The other day my husband and I were talking about zombies. Yeah, I know, big fucking shock. I’m sure if you hang around at this site for more than a day, you’ll start to see this is a pattern for me. We talk zombies quite a bit. That’s why he’s awesome (among other reasons).
Anyway, so we were talking about zombies and somehow ZombieBoy (which is henceforth how I will refer to him in blogs or ZB) ended up saying, “Well, it all depends on how you define a zombie.”
Wow, what a concept! I mean, what makes a zombie? So here’s what I came up with:
1. They’re dead. In some movies they rise from the grave, in others once a zombie kills them, they become a zombie. But dead is pretty much a constant. Except when it’s not.
2. They want your brains. Also your flesh. Bones. Whatever they can chew, really. And they don’t seem to be able to get enough, either. They could eat twenty people and still go after you if you happen to wander in. Which is why they’re different from other monsters who might just want to kill or destroy you. You are the zombie food supply.
3. They’re gross. Because the basic zombie is dead, they also rot. Which is both yucky and awesome. Their arms are falling off, their cheeks have holes in them, they smell and they’re sticky. Plus lots of them vomit sludge and have rotten blood all over them. See what I mean? GROSS.
4. They can’t and won’t stop. Vampires are a thinking monster. They have a choice in who they pursue and who they don’t. Werewolves are out of control when they turn, but without the full moon they’re normal. But zombies don’t have those abilities. They can’t stop. They can’t even WANT to think. And as far as not stopping go, they are the champs. You can blow their legs off and they’ll drag themselves toward you, still trying to get you. You can point a gun at their head and they won’t chill out. They don’t have a game plan except to just chase you until you fall down.
5. You can only kill them by destroying the head. I guess this is partly related to number four. You can hurt a zombie in a thousand ways, but until you disconnect their head from their body or blow their skull into a thousand smithereens, they are still going to come after you. They have a weakness, but it’s a very specific one.
So what do you think? What makes a zombie for you? And what variations on the zombie theme have you really loved?
I’m a fan of the idea that if a zombie eats enough, they retain cognative abilities and don’t rot/can regenerate some rottedness, i.e. the movie My Boyfriend’s Back.
Definately dead with a craving for human flesh.
Something disturbs the body to make it a zombie (curse, necromancer, voodoo priestess…)
Only killing via burning the body to ashes or breaking curse, laying them back to rest…
Mostly gross, but there can be some less gross, dry zombies
Once the brain decomps they become eating monsters that can be controlled if one has the ability.
There is the special kind of hell of a soul being returned to their zombie body, so they are stuck in a rotting body