Some zombies appear to be normal humans, especially from a distance. They wear clothing, have all their hair and teeth, and their tendons and muscles have yet to rot, making normal locomotion more or less possible. These zombies—usually bitten while they were still alive (or reanimated directly after death)—may look and act like living humans in more ways than not, but each of them will have a “tell” that betrays them. You just have to look for it.
That guy shambling down the block might look like the same mailman you see every day, but look closer. Do his eyes lack their usual focus? Instead of whistling show tunes, is he drooling and moaning? Do the neighborhood dogs, who usually bark at him, now flee in cowardly terror?
How about the nice lady who works behind the deli counter at your local grocery store? Does her skin look a little more—how does one put it?—“corpselike” than normal? Are the red spatters on her apron a little fresher than usual? Does she give off a reek of raw meat that has nothing to do with the ham slices in the glass case in front of her?
What about the babysitter . . . ? She’s a little early to watch the kids tonight, but so what, right? Maybe she’s just getting a head start on things. But now that you take a second glance, her clothes appear to be a few days old, and her hair (usually so carefully brushed) is more than a little tangled. Her Keds also seem much muddier than you remember. What kind of muck she been walking through, anyway? And instead of waiting for you to leave so she can call her boyfriend, she’s totally trying to eat you. What’s up with that?
Importantly, in most of these cases, you have to get really close to these “people” before you can tell for sure that they’re zombies. In each instance, the zombies will use this fact to their respective advantages. This law of deception by proximity is something that you must now employ in your business dealings with other companies.
Any questions?
A final category of zombie may fairly be called the Most Decomposed Zombie. Some researchers have even wondered if these creations ought to count as “zombies” at all. Here you find the walking skeleton, no more than rags, tendons, and bright white bone glistening in the moonlight. Here you find the gelatinous humanoid mass, muddily rising from a grave in the bottom of a swamp and lurching toward land caked in leaves and vines. Here the brain, spinal cord, and gibbering skull, squirming along like a fish out of water. These zombies are not just un-human, but un-zombie-like as well. But fuck it, right? They’re still coming for you, and that’s the important thing. In fact, maybe that’s their advantage. These zombies aren’t trying to look like humans. They’re mud creatures, or fish, or skeletons, or fish skeletons. They’re not going to let you tell them they’re not zombies. You don’t “get” to tell them what they can or can’t be. They’re going to crawl or slither or drag themselves after you, and eat your quick-to-categorize brain before it can exclude them from anything else.
In short, the zombies (in all of their various forms) remind us that to be good at what you do, you don’t need to be “normal” by anyone’s standards but your own. No matter what hand God, or nature, or various artificial reanimating nerve agents have dealt you, you already have everything you need to effectively achieve your goals and follow your dreams.
“No man left behind.”
It’s a motto that has long served some of the most impressive and storied fighting forces on the planet. It also doesn’t apply to zombies at all.
Zombies, as everyone knows, are constantly left behind on the battlefield. One reason for this is that they tend to move slowly and often just get outpaced. But another reason is that zombies don’t stop to bury their dead. Nor do they pause to tend to their wounded. Since time immemorial, soldiers facing zombies have known that it is bootless to wound one zombie in hope that others will stop to “help” it.
Thus, to become a true zombie warrior, you must expunge from your brain all fealty to the credo “No man left behind.” Don’t believe for one moment that zombies don’t stop to attend to the fallen because they are insensitive or heartless (though, yes, some zombies are technically missing hearts). Rather, a zombie soldier understands that the best way to help a fallen colleague is to eat the brain of the one who felled it.
One thing that makes zombie soldiers superior to conventional soldiers is their ability to attack without prompting. (Conventional soldiers tend to waste valuable attacking time waiting around for “a battle plan” and similar things.) Consider the following comparisons.
If cut off from communications with HQ:
Conventional soldiers will hold position and attempt to reestablish lines of communication.
Zombie soldiers will hunt and kill the enemy.
If caused to encounter unforeseen obstacles, natural disasters, or confusing signs from the enemy:
Conventional soldiers will wait for word from senior command on how they ought to proceed in light of this new development.
Zombie soldiers will hunt and kill the enemy.
If faced with an overwhelming foe they cannot possibly hope to defeat themselves:
Conventional soldiers will call for reinforcements, request an air strike, or just run away.
Zombie soldiers will hunt and kill the enemy.
See a pattern here?
Zombies also use their slow speed as a tactical advantage in many situations. Zombies walk but don’t run, so fleeing humans usually understand themselves to have a little time to run away. However, in doing so, these humans reliably make very bad decisions, of which zombies will happily take advantage. For example:
Ack, zombies! We just have time to barricade ourselves inside of an abandoned house and nail all of the doors shut, effectively sealing us in until the zombies catch up.
Ack, zombies! We just have time to run deeper into this abandoned mine (or system of caves), which we can only assume must go on forever.
Zombie Tip—Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today: Especially when it involves violent, lawless mayhem and cannibalism. Those brains aren’t going to eat themselves. Hop to it, dude.
Ack, zombies! We just have time to run to the other side of this tiny island (instead of, say, fixing our boat), where I’m sure there won’t be more zombies waiting for us.
In each of these cases, it is the impression zombies give that they can be at least temporarily outrun that leads their victims to make these bad decisions. Time after time, the zombie’s victims ironically place themselves in situations where the zombies’ lack of quickness will no longer be a factor.
We’ve covered the advantages of Always Just Marching Straight Ahead in the direction of your enemy. One contingency to be prepared for is the result of this tactic when employed against an enemy whose troops are fewer in number and/or more tightly packed than your own. Namely, your troops will encircle your enemy.
Note that this is more than just a “side effect” of marching a bunch of soldiers (who don’t want to patiently stand in line behind one another) toward a smaller encampment of enemies. It is a tactic that has been used by zombies since the beginning of time and should be adopted by you whenever possible.
In dialogues pertaining to combat, generals speak of wanting to flank and rout one another’s armies but rarely of “encircling” them. This is because most generals have in mind the goal of compelling the opposing army to either run away or to surrender. Very few military leaders have the goal of “eating every last one of the enemy’s brains, no matter how much time or how much effort we must expend to make that happen.”
If you have access to powers that can actually raise the dead, it will certainly help things out a lot. People in this category might include:
• Voodoo priests (or at least researchers who’ve synthesized the zombie-creating powder used by voodoo priests)
• Magic Users level 34 or higher who have mastered all Raise Dead spells and are of lawful evil alignment
• Funeral directors who’ve been lucky enough to save some of the mysterious glowing goo they found in the asteroi
d that landed on their property that one time
• Scientists who’ve been shunned by the mainstream establishment for conducting experiments into the reanimation of necrotic tissue
• Industrialists overseeing large toxic-chemical facilities who have seen fit to circumvent EPA standards by stashing hazardous waste in graveyards (I mean, who’s gonna ever know, right? And plus, who’s it hurting? The dead people? Ha! [Takes long, fitful draw on Davidoff])
• Socially isolated teenagers who found a copy of the Necronomicon in that occult bookstore over on Milwaukee Avenue
(Note: Those with the power to create actual zombies will be able to skip ahead to the end of this chapter.) But what if you’re not a voodoo priest, magic user, or smug factory owner richly deserving of comeuppance? What if you’re just some guy or gal who bought this book?
Fighting like they’re dead is something zombies do because they actually are dead. (The word “like” hardly needs to be applied, really.) Being dead brings with it several advantages, however, that often give zombies the edge they need in combat situations. Chief among these is an almost total and complete lack of fear.
Most soldiers on the battlefield have—if we’re honest about it—two priorities:
• Accomplish mission (e.g., kill enemies, blow up supply bunker, assassinate Saddam/Hitler/Osama)
• Not die
And they aren’t necessarily prioritized in that order. Usually, for one to happen, the other has to happen, too. But when it comes right down to it and a soldier has to choose one, what are the things that would make him or her choose to accomplish the mission even if doing so would mean his death?
The answer is: the notion that death is a certainty.
If you’re going to be KIA no matter what, you might as well try to get the job done, whatever it is. I mean, what else are you gonna do? Just sit there and wait around to get killed? Hell no. If you’re going down, at the very least you want to take a few of the bad guys with you.
The trick is gaining the sense that death is inevitable. To make the point clear, let’s start with a less extreme example. Like jogging.
Let’s say you’ve let yourself go for a few years, but now you want to get back in shape, so you decide to start jogging again. But with your flabby gut and man-boobs, you feel a little self-conscious about getting back out there. It’ll be embarrassing. You’ll be “the fat guy” in the park or on the treadmill at the health club. So, consequently, you start to put it off more and more. You find excuses not to go. You procrastinate. Maybe you fail to go jogging at all.
Why? Because you’re afraid you’ll be embarrassed as “the fat guy.”
Zombie Tip—I regret that I have but many, many zombie “lives” to give to my country: How many times can you reanimate a blasted-apart zombie and get it back into fighting shape? I dunno, but let’s find out!
What’s the solution? (No, not “work out at home” or “jog at night.”) Don’t take the risk that you might be embarrassed. Instead, ensure that you’ll be embarrassed.
Make yourself a Day-Glo T-shirt with lettering that reads: “Get a load of my ginormous man-boobs!” Compose a route for your jog that takes you past the homes of all your ex-lovers and former business partners who are now more successful and thinner than you. Wear jogging shorts that are far too tight and expose parts of your backside that should never, ever be seen. You’ve got to make it more than a daily jog. You’ve got to make it a daily-jog-and-exercise-in-total-humiliation. You can be like: “Honey, I’m going out for my daily-jog-and-exercise-in-total-humiliation. Time to get my heart rate up while bawling like a little girl at my own shame! Be back soon!”
When the fact that something might occur is dissuading you from taking an action you need to take, you need to ensure that it occurs and, in doing so, give your fears no place to go.
Anyhow, let’s leave the fat jogger and go back to the battlefield. Obviously, you don’t want to ensure that you die—like shoot yourself or something—but you need to be ready for that possibility. (This is war, after all.) Just as our self-conscious jogger has to stop thinking, “I could be embarrassed if I do that,” a soldier who truly wants to fight like a zombie must never allow the phrase “I could get killed if I do that” to prevent him from acting.
Zombies can of course be “killed” (or “killed again” or “rendered still”) by disconnecting their heads from the rest of their bodies, or by penetrating or destroying their brains. Zombies do not walk with a swagger because they are invulnerable. Rather, they take the battlefield with the confidence of one well prepared for the eventuality of death. (Also, they’ve died once already and probably have the sense that it’s not all that bad.)
To be clear, zombies never try to kill themselves. They don’t leap into lava pits, position themselves in front of artillery cannons, or turn melee weapons on themselves. (There is no record, anywhere, of a zombie suicide.) Zombies are merely open to the possibility of another death. They accept it as part of the general condition of being a zombie, and do not allow it to deter them from their efforts to eat the brains of as many humans as possible.
Now, it is true (believe it or not) that zombies can’t accomplish everything. Some chasms are too deep to cross, some government missile silos are too tightly guarded to infiltrate. But no zombie ever looked at itself and the task before it and decided not to try. Zombies are so successful because they try everything possible to get what they want, regardless of any physical setbacks. In some cases, they are even able to turn their physical “inadequacies” into advantages.
Zombie Tip—History has shown that those who presume to know what zombies want almost always meet an untimely end—usually because they forget that zombies, more than anything, just want to eat them.
A zombie with no arms or legs can inch along on its haunches, or slither like a snake. Sometimes these inching-slithering types can find their way through grates or fissures in castle walls that a regular zombie would never be able to negotiate. They can wiggle through and stoop under barricades that might hold a regular zombie at bay.
Plus-size zombies (originally fat people, now obscenely bloated by the process of natural decomposition) can use their inhuman girth to block doorways and corral humans into corners. They are dynamic, walking barriers of death. (No one is ever too fat to be a zombie.)
Ugly zombies—those missing jawbones or other significant maxillofacial components—can use their ugliness to their advantage. Most humans are horrified upon seeing a zombie, but still possess the sense to run away. Yet if a zombie is especially terrifying to look at, a human may be completely paralyzed with fear. Then, all the ugly zombie has to do is saunter up and start munching.
Severely decomposed zombies can use their physical decline to their advantage by passing for offal or meat-rendering by-product. In the case of a zombie like this, most people won’t know what it is . . . until a mouth appears somewhere in that gelatinous, fleshy mass and takes a bite out of them.
Zombie Tip—Remember: Instead of “No man left behind,” a zombie’s creed is “No. Man left behind.”
Kicking ass like a zombie is as much about what you don’t do as it is about what you do. And one important thing that zombies don’t do—ever—is obey conventions, treaties, or rules of any kind governing their behavior on the battlefield. No zombie has ever agreed not to eat the brains of women and children, or not to eat the brains of prisoners of war, or to refrain from using certain tactics on the battlefield. Zombies do not allow themselves to be bound by documents or contracts, and so find themselves unfettered killing machines with infinite options when it comes to kicking your ass.
Sometimes people assume that battlefield techniques lacking in complexity must be outdated and ineffective. People are attuned to watch for the new, the surprising, the cutting edge (or leading edge, or bleeding edge, or the edge of a zombie’s teeth as it eats you). People are ready to credit a complicated tactic with being able to accomplish wonderful things but are susp
icious of an approach known for its “elegant simplicity.”
Sometimes the best ways of doing things are the oldest and simplest. There are some models upon which no improvements can be made. And one such a model is the attack pattern of the zombie (a.k.a.: the first thing you must learn if you are to become a Zombie Commander).
A zombie army is always moving. (Not at the quick step, certainly, but they’re always making forward progress.) Moving brings you closer to the enemy. Moving makes things happen. Moving keeps things interesting.
Zombie soldiers neither bivouac nor “hold their position.” If a zombie army isn’t moving, it’s because humans are nearby and the zombies are trying to figure out how to get at them. Yet the main function of this tactic is not merely to locate the enemy and have a nice change of scenery. Always Just Marching Straight Ahead will endow your soldiers with numerous advantages on the battlefield once combat begins.
The first opportunity for this strategy to help you will be the moment your army first comes into contact with the enemy forces. Throughout history, large armies have tended to “make camp” once sighting their enemies—pausing to consider a plan of attack, determining how the terrain might best be used, and sizing up the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. (Sometimes, based on an unfavorable analysis of the latter, the armies elect not to engage one another at all!) Weapons are prepared. Battle plans are drawn. On some occasions, representatives from the two sides actually meet face-to-face to see if the conflict can be avoided (and, if it’s unavoidable, then they discuss the “rules” and parameters of the upcoming engagement).
The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and Survival Page 7