got to love it. Unless something went wrong. What if merriment wasn’t what Santa brought, but chaos? Can you even stomach to imagine an infected Santa? Think about a zombie capable of visiting every (Christian) home on Earth in a single evening. Think about a zombie that is untraceable and untraceable. Zombie Santa Motha Fucka!! I don’t know about you, but my balls just snuggled up to my kidneys, my nose has started bleeding, and I just shit my pants. What would you do?

What you should do:
First off, you should pull out your ZAC chart and figure out which color depicts the urgency of the situation so that you know how you should feel. Raging Red, right at the fucking top of the list, sums it up quite nicely. How should you feel? If you don’t have the heart of a fucking mule, you should probably be dead by now. Remember that time you got a fish hook stuck in your eye? You should feel worse than that. Raging Red means you should be shitting your pants so hard, you might bleed to death. It’s that bad.

The first step is watch Futurama episodes 17 and 35. These are the evil Santa-bot episodes which is a little different, but it gets the gist of it. Take notes on how they fortify their building including a giant solid steel barricade that rolls in front of the fireplace. This is designed to block Santa’s traditional way of getting in. He might not be able to figure out another way in, so use this. I personally would design similar barricades for the doors and windows and even the walls. Fuck dry wall.

You should also have a panic room installed in your home. Once the house is secure, secure it again by getting in the panic room. Have some food and water, but mostly guns available here. You won’t need much food if he gets in. As a last ditch effort to save the planet, rig the place to blow. If it gets out of control, take one for the team. I’ll rename the 4th of July in your honor once I take over the planet.

Finally, as a precaution, be a prick all year. If there is a list, you have to keep your name off of it. Make sure that you take advantage of anyone you can. Cheat every system you use. Hell, shoot the paper boy with a potato gun and then bitch at the news paper office when he stops coming by. Do it all. You have to stay under the radar. If you can’t stomach that type of lifestyle, then switch to Jewish or whatever. That should do the trick. I know that the sharper readers out there are going to assume you get on the naughty list by doing this stuff, and all that is probably true, but Santa uses the nice list. I doubt he even takes the naughty list on his sleigh with him, so fuck it. Life is too short, so go ahead and burn the stripper with your cigarette.

What I would do:
I had intended to post this before Christmas came, but I was too busy preparing for a possible onslaught. It took all of my time, up to the last minute, to make sure I would prevail. I had to fortify my house in a similar manner as described above, with a few creative additions. I also had to break into all my neighbors’ houses and plant large amounts of explosives. They wouldn’t let me do it with their permission, so it’s our little secret. That way Zombie Santa can get a taste of what I have to offer even before he gets to my house.

One little thing I did was install a transmitter inside my chest. It is hooked to my heart so that the moment my heart stops, all of my explosives will detonate simultaneously, including the neighbors’ houses. I did that just in case Zombie Santa’s speed gets to me before I can hit the button. I also had my neighbors’ houses blow up in case he is fast enough to escape my house and move onto the next before I die. It’s unlikely, but a necessary precaution.

Scenario:

Every now and then, something comes along that you don’t expect.  Sometimes, it’s a bad surprise from a ‘girl’ you picked up at the bar.  Sometimes it’s a bad phone call from the doctor after a recent rectal exam.  And sometimes, it’s your best friend and your wife.  But not all bad surprises deal with sex.  Sometimes, you find a life mate that you don’t feel horny about, but once you really get to know them, they aren’t the person you thought there were.

You are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse when you find someone who feels the same way you do.  They had all the right plans before the attack.  They had a secret fortress armed to the teeth.  They had it all but made the mistake of letting in a survivor who was infected.  From the inside of the fortress out, the base was destroyed.  He looked death straight in the face and smiled.  To get out alive, he had to lob off the head of his beautiful wife.  Fate, it seemed, brought you together.  But as time went on, you find out disturbing details.  He believes that there is a cure and that zombies can talk.  He also believes that killing a healthy human being because they are not diehard survivalists is worth it in the long run.  What do you do?

What you should do:

This type of situation is so dangerous to the survival of the human race, it places up high on the ZAC chart (Zombie Advisory Colors).  If you encounter someone like this, you are immediately upgraded to a Ornery Orange status, the second most serious.  These people are every bit as committed as you are, but with a few dangerous misconceptions.  They will try to save zombies if they think they can cure them.  They will kill survivors if they go too slow.  They will rise up against you if they feel that you are wrong, even when you are right.  There are three ways to deal with these people, and none of them are particularly good.

Option one, kick them out of your group.  This is a dangerous path to take because it could breed resentment in their eyes.  You will keep a valuable ally against zombies, but gain a terrible enemy over the long run.   They are certain to find survivors among their travels and could build a rival gang that could attack your group.  The probability of this is actually pretty high, given human nature.  Do not take this path lightly.

Option two, kill them.  I do not like the idea of dispatching a man as equally qualified to kill zombies as myself.  It would be a terrible loss for the human condition but a rival gang is not a pretty picture either.  But if it must be done, do it right.  Knowing this type of person, they can eat leather, shit vinegar and piss blood that smells like cherry starbursts, so you have to get the job done right.  Don’t forget to burn the body.

Option three, keep them in your group.  The Null Hypthesis is not rejected in this case and we will do nothing.  Again, this is dangerous because they could overtake your group and kick you out or kill you.  Remember, they are your nemesis and think a lot like you.  Tread lightly.

What I would do:

Have you ever heard of a frontal lobotomy?  Well, it basically consists of me sticking an ice pick through your eye socket or up your nose and poking your brain a little bit, damaging the frontal lobe.  What this does is take away a lot of your personality.  You would still have the same skills as before, but would have a decreased ability to demonstrate thoughts and feelings. 

The lesson I am trying to teach you is simple, I would pick option three and keep them in the group.  However, I would not be able to live with the risk this option presents and would be forced to give him a frontal lobotomy to ensure the safety of the group.  Plus, I would still have his skills.  The reaction speed would definitely lag behind, but it would be worth that sacrifice with proper planning of the troops on scouting missions.

Scenario:
It’s 10/31/2008. OMFG, it’s Halloween again!!! This is the single most dangerous holiday for all of mankind. It’s the one day in the year where you could be killed for simply dressing like a zombie but you could also save the world for simply dressing like a zombie. It doesn’t make any sense when you really try and wrap your meaty brain around it, but give it a shot anyway. And take a shot already, because it’s going to be one long day and I can’t have you freaking out on me. So, what are you going to do? Dress like a zombie and die or dress like a zombie and save the world? The choice is yours, but the outcome isn’t.

What you should do:
Never dress like a zombie if you are optimistic. There are a lot of reasons why this is the only option for you and they are all pretty obvious. I will now go over them with you in case you aren’t an “obvious” type of person (you should probably dress like a zombie if this is the case).

One, by not dressing like a zombie, you run a much lower chance of being mistaken for a zombie. This benefits you in that I will not automatically kill you. Matthew will not automatically kill you. The tens and twenties of people out there who are trained like we are will not automatically kill you. Plus, if the zombie apocalypse does come, you won’t be mistaken as a real zombie and killed by any of the gun-toting military/redneck people who have been waiting for a reason to open fire on the public. Does it scare you that the military thinks about that? Good. Fear keeps you sharp unless you are one of those pussies who caves in like a kid with polio. In that case, you are wearing a zombie costume I hope.

Two… Hmm. Nope, I guess that is the only reason to not wear a zombie costume.

If you are pessimistic, then wear the zombie costume. When the zombie apocalypse does come, you will be able to hide more effectively amongst the zombies so that they don’t attack you. By doing this, you may be able to bring down the zombie armies as part of the last resistance. Plus, I don’t want to hear all the bitching and whining when the apocalypse does come and you can’t watch your daily dose of Opera and Dr. Phil. It makes it easier for me to kill you and claim it was an accident by blaming it on all the LSD and the strobe lights.

What I would do:
Each and every year, Halloween comes and goes and the next morning I have this horrible feeling of regret and a terrible pounding in my head. No, I don’t get wasted and bang a fat chick, although that would bring a similar feeling to me, but not as severe. That would be all too simple. No, I fall victim to what we in the business call a “false positive”. This occurs when my IZRM goes off and some poor shmuck ends up dead because he was dressed up like a zombie a little too well. Usually this happens more than once. In fact, it happens so often that I get a headache from it all and I have this horrible feeling of regret. I don’t regret that I killed them, just that they weren’t zombies. Dang, now I feel a little down.

**Smacks himself in the face**

Anyway, each year, I put out a warning that the ZAC (zombie advisory color) has been upgraded to “yelling yellow”. Yelling yellow signifies to the public that they are in grave danger for two reasons: the chance for the zombie plague to spread quickly is at its peak and that they run the very real danger of suddenly dying because of a lack of bones, courtesy of me. The danger of zombies spreading out of control is so real because it will take a lot longer before anyone realizes what is happening. When one zombie tears into someone standing next to you on a regular day, you freak out. On Halloween, however, you laugh and play along by letting it tear into you. Soon, an entire party is full of zombies and nobody was even smart enough to call for help. Then an entire neighborhood, the city, the state and it goes from there. All without anyone bothering to ask the question, “Is this real or fake?” This is as real and serious as the Routan Boom. Watch out.

Scenario:
It’s an unseasonably warm September day and you’re a fat, hot guy holding a lawn mower engine. You bought it at a yard sale because you thought it would be cool to rig your fishing pole with a powerful motor. It’s not that you need it to pull in the big one or anything, it’s just that it would be cool. On your way to the garage, you hear something disturbing on the radio. It’s going to be hotter tomorrow. Son-of-a-bitch! There was a box fan at the yard sale, so you walk across the street to go grab it. As you near the crowds, a fucking zombie shows up and bites you on the hand. What do you do?

What you should do:
Well, you’ve been bitten by a zombie, so you are most likely going to die, become undead, and then get killed by me but there may be hope. You’ve got to find that lawn mower and reattach the engine. Being a mechanical genius, this only takes you a few seconds. The purpose? To get the blade spinning fast enough to cut off your arm at the elbow. This will hopefully do two things.

The first, you will lose the bottom half of your arm in a clean cut way. It won’t have to break through bones and it won’t take more than a split second. The benefit of this is that it will hurt less, be easier to dress and treat, and get the job done before the engine stalls. All of these are important because if the engine stalls and the job isn’t complete, you’re definitely a goner. If it is a ragged cut, it might get infected which could lead to further death. Neither of these deaths will be ideal.

The second thing that this will accomplish deals with odds. It will give you the best odds of not becoming a zombie. It is not fully understood how zombiism is transmitted from one person to another, but odds are it has to deal with spreading the infection through the blood or tissue. If this is the case, severing a bitten limb quickly enough just might stop the bleeding. And if it did, how badass would you be? You could tell future survivors how you survived being bitten by cutting your arm off with a lawn mower blade. And if it doesn’t work, at least you will have given the rest of us some information about zombies.

What I would do:
Being a zombie survivalist is not just a full time job with mandatory overtime, it’s a lifestyle. Being as such, I will have all of my jointed extremities lined with explosives designed to blast in a concentrated area. This will limit the damage to the rest of the body while instantly severing the joint. Another plus, it may cauterize the wound, but that isn’t a given.

Once the limb is gone, I will destroy the zombie in one of three thousand possible ways that are always at my disposal. When the zombie is destroyed and I have burned its carcass, I will have to go into hiding. I won’t go to the fortress that I have designed to save up to twenty people from the zombie invasion because all of the people who can live there have directions to go there when the zombies do come. I would be putting them all in grave danger. As such, I have also designed a cell that only a completely lucid Geoffrey can get out of. There is a time lock that expires after two weeks. If I am not lucid, then I am already dead. If the zombiism has not been released from my body, I will perish there. If I am not infected, I have the tools to treat my wound and survive for two weeks. Once the two weeks are up, I will set out into the world, if a world still exists.

Scenario:
It’s a clear night on an occasion when a meteor shower is lighting up the sky. Pretty. But, unbeknownst to the world, the meteors burning up in our atmosphere are carrying the eggs of a microscopic, parasitic lifeform. It swirls around in the clouds, then mixes with the rain and falls to the earth. As the eggs hatch, the lifeform grows from something invisible to the eye into increasingly larger black slugs that can only be described as leeches.

They latch on to living organisms and feast until they mature, at which point they produce eggs and inject them into the host. These eggs move through the blood stream, fundamentally changing the brain and infecting bodily fluids. In order to spread more efficiently, this parasite takes control of the host’s nervous system and has complete command of their body, forcing it to act wild and angry, forcing it to bite other living things. And, with that bite, the eggs will spread. Then the process repeats. Alien zombiism.¹ What do you do?

What you should do:
Get a gun. And bullets. Lots and lots of bullets. And then go to Sams Club or Costco or any other wholesale retailer. Why? Because you need a ton of supplies, and if you can’t get them and defend them, you don’t have much chance. You’ll need a lot to survive, and it won’t be feasible to try to move everything immediately from the store to a safer place far away from the city.

The problem here is quite clear. The water is contaminated with zombie bugs, so you can’t trust the water. You can’t trust the rain, you can’t trust the city water, the well water, any of it. The only liquid you can trust comes in bottles and cans, so you’ll have to guard/gather as much as possible while fending off those that would spread their bugs in you. In fact, you’ll have to find enough to last the rest of your life, no matter whether you decide to fortify a base or move from place to place like a nomad.

There is, of course, a second major problem, and it deals primarily with zombie animals. Sure, some animals have always wanted to bite humans, but generally not every animal ever, like your dog or cat or mouse. And, unlike humans, animals won’t be able to avoid drinking the contaminated water, and they won’t be able to fight the parasites with drugs or whatever else might help.

So you’re facing zombie animals, zombie people, and zombie bugs, all with contaminated water cursing you like a sailor in a storm. The odds are not good, not good at all. The food should be good though, because if you cook the animals thoroughly I’m sure it will be safe to eat, but say goodbye to those rare steaks or medium-rare burgers. That time has ended.

Really, the cards are stacked against you. You can’t get caught in the rain, you can’t fall into a river or swim across a lake, you can’t do anything that might allow contaminated water/fluid into or on your body. That is, not unless you have the straight alcohol, or gasoline, or iodine, to wash off with afterward (assuming it doesn’t get inside you). And then there are zombie fish, and who knows, maybe those leeches can grow forever and you’ll eventually see whale sized leeches trying to swallow you into their veins.

Which means that there has to be a change of location to some place where there isn’t so much water, where the climate is harsh and few things tend to survive. Places like the frigid parts of Canada or Russia, or anywhere else in the world. In the remote places, those bugs might not be able to live and there won’t be near as many enemies. Of course, it will also be harder to find supplies. Once you’re out there, you’ll need to fortify the place against the animals that will want to tear into you and the zombies that might attack in masses during the thawing months.  Life will be rough after the zombie bugs come.

What I would do:
Sadly, this kind of invasion leaves us with few choices, even for veteran zombie killers like me. Despite all that I’ve already mentioned, the biggest problem is a lack of knowledge. We know how to kill leeches, but leeches don’t lay eggs in you that turn you into a zombie. We don’t know what kills these parasites, if they can mature inside you and infect you internally, if there’s a way to destroy the eggs in you before they take control. We just don’t know.

Which is why I would take every precaution. You know what kills most things? Alcohol. So how do you kill zombie eggs? Tequila. Lots of tequila. I would drink so much of Mexico’s golden finest that nothing would be able to live in my veins except me. Then I would probably bathe in bug spray, rinse off with tobacco juice, and try all of those other home remedies that are supposed to keep leeches away.

Then I would do what I’ve suggested you should do. Find supplies, stay away from the water, fend off the zombos, and otherwise be bored out of my mind. Eventually I would load up a semi-truck full of canned food and water, then move into the desert where it never rains and nothing is out there for parasites to bother except me and my mangy dog. I think a man could live for quite a while like that without too much to worry about. Of course, living wouldn’t be worth a whole lot at that point, but that’s where the tequila comes back into play.

At least there’s always tequila.

¹ Note that this is Alien zombiism, not exactly pure zombiism. It’s not clear that this scenario would actually create real zombies since the hosts may not exactly be first considered “dead” and then later “undead.”

Sure, the brain is wrecked, so there is no cure, and the person that once was no longer is, so they could be considered ‘dead’ in a sense. Also, the parasite has complete control over the body’s muscular system, so the body continues to function after death. However, the ‘alien zombie’ could be, perhaps, considered ‘alive’ since the other bodily systems continue to function to some extent, for a while, which would make them not a zombie. Feel free to chime in with a comment on your take of this issue.