#51 Zombie Lab: Let’s All Go to the Museum!

Hi! Yes! I’ve been away for a while. I don’t want to go into details, but it turns out there was a completely unrelated apocalypse that coincidentally was due to happen on the same date as the supposed “Mayan” apocalypse. The only person who knew how to avert it was Bing Crosby, who concealed clues to the only hope to mankind’s salvation in the lyrics of several of his biggest hits.

Anyway, long story short, I managed to avert the rise of the Spider Clowns, but then I was stranded in Reykjavik and it took me three months to hitch hike back to somewhere with Internet access. It wasn’t that far to travel, I’m just very unappealing to drivers.

But I’m not here to talk about that, there are much more interesting things for us to discuss.

So let’s talk about museums. I love a good museum. Whenever friends come to visit me in Norwich I’m always keen to recommend that they visit our famous Teapot Museum, then they ask if I’m being sarcastic and I say “No, I’m not being sarcastic. Why?”

One place that has a lot of museums is London, and among my favourite museums there in the Science Museum because, frankly, it has lots of planes and a lunar module and I think that’s cool. (Also cool: Novelty teapots).

This week the science museum is combing two things I love (Science. Museums.) with something else I love (Zombies) to bring about the Science Museum Zombie Lab. The Zombie Lab is going to take place over this Wednesday evening (January 30^th, 6:45pm to 10pm) and Saturday and Sunday afternoons (February 2^nd/3^rd, 12pm to 5pm).

I’m going to be there, and all of you should be there too. Here are a few of things you ought to expect:

Games and Activities

Zombie Costume Competition

Exactly what it says on the tin. Come dressed as a zombie on Wednesday evening, and if people are convinced enough that you’re a shambling corpse they’ll give you a prize. Or hit you in the head with a shovel. It depends.

Quarantine

This one looks fun- the idea is that the zombie safe house doors will be slamming shut in ten minutes, and you have to prove you aren’t a zombie by completing a number of tasks.

Horde
Remember that bit in Shaun of the Dead where they try and navigate through a horde of zombies by groaning and shuffling? Zombie LARP regulars among our readers may remember this account of why we’re not longer allowed to do that in game.

Well collective behaviour experts Edd Codling and Nikolai Bode of the University of Essex will be looking to test just how good a zombie you can be in what they’re describing as a “predator-prey” game.

The Trial

This is my personal favourite activity at the event, purely on the grounds that I helped write some of the support materials for it. Yep, Mary and Grant (or Serious Business to give them their official name) the minds behind Zombie LARP and the Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter live game we reported on last year, have come up with a new creation. Since, sadly, the Science Museum was apparently unwilling to let us charge headlong around the museum firing Nerf guns at one another, they have instead constructed a post-post-apocalyptic world, where the tide is just beginning to turn against the zombies, a cure for the disease has been discovered and society is beginning to rebuild.

People will be asked to take part in the Community Jury Initiative to answer two fundamental questions- are the cured zombies legally responsible for all those people they ate? And should those who didn’t get infected be held responsible for all those zombies they killed? The answers may not be as straight-forward as you think...

UPDATE: You can find out much more about The Trial here.

Talks

I’ve written about the zombie apocalypse being used to examine real life issues so many times here you’re probably bored of reading about it, but the Zombie Lab will feature a number of talks that do just that. Daniel Bor (University of Sussex), David Papineau (Kings College London) and author and games writer Naomi Alderman will be talking over whether zombies are conscious as a way of examining what consciousness is. Another talk will look at possible causes of a zombie apocalypse, because there aren’t enough things to be terrified of in the world.

Films

There will also be a special showing of the zombie romance Warm Bodies, which we’ll probably have to get round to reviewing for this site sooner or later.

And that is just scratching the surface (which I’m sure could be worked into a zombie pun, but it’s late and I’ve got some other stuff to write, so you’ll have to come up with that one yourselves). Have a look here to see the full list of stuff the Science Museum is going to have on over the festival, and I’ll see you there!http://zombielarp.co.uk/

#48 Play Dead: The Most Adorable Zombie Movie Ever

It’s time I admitted it. If you set yourself the challenge of updating a blog that is mostly about zombie movies on a semi-regular basis, after about 20 months you can start to feel like you’ve had your fill.

Zombie movies, after all, all follow very similar structures. Hell, that’s part of the reason why I chose zombie movies in the first place, because by seeing the same story done over and over again in dozens of different ways, you can hopefully reveal some interesting things about storytelling.

But still, even then you can sometimes feel like you’ve seen every twist, every variation, ever meta-post-ironic-reconstructed-deconstruction. Then something like Play Dead comes along and shows there are still fresh, new and exciting things to be done with the genre.

Play Dead (2012) FULL MOVIE from Andres and Diego Meza-Valdes on Vimeo.

It’s a zombie movie, but dogs! Look at the cute little doggie woggies! With their little noses and their wagging tails!

Okay, full disclosure. In the same period during which I have been testing the very limits of my zombie-movie-watching capacity I have also reluctantly been drawn over to the side of the dog lovers. A client whose house I work at regularly has a couple of really stupid dogs, and they keep looking at me with their big wet eyes and wagging their tales and jumping up to say hello and I’M NOT MADE OF STONE!

I mean look at him!

I haven’t even asked the client for permission to nick this photo from his Facebook account, on the grounds that he loves looking at pictures of his dogs so much he’ll see it as a pleasant surprise that one has suddenly turned up on a website he’s reading.

But enough looking at that dog’s stupid cute face. We’re here to review a zombie movie and review a zombie movie we shall. Minor spoilers from here on in (although really, the entire movie is right up there and takes slightly less time to watch than an episode of The Simpsons, so I don’t know why you don’t watch that first).

Play Dead is a short film funded through a Kickstarter page last year and made on a budget of less than £6,000, which even George Romero would probably have a good giggle over. The Kickstarter page describes the movie as “Homeward Bound meets a zombie apocalypse” and it doesn’t disappoint, although there’s no talking, weirdly anthropomorphised animals here. These dogs are dogs, pure and simple. The dog’s personalities are communicated partly through introductory freeze frame captions when each dog appears, and partly through... dog... acting... ? Is that a real thing?

The usual tropes you’ll find in a zombie movie are here, with a doggie twist. The disparate characters from different backgrounds forced to work together by circumstance? Check. The human settlement that looks like it’ll provide sanctuary but actually turns out to be more dangerous than the zombies? Check. The long trek through the apocalyptic wasteland to find a destination where safety and supplies are plentiful? Check. The shocking twist at the end where it turns out the sanctuary is taken over by vicious, flesh eating killing machines? Check and check.

However, perhaps the people who’ll find this film most disturbing are dog owners themselves. Not because we see horrible things happen to the dogs (although we do) but because of the other zombie movie trope this movie embraces.

See, as I’ve talked about before, one of the things about the zombie apocalypse is that it’s a fantasy. It’s a fantasy of waking up one day to discover the rules and restrictions that are holding you down the rest of the time have suddenly disappeared, and now you can go running around shopping malls stealing everything you like and hitting people in the face with cricket bats.

It’s something we’ve seen pass into Young Adult fiction as well, with books like Charlie Higson’s The Enemy and Alexander Gordon Smith’s The Fury showing kids scenes of sheer horror back to back with appealing fantasies about what life would be like with all these grown-ups all over the place.

And so with Play Dead “law and order” or “grown-ups” are replaced with, well, you, dog owners. Play Dead is a dog’s wish-fulfilment fantasy about just how great life would be if you were dead. One of the dogs even drags her zombified owner around on a leash.

So, ummm... yeah, there’s that.

Still, look how cute the doggies are!

#47 The Fury: The Drunk Author Interview

Today we’re going to be talking about the new Young Adult zombie novel, The Fury. In The Fury, our heroes discover that, whenever people are within a certain range of them, they’re overwhelmed by the desire to murder them horribly. It’s like a zombie move, but after the zombies kill you they go back to making the tea, washing the car, delivering papers, etc.

I arranged to meet up with Alexander Gordon Smith to discuss how he wrote the book, where he got his inspiration from, and what he thought about exposing children to such horrible and violent stories. Because I know Gordon from a while back (his middle name is actually his “first” name, because he likes to be awkward like that) we ended up having quite a few drinks first. Surprisingly the recording came out as pretty listenable.

Download Part One of the Interview Here: In the first part of our interview (which you can also read below) we talked about where Gordon steals his ideas from, and why he decided upon the premise of The Fury, as well as writing horror for children, and the really quite terrifying real life genesis of the idea behind The Fury.

Then I bought another round.

Download Part Two of the Interview Here: In the second part of our interview I ask Gordon about his Fury survival strategy (I once again make an impassioned argument for the shovel), we talk about our favourite zombie movies and paranormal versus scientific zombies and the importance of rules in horror, all while we become steadily more inebriated.

If listening to drunk people talk about horror fiction doesn't sound like your idea of fun, I've transcribed the first part of the interview below:

Gordon, you’re a massive plagiarist. Who’ve you been stealing from?

Everybody I can. I think as we were chatting about earlier being a writer you tend to plagiarise pretty much as many people as you can. Everything I like you try and recycle in some fashion. But as The Fury is a zombie book I’ve taken every single zombie think that I loved which is pretty much every single zombie thing ever, and used it somewhere in the story.

I’ve tried to put my own spin on it but I feel like when you’re writing in a genre you love you’re standing on the shoulders of the people who came before you. I’d like to think one of these days someone will stand on my shoulders or my face and write something else.

I noticed that through the course of the book a lot of children die. Why do you hate children?

Oh well, that’s an interesting point. A lot of children do die. And a lot die in my previous series as well. I don’t know, maybe this is some weird subconscious thing? I was bullied a lot as a child... maybe I should see someone about this? I’m not sure...

It is worrying...

I think, I’m a big fan of death in literature and when you’re writing young adult books the percentage of younger characters to older characters is higher than in an adult series so I guess proportionally you’re going to end up killing more kids and teenagers, I guess maybe that’s why!

One of the great things about zombie stories is that you can kill a load of people without it having any consequences legally or morally because they’re zombies.

That’s very true.

In The Fury when you kill the zombies, if you hadn’t killed them and left them alone they would have gone back to being normal people.

Yes.

Why do you want to take the fun out of murdering zombies?

Well I wanted to throw a new twist on it. I spent ages and ages and ages trying to think of a new way of telling the zombie story because obviously the zombie story has been told so well by so many people and I guess this is why it took me such a long time to write a zombie book because I wanted that twist, I wanted something unique and I don’t know whether this is completely unique, probably not completely unique but the idea that people.... I was thinking about how there’s so many zombie triggers out there, there’s the chemical trigger, the possession trigger, an infinite number of zombie triggers and I just suddenly thought “What if the trigger, the thing that made people zombies was you? And only you. Every time you went near someone they became feral, they became a zombie. That was the thing that drove the book. When you go near people they become zombies but as soon as you go away or they kill you they go back to normal.

This is why I loved writing the book so much because usually in a zombie story it’s the apocalypse, the world is over, but with this one nobody is experiencing it apart from the characters in the book. Everyone else is going about their life as normal. So these characters don’t have anything to fall back on, they can’t say “It’s the apocalypse, let’s just roll with it.” As far as they can see everyone in the world is going about their business, but soon as they go near them, they are the ones who are in effect ruining everything. They’re the spanner in the works. They’re the ones who turn everyone around them into zombies.

I don’t know if I took the fun out of it... well hopefully I didn’t take the fun out of it! But I think it’s quite fun where... everyone’s seen that thing where your mum is a zombie, y’know, Shaun of the Dead kind of thing and this is really interesting because when you kill your mum when she’s a zombie you’re not really killing your mum. But if you kill your mum in The Fury you’re actually killing your mum! People will go to her funeral! It’s a weird... I wanted to add something else to it, but it was horrible. I did particularly enjoy writing those bits because it felt more real than, I guess, a zombie story. I felt the whole of The Fury felt more real than a typical zombie book because of this kind of background that people are people, they’re not zombies.

It was a really weird story to write.

GP Taylor has said that young adult books should have some sort age certification on them because they’re getting too scary. Do you agree with him wholeheartedly because your books are so horrible?

Thank you I’ll take that as a complement! The only thing age certificates will do in books is make younger readers want to read the books for older readers. If my books had a 15 certificate I’d get more 12, 13, 14 year old readers, so yes I think it’s a great idea!

But you know, I think this is the thing about horror. It is a horrible book, the prologue of the book is one of the most distressing things I’ve ever written, because it was quite shocking when I was writing it, but y’know, I like to think that the core of the books, the same as with the Furnace books, the core of the book is heroism, the core of the book is hope, the core of the book is humanity. That’s what I love about horror, horror brings out those things. You never see heroism like you do in a horror story.

I think the worse things get the more good you see in people. I honestly think that about The Fury, that if a 12, 13 year old boy or girl reads The Fury then yes, horrible things happen but I hope they’ll learn something about themselves, something about their own strengths.

It’s the same as Bettelheim’s argument that fairy tales really do make very young children feel more confident about their abilities. I think horror as the same effect on teenagers, because being a teenager is incredibly difficult. I remember being a teenager and I remember hating it, and I read a lot of horror. Horror made me think- You know what? There are worse things out there. I can do this. I have strength. I’ve seen people defeat greater evils. I’ve totally forgotten what the question was... I’m just ranting now!

Whether children ought to be protected from the horrible things you inflict on them.

I think no. I think booksellers, librarians (especially librarians), teachers, parents will be a guiding force. There are children’s and young adult books that have very adult themes. I don’t put anything rude in my books there’s hardly any swearing, I think there’s different levels of danger in young adult books... I don’t know. I’m not really qualified to answer this question but I think with horror there’s not much of a need to censor books. I think we were talking about this earlier, if a younger reader comes across something in a book that they’re not too sure about I think their default setting is to stop or skip, and that’s a strong impulse in a child. I know I was like that as a kid.

Aside from my general tone of trying to accuse you of being a terrible person, honestly, when you’re writing how much do you think about holding back because of the target audience?

That’s really tricky. I’m not consciously aware of holding back anything. Because with horror the main thing you’re worried about is violence. I don’t really hold back on that at all. Maybe there’s times when you think you’ve gone too far. But the default setting is to leave it in.

There’s been a few times where my editor has said “Let’s get rid of this. Let’s just tone this down a bit” and I’ll always go along with it because you know the editors job is they know the audience better than I do, they know what levels people will expect...

Okay, is there any really disgusting violent gory act that’s been cut out that you can tell us about?

Let me think, with the Fury... No! I think at one point there’s a dead baby in there somewhere, but I think that got left in. I don’t know how that dead baby got in there... she just gate crashed the party...

Any children listening to this, he didn’t write the dead bay, he just crawled in there and it might be under your bed right now...

In the sequel, the Storm, there’s another dead baby...

Spoilers!

With the Furnace, my previous series, the violence was almost Tom and Jerry violence. It was very real in the context of the story but in terms of real life you’d never be in a situation like that. Whereas I think The Fury is a bit more visceral, it felt more real when I was writing it.

In the prologue, and even the first few chapters, the thing that gets through is that is so familiar to anyone who’s been to high school, you make that work to the point where when everyone starts trying to kill you it seems like a fairly natural progression...

I was a bit of a loner in high school, found it very difficult to make friends in high school...

But you’re such a jock now Gordon!

I feel I’m a better person now for not trying to fit in the crowd, but that’s a whole different argument, but I have very vivid memories of things, like cycling down the street with the guy who was my best friend at the time and suddenly a bunch of teenagers who were slightly older than us appeared at the end of the road and he cycled up to join them, and as soon as I cycled up he was taking the mickey, pointing... and I think you never feel so alone as you do at high school.

At that age that’s survival technique at the same time...

That’s true, it really is. You learn how to deal with that kind of emotion.

I think the actual inspiration for this book, although I didn’t consciously remember it while writing it, or maybe I did, I don’t know. It’s weird how the brain works.

But when I was in high school... I’m in amazing shape now, obviously...

He’s a golden Adonis!

It’s hard to believe when I was at school I was a bit overweight, and I was in the bottom set at PE, as were most of my friends, and we had this sadistic P.E. teacher called Mr Wren. So if you’re out there Mr Wren thank you for inspiring this book! And his idea of a laugh was this game called Murder Ball.

There’d be thirty kids in this class and we’d be outside in the driving rain or the sleet or the snow or whatever and he’d give the slowest kid in the class (usually me) a rugby ball and everyone would have a turn at doing this, he’d give you a five second head start, and so you’d start running and five seconds later he’d blow the whistle. Now you were pelting across the field as fast as your legs would go, which for me obviously wasn’t very fast, and you’d throw the ball away because it was just slowing you down. After five seconds he’d blow the whistle and every person in that class would come after you. Now their goal was the get the ball back, they wanted the rugby ball, but they’d ignore it, it was forgotten. They wanted you.

They’d be coming across the field after you, you’d feel the ground shake, and these were your friends, the people you hung out with at lunchtime and you’d look over your shoulder and they would have faces like demons, they wanted to kill you. I could never outrun them so after a few seconds I’d be on the floor, 30 people on top of me punching me, biting me, kicking me, putting grass in your mouth so you couldn’t breathe and mud up your nose. I’ve in my life never felt so much like I was going to die as I did when playing murder ball.

And the really weird thing is, it was horrible, I hated it, but as soon as it was someone else’s turn to run with the ball you were there. You would run after them, as soon as they were on the floor you were punching them, you were kicking them... It was weird.

And this is what I love about zombies. You cannot fail to be pulled into a mob like that. It’s amazing how quickly it happens. It’s like a totally different part of your brain takes over.

And I think that, years and years later, that’s what inspired the book.

#44 Anniversary Dinner: On Caring For Your Pet Zombie

So this week I got a sneak peak at Anniversary Dinner, a new short from gotta/enk productions, the brains behind Werewolf stabbing film The Big Bad. This time the duo have decided to make a zombie movie, with Jessi Gotta taking on both directorial and zombification duties.

The plot is simple. In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse it’s the wedding anniversary of a man who’s keeping his zombified wife tied up in the spare room. From there what happens is pretty much exactly what always happens when you keep a zombie tied up in the spare room. Kids, don’t keep a zombie tied up in the spare room.

This is ground that’s been covered plenty of times before. The morality of zombie movies says that if you don’t smash your zombified loved one’s brain in with a shovel or a shotgun blast you’re either weak, misguided or dangerous. There’ve been exceptions. In Shaun of the Dead Shaun seems to have trained his dead best friend Ed to concentrate on playing Timesplitters 2 more than trying to chew off Shaun’s goatee, and in Fido it results in a happy, nuclear, possibly kind of necrophilic family.

But usually that’s not how it ends. It ends with Bubba the friend zombie finally mastering how to shoot you in the head, or the chained up infected soldier in 28 Days Later being let out and running round killing everyone. At best, you’re going to be faced with some truly revolting meal times of the type seen in Braindead.

The way the pet chained up zombie is used in this short does something that’s surprisingly rare in zombie movies. For once, this is a film that uses zombies to talk about death. Frederick, the loving husband in this movie, is still clinging onto his relationship with his wife long after she’s dead. There’s no way she can return his feelings, and so her body becomes a huge, toxic presence in Frederick’s life.

And not just Frederick’s life. Leigh, the zombie played by Jessi Gotta, is a threat not just to Frederick, but to everyone else around him, possibly to the point of restarting the pandemic that has only just been brought back under control. And Frederick doesn’t care, because when we feel at our worst it doesn’t often bring out the best in us.

It’s a great little film, simple but nicely done, and definitely one I’d add to my list of lunchtime zombie movies. When it gets released, I’ll let you know. In the mean time, watch the trailer here:

Anniversary Dinner - Official Trailer from gotta/enk on Vimeo.

#43 Last Stand on Zombie Island: Why Guns Are Basically Balls During A Zombie Apocalypse

This week I’m turning Chris Writes About The End Of The World into an open forum for debate. Please welcome another Chris Who Writes About The End Of The World, Christopher Eger. Christopher Eger’s new book, Last Stand on Zombie Island, aims to take a more realistic look at the zombie apocalypse. One of the areas Chris is able to be particularly accurate about is the description of guns and the way they’re used, being a self described “recovering gun nut”.

On hearing about this, I asked Chris to respond to the self-evident truth that, should the zombie apocalypse actually happen, guns would actually be totally useless.

Here’s my argument:

Why Guns Would Be Useless During A Zombie Apocalypse
Let’s get one thing clear from the outset. We all know that the double barrelled shotgun is the second coolest weapon for killing zombies, being only just beaten out by the chainsaw. The Bruce-Campbell-Combo is still unmatched in the annals of zombie killing awesomeness.

However like the chainsaw, the double barrel shotgun, and indeed, any firearm, will inevitably get you killed in an actual zombie apocalypse. With the chainsaw, the reasons behind it killing you are obvious- within thirty second you’ll have accidentally chopped your own legs off because you’re an idiot. With firearms it’s a little more complicated.

Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m not a big fan of guns outside of the NERF variety, and the computer generated variety. I live in a country with no second amendment, where the only people with guns are farmers, and farmers’ mums. When I see police officers with guns I get nervous, because historically they’ve not proven completely trustworthy with sticks.

However, all of this is irrelevant to the fact that when law and order breaks down and our neighbours turn into blood thirsty ambulant corpses, even if you’re well trained a gun will get you killed faster than being the optimistic, cheery character who gives the other survivors reason to believe there is still hope in the world. This is for three reasons.

One: Guns Break
Guns have moving parts. Moving parts can go wrong. Even if you clean and maintain your gun properly on a regular basis, every piece of that weapon is going to subject to Murphy’s Law and it’s just waiting for the absolute worst possible moment to go kafooey.

Two: Ammo Runs OutThe reason the zombie apocalypse, and here we’re talking about a true, George Romero zombie apocalypse rather than anything based on “infection”, is that everyone who dies becomes a soldier for the other side. Given that everybody dies, this means that barring destruction of the brain sooner or later every single human being is going to be playing for the other team. Now I’m sure that bullets actually outnumber humans by now, and should we feel the need we could probably all shoot ourselves in the head and leave plenty of bullets left over, but you don’t have that many bullets. However many zombies you kill, more are going to keep coming, and eventually you’re going to have to make a decision about what to do with that last bullet.

Three: Your Gun Is A Dinner BellAs I mentioned, in a zombie apocalypse everyone who isn’t you or your merry band of survivors is probably a zombie. Now zombies are very stupid. They pretty much walk directly towards the nearest thing that’s moving around or making noise.

You know what makes a shitload of noise? A gun going off.  Even say you’re super-well equipped for the zombie apocalypse, and have silencers, you know what a silenced gun sounds like?


You hear that sound a bit like a gun going off right after the sound of the gun going off? That’s an echo.

You kill one zombie with a gun, you’ll attract three. You kill those three, nine more have turned up. Sooner or later you’re going to go back to point two of this list.

So What Should You Do Instead?Which is all very well, but zombies have got to die, right? What sort of hippy, liberal wusspants solution would I suggest? Hugging them to death? Blowing bong smoke in their faces until they need a sit down? That wouldn’t work, it would just give them zombie munchies!

Actually, my solution is very straightforward. The only weapon you need for the zombie apocalypse is a sturdy shovel with a sharpened blade. It never runs out of ammo and there’s far less that can go wrong with it. The lengthy wooden shaft allows you to stay out of arms reach of the zombies, with the handle letting you put some force behind it as you jab it into the necks and faces of the approaching horde. Yes, there is a risk the zombies will simply grab hold of the shovel and start biting it, but if you’re smart enough to bring a spare you can beat the zombies to death with that while they’re chewing your first one.

So that is why when the dead begin to rise you should ignore the hunting and fishing shop and instead head for the garden centre.

Why Guns Would Actually Be Totally Awesome During A Zombie Apocalypse

Thanks to Chris for the invitation to visit your choice of armament against the seething hordes of the shambling and running undead. I agree wholeheartedly that any weapon at all is better than the hippy hug-a-zombie approach. We started hugging the Soviets a few decades ago and you see where that got us! What I do disagree on, is that firearms are the go-to weapon of choice over shovels in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

Let us look briefly at the history of weapons. From prehistoric times to the dystopian future, there have been roughly two types of weapons: melee and ranged

Melee weapons are anything that has to be held and engaged with at extreme close quarters. Examples of these are axes, machete, swords, chainsaw, clubs and bats, brass knuckles, tins of soup, shovels, golf clubs, bayonets, et al. The other Chris is a fan of the melee weapon. Sharpened shovels indeed.

I wish him luck.

I, on the other hand, am a ranged weapon proponent. Ranged weapons are something that can be fired accurately further than a melee weapon can be thrown. Examples of these are bows, flamethrowers, some javelins, and projectile weapons (i.e. firearms)

The advantage of ranged weapons of melee weapons is the key of the reactionary gap. It has long been accepted fact, verified by studies and experiments that there is a '21-foot rule' as far as reactionary gaps. For the record, the 21-Foot Rule, says that in the time it takes the average firearm-equipped law enforcement officer to recognize a threat, draw his sidearm and fire 2 rounds at the center mass of an attacking subject, said average subject charging the officer with a melee edged weapon can cover a distance of 21 feet. If the shooter is slower than the average trained law enforcement officer or the attacker (zombie?) faster, the reactionary gap is more. In short, with a ranged weapon it is possible to engage a zombie from a safe distance.

With a melee weapon, you have to get bad-breath close, which is close enough to infect. In addition, as proven by hundreds of films, books and graphic novels on the undead, zombies tend to congregate in large swarms or hordes. If presented with having to defend against a group of twenty undead with either a shovel or a firearm (with more than twenty rounds,) I would take the firearm all day.

With melee a weapon, their prime advantage is in the short training period required. You can impart the techniques needed to turn a fireplace poker into an effective weapon to the average person in less than a minute. Granted, I would prefer a melee weapon to no weapon at all, but it would not be my first choice if a firearm were available. It should be recognized, however, that with a firearm, you have to give the user basic weapon's nomenclature, safety, and manipulation training, which, even under pressure, cannot be skipped. If you plan on the zombie apocalypse (and who doesn’t, right?) then this training needs to take place before hand.

Classic ranged weapons such as bows and javelins are often not too high up on the list of zombie apocalypse survival tools. It is just too hard to justify becoming efficient enough with a ranged weapon that it is often impossible to carry more than 10-20 projectiles for to justify it. Flamethrowers are just a bad idea (who wants to have flaming zombies running amok?) This leaves the firearm as the superheavyweight champion of ranged weapons.

A melee weapon needs to be wielded by an arguably young and fit person. Both young and old, sick and well, can use a firearm, providing the would-be zombie assassin is trained in its operation. Example given, your 80-year old grandfather may not be able to hold his own against five zombies in his front yard with only a garden hoe. However, this same hardcase, who had spent his youth battling Rommel in North Africa before Germans knew of techno music, could come out on top if he had an old shotgun and a pocketful of shells.

Even in countries with very strict firearms registration laws such as the UK and Australia, it remains possible to own modern shotguns and other firearms with a certificate. According to figures from the Guardian, in 2011 no less than 1.8 million legally held guns were on record just in England and Wales alone. Granted this is still only about 3300 guns per 100,000 populations, but can you guess to reason which 3300 people would be better equipped in the event of a zombie apocalypse?

*For the record Christopher Eger also recommends nuclear depth charges for use against mermaids, weaponized spider monkeys against aliens, and 84mm antitank rockets with hyperbaric warheads against most bigfoot/yeti type creatures, (provided, of course, that the above prove hostile.) Hey, if they ask for it, they get it.

So there you have it, the case for and against guns as the weapon of choice during the zombie apocalypse. Now you have the information, you can make your own mind up that this new, interloping Chris is wrong!


Still, it's worth checking out his book, which you can find here.

Thanks for taking part Chris, and I wish you well before your imminent, painful death at the hands of the Undead.

#42 Juan of the Dead: Cuban Shaun of the Dead, No Really

First, a disclaimer. Reviewers are really, really lazy people. This is why we spend our time, as it’s often been observed, criticising the work’s of others rather than doing anything productive ourselves. This is why you will so often read reviews that include the phases “An action-packed thrill ride!” or “Fun for the whole family!” And those phrases will always include an exclamation mark, not because the review is particularly enthusiastic about what they’re saying, but because the full stop is smaller and thus slightly harder to find on the keyboard.

This is why when you read the quote “A cross between Indiana Jones, Blade Runner & Star Wars” you should expect not the most mind-blowingly awesome film ever made, but Super Mario Bros, the movie.

A lot of geeks first became disillusioned with the world when they saw The Phantom Menace. For me it was when I was 10 years old and saw this on video for the first time.

I wanted to acknowledge that, because in the face of Juan of the Dead a lot of people have been using the phrase “A Cuban Shaun of the Dead”. On reading that phrase you most probably made the assumption “So it’s a zombie film with jokes in, and it’s set in Cuba, and the reviewer was writing this before knocking off to the pub early”. Firstly- yes, you’re right, every single one of those things is true. It is a zombie film, it is set in Cuba and the reviewer is gasping for a pint, it’s got to be, what? Three PM already?

It's their own fault for using a vaguely similar font.

But aside from that, it’s also true. Juan of the Dead is exactly a Cuban Shaun of the Dead. I’m going to explain how in a second, but first I just want to put our their some of my ideas for “Things that rhyme with ‘Dawn’ Of The Dead” movie ideas.

Prawn of the Dead- Finding Nemo but with zombies.

Porn of the Dead- Obvious.

Pawn of the Dead- The lowly Pawns finally realise they have more in common with each other than the aristocratic chess pieces on either side of the board, and rise up against them.

Gorn of the Dead- The giant lizard aliens seen in the original Star Trek episode “Arena” get infected by a zombie virus.

Juan of the Dead stars a likeable but essentially deadbeat guy with a loveable, chubby and bromantic sidekick. They learn about the zombie apocalypse through the TV and respond in apathetically, not really realising that the world has gone to hell until far too late. Over the course of the film Juan has to overcome his slacker-ish nature to win back an estranged loved one (in this case a daughter, rather than a girlfriend).

And to be clear, none of this is meant as a criticism of Juan of the Dead. As I love mentioning, writers are thieving bastards, and if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. But more than that, Juan of the Dead steals blatantly from Shaun, and then makes it its own.

Ooh, wait, I’ve got some more!

Quorn of the Dead- Vegetarian zombies.

Faun of the Dead- Getting bitten by the infected inexplicably gives you the legs of a goat.

Lawn of the Dead- Zombie grass. More frightening than it sounds.

Forn(ication) of the Dead- See Porn of the Dead.

Corn of the Dead- Sequel to Lawn of the Dead. Zombie ears of corn can only be defeated with hot oil, resulting in weirdly disgusting scenes of them popping on the spot.

Bjorn of the Dead- An outbreak during a production of Mama Mia with terrifying consequences.

Juan of the Dead owns the Cuban Shaun of the Dead label by making the most of the Cuban part of it. Just as Shaun of the Dead makes the most of its London setting, every scene of Juan of the Dead is firmly grounded in Cuba, from the relationships between the neighbours in Juan’s block of flats, to the news’ original description of the zombies as “dissidents” (and in keeping with the “Don’t call them zombies” rule, the survivors refer to zombies as dissidents for the rest of the film).

Even in cases where jokes were lifted entirely wholesale from Shaun of the Dead, Juan pushes them further and puts its own twist on them.

Juan of the Dead is also willing go further and darker with its jokes than Shaun of the Dead. While Shaun was very much set in the version of Britain seen in our sitcoms and romcoms, where you can be a bit of an arsehole but must essentially be an alright guy, in Juan of the Dead there are characters who really don’t think too much about using a zombie apocalypse as a chance to off a couple of people they don’t like too much anyway.

Hey, I just realised something! Rhyming dictionaries!

Yawn of the Dead- Sleepy people rise up and bite people. They people they bite become sleepy. The people they bite become sleepy, until soon nobody can be bothered to get out of bed.

Fawn of the Dead- Bambi’s dad is back from the grave, and he’s pissed off.

Spawn of the Dead- Zombie tadpoles will fuck you up.

Drawn of the Dead- Zombie stick-men.

Awn of the Dead- Hair or bristle-like appendages on plants spread a deadly zombie virus.

Bourne of the Dead- Matt Damon has amnesia and fights zombies.

Horn of the Dead- An adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, only done accurately in a way that’s nothing like its previous movie adaptation, Zombie Strippers (true story).

In the end, Juan of the Dead reminded me why I keep coming back to zombie movies over and over again, and it’s not just because I’ve set myself up to have to keep a blog about them updated on a semi-regular basis.

Even when you can tell, really obviously, where a zombie film is getting its inspiration room, that comes side by side with seeing what new things they’re bringing to the table, and how they’re interpreting the things they steal. In an age of remakes and reboots zombie movies are telling the same story over and over again, and every time there’s something new to say. I think there’s something kind of brilliant in that.

Have I already done “Porn of the Dead”?

Competition Time: Can You Think Of A New Apocalypse?

Yes, it’s competition time at Chris Writes About The End Of The World. We have been given the shiny prize of free tickets for two adults and two children to go to The London Dungeon, where you will be taken underground, shown various horrific and gruesome things and then get a chance to go on various rides that will scare the poop out of you, because here at Chris Writes About The End Of The World we’re still kind of fuzzy about the meaning of the word “prize”.

See the haunted terror in his eyes? That could be you!

“What could I possibly do to deserve this?” you’re probably asking right now.

Well, it would have to be something pretty bad, let’s be honest. We’re thinking, apocalyptically bad. Yes, to get these four tickets to darkness and terror, we want you to come up with a brand new apocalypse. Killer zombies, killer asteroids, killer aliens, killer plagues, killer robots, killer plants, killer words, killer apes and killer dolphins, all the grass dying, nuclear war, global flood, the earth being obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass, everything randomly turning into crystals, greygoo (although technically that’s robots), all the men on the planetmysteriously dying, all the women on the planet mysteriously becoming sterile, and whatever it is that’s supposed to happen in the book of Revelation are all pretty played out. I want you to wipe out all human civilisation, leaving nothing more than a few desperate survivors, in the most imaginative and creative way possible.

Suggestions can be as brief as you want (For instance, “a terrifying disease that turns everyone who comes into contact with it into a mime”- OH you can’t have that one now!) although obviously the more detail you put in, the more impressed our panel of judges will be.

The winner will not be burned alive at the stake. Actually, I should probably check that...

Entries will be judges on Originality and Awesomeness. The panel of judges will be made up of me, and some random person I rope into judging the competition once I’ve got all the entries in. The decision of the judges is final and cannot be bought, although this should not stop you from just randomly sending them cakes filled with money.

Send your entries to: chrisfarnell at googlemail.com with the subject line “A Brand New Apocalypse”.

You’ve got two weeks (Until the 24 April) to get your entires in, and the winner will be announced the week after that. So, GO!

#38 Five Zombie Movies You Can Watch in Your Lunch Break

A few decades ago George A Romero made an indie horror film on a shoestring budget and changed horror movies forever. If you look at indie horror movies no, you’re going to see quite a few zombie and post-apocalyptic movies among them.

There are plenty of reasons why the post-apocalypse is appealing to film makers without much in the way of cash. Your cast doesn’t have to be that large, on account of most of the people on the planet being dead. Sets aren’t much of a problem either - any construction site, quarry, disused warehouse or high street early enough on a Sunday morning can be made to look like the aftermath of civilisation without a lot of effort. Likewise, when it comes to special effects, you can get your zombie horde with just an economy tub of fake blood.

We’ve looked at horror shorts before, such as Contact, Zombies and Cigarettes and that Lynx advert, and sooner or later we’re going to be taking a look at my acting debut in Alexander Gordon Smith’s zombie short, Sola Gratia.

But here’s a grab bag of some other post-apocalyptic shorts, all on youtube, and all under 15 minutes in length. With careful application of headphones you should be able to watch these from your desk at work, and still have time to go buy and sandwich and use the loo before your lunch break is over.

Romero Zombie Movies

One of the things I secretly love about zombie movies, particularly ones that follow the Romero rules, is the idea that all these stories could be happening at pretty much the same time. There’s strong, geeky appeal in the idea that a bunch of stories take place in the same universe, whether it’s the Star Wars expanded universe, Star Trek, Stephen King’s version of Maine or the theory that pretty much all of TV is a dream in a snow globe being stared at by the autistic kid in St. Elsewhere. So yes, while Night of the Living Dead takes place in the 60s, Dawn of the Dead is overwhelmingly 70s and Shaun of the Dead has people running around with mobile phones, I still like the idea that while Shaun and his buddies are holed up in The Winchester Barbra, Ben and co are trying to fortify their isolated farmhouse.

Zombie shorts are great for this, as they tell smaller, isolated stories about the apocalypse, usually shortly before their characters all die horribly.

I Am Lonely

This short, whose title is probably an homage to I Am Legend, is a great example of how a zero budget production can make use of the zombie apocalypse. The majority of the film takes place with one guy sitting on a sofa, talking to his dead flatmate. It’s a small, sitcommy piece, which is appropriate, since sitcoms and zombie movies are both built around the set up of a bunch of people thrown together, who hate each other.

I Love Sarah Jane

Not a Doctor Who spin-off. This film only features the one zombie, chained up in a back garden. Mainly it’s a story about a kid’s first crush, but it also returns to the recurrent zombie theme that when you have a bunch of people you can horribly, violently murder without legal or moral consequences, it doesn’t bring about the best in us.

Videogame Fan Films

Videogames loves themselves some apocalypse, as we’ve covered before and no doubt will again. The stories in these games are usually told through graffiti, carefully arranged tableaus that players run screaming past or try to shoot, and diaries that have been written and then inexplicably spread over hundreds of square miles. This leaves quite a few gaps for budding film makers to fill in, and rich background histories for them to exploit, and the weird thing is that these films often have great production values, despite the fact that the film makers can’t make any money off their creations without getting themselves sued.

Beyond Black Mesa

When you’re playing the Half Life games you can’t help but feel that there’s a huge back story that’s been written down somewhere, but which no-one has actually got around to telling you. This short continues in that tradition, without much dialogue aside from the voice-over, given by a character from the original Half-Life’s first add-on pack, Opposing Force (Kids- add-on packs are what we used to call DLC). What the short lacks in detailed plot and character, it makes up for with some truly kick-ass fight sequences and amazing special effects. It’s also a good demonstration of how the crowbar is the most badass weapon across the entire Half-Life franchise.

Fallout: Nuka Break

Okay, there aren’t really any zombies here, only ghouls that, while dead and gorified, are also sentient and non-brain-eating. Instead, it’s the story of post-apocalyptic wasteland survivors bickering, shooting people and hunting for soft drinks. They’ve got Fallout’s dark sense of humour down nicely, and have actually gone on to build a whole web series around their characters. It’s worth watching the lot (although this may take several lunch breaks), particularly if you want a Firefly-esque mix of banter, shady dealings and gunfights.

And One Film That Doesn’t Actually Have Any Zombies In It At All

Okay, this film doesn’t have anything even a bit like zombies in, but as its one of the bleakest apocalypse stories I’ve seen so I want to include it anyway:

Connected

Seriously, this film makes The Road look like a heart warming tale of optimism and fluffy bunnies. Not content with mere zombies or nuclear fallout, this film is set in a world where the very air has become toxic. Featuring zero dialogue, it’s short, brutal, and adequately shows what complete shits we can be when our own survival is at stake.

Now I'm not normally one to demand people fill in the comments on here- But if you know of any good post-apocalyptic shorts I've missed, please do let me know below.

#35 The Enemy/The Dead/The Fear: Zombie Apocalypse for Kids

It’s been a whole year since I first sat down and decided that the Internet needed to hear all of my opinions on zombie apocalypse fiction. Say, you know what I’ve not done for a few weeks? Given you my opinions on some zombie apocalypse fiction! Let’s do that today.

With that in mind, here’s my review of Charlie Higson’s Young Adult zombie series, The Enemy, The Dead and The Fear. (By the way, is it just me, or is there something vaguely patronising about the phrase "Young Adult"? Why doesn't Teenage Fiction do the job any more? I can't help feel it's more for the benefit of people in their 20s and 30s who still want to keep reading Harry Potter (and all power to them) than for the supposed intended audience of the books.)

Anyway, let’s start by talking about Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies was a book I saw on my mum’s bookshelf as a kid but didn’t read because the cover was a decomposing pig’s head on a stick, and I was a sensitive child. Then at 13 we were made to study it in English, and fell in love with it.

Pictured: A children's book, clearly

I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid to read that book and realise that A: It was 100% spot on, and B: If I and my classmates ever ended up on a desert island I would probably get my head cracked open with a rock.

But there’s one thing that people always seem to miss about Lord of the Flies. It’s a science fiction story- a post-apocalyptic science fiction story. It’s definitely not a large part of the plot, in fact aside from one mention in the first chapter of the book, I’m not sure it’s ever mentioned again, but it’s definitely there.

Right at the beginning Piggy tells Ralph, “Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.”

It’s not referred to again, but it does cast the entire novel in a different light. Firstly, it means that for most of the novel the characters aren’t just kids without their grownups- they’re possibly the last surviving people on Earth. Secondly, it throws a different light on Ralph’s thoughts about the grownup world. Throughout the book Ralph remembers the adult world as a place of law, order and civilisation. Yet what we actually see of the adult world is a plane getting shot down, atom bombs being dropped, and the only actual adult we meet is a military officer. The wider world the characters of Lord of the Flies live in is, in the end, just a bigger version of the island.

Since then other writers have chosen to write similar stories and instead of stranding their children on a desert island (where sooner or later you apparently have to start dealing with smoke monsters and bizarrely multi-faith churches in parallel purgatory universes). A quicker and easier way to do it is to just wipe out all the grown-ups with a deadly virus.

One example of this was New Zealand’s series The Tribe, where the death of all adults meant that the survivors all decided to wear far more hair gel and facepaint. Actually, that’s probably pretty realistic. Another version of this plotline- and one a good deal closer to Charlie Higson’s series, was the Star Trek episode Miri, where the crew visits a planet identical to 1960s Earth, except that the grownups have all been infected with a deadly disease that fills them with homicidal rage.

This episode featured the most disturbing romantic subplot in Star Trek history, apart from the episode where the Enterprise carries a “cargo” of wives, or the one where the Enterprise-D has a cargo genetically designed to become every man’s fantasy, or the one where Scott Backula and his crew are given sex slaves as gifts... You know, looking back, there are a lot of "women as property" plots in Star Trek

In actual fact, it’s surprising that there aren’t more well known stories about all the adults getting wiped out. After all, it’s a well known truism used by everyone, from Charles Dickens to Roald Dahl to Jacqueline Wilson to J.K. Rowling, that you’ve got to kill the parents off if your child protagonist is going to do great and heroic things. It only makes sense that for a really dramatic story, all you need to do is kill off all the grownups on the planet.

It also plays in nicely to the wish-fulfilment/careful what you wish for aspect of the apocalypse genre. On the one hand, nobody will ever make you eat your greens again. On the other hand, you quickly learn exactly why your parents were so keen on doing laundry all the time.

Well, we’re almost eight hundred words into the blog post by now, so I should probably start telling you a bit about the books themselves.

In Charlie Higson’s series the grownups are most definitely The Enemy (Oooh, see what I did there?). Even where grownups seem to have avoided the symptoms of the plague, they aren’t to be trusted. There are even scenes where we are given the grownup/zombie point of view, which is usually a twisted parody of grownup thought, including a vicious hatred of kids that’s only a hairs width away from what is genuinely said by adults in a culture that just loves villainising its youth.

There are times when children reminisce about how kind and smart and super awesome their parents were, but those times are pretty much restricted to immediately before a child dies a horrifying death. Oh, and children dying horrifying deaths happens a lot.

One way in which Charlie Higson’s books differ from your usual zombie apocalypse fare (aside from the young protagonists) is the size of the cast. It’s huge, and on more than one occasion in the last three years I’ve been reading these books I’ve had to go to Google to remind myself which character is which (seriously guys, we’ve got an extensive and detailed wiki for Bones (http://bones.wikia.com/) but not for this? What’s wrong with you?). The massive cast serves two purposes. Firstly, it allows Higson to kill off a lot of people. The cast is about 90% Red Shirts. What I’m saying is: Charlie Higson loves nothing more than murdering children. Often when writers enjoy murder, they’ll introduce lots of minor characters who are given just enough dialogue and description for you to distinguish them from the furniture, then quickly jog forward to the satisfyingly gory deaths (This is sometimes known as being a Mauve Shirt. In The Enemy series Anyone Can Die (That’s two links to TV Tropes- I’m really sorry if you’re reading this at work, and for the two hours of time you’ve just lost).

Aside from giving Higson plenty of zombie-fodder, the big cast also allows him to show a variety of different post-apocalyptic set-ups. Anyone who was reading this blog early enough to take part in our Zombie Drinking Game will be familiar with my theory that zombie apocalypse stories are nearly always about locking a bunch of people who hate each other in a room together. When it comes to The Enemy series this theory still stands. In fact the series reads pretty much as a tourist guide to London for the zombie apocalypse survivor. Over three books the survivors form communities holed up in Buckingham Palace, The Imperial War Museum, The Natural History Museum and the Houses of Parliament. I’m pretty sure this list will expand in future books, depending on which London landmarks Higson wants a behind the scenes tour of next.

Each of these landmarks serves as a testing ground for a different response to the apocalypse, with a cargo-cult style society being built around it. For some it’s parliamentary democracy, for others it’s a dictatorship, for others it’s simply having lots of big sticks to hit the grownups with. In each of these places, the same power struggles we see in all the standard zombie movies are still going on, alongside increasing paranoia and competition between the various encampments.

However, it’s got to be said- this series is not a sociological treatise on how to best rebuild the world. Nor is it trying to make any big statements about the relationship between kids and grownups. First and foremost, Higson is trying to write an adventure book. You can tell the writer is having his most fun when he is lovingly describing the various states of disrepair of the grownups as they stumble about a ruined London, or in the frenetic and extremely violent combat sequences. I think if this book has one thing it does really well, it’s that no punches are pulled here at all. Higson is writing a horror book, and giving his readers nightmares is what he is here for.

#33 A Christmas Zombie LARP Carol

Yes, it's time for yet another Zombie LARP blog! You can read about my previous LARPing adventures  here and here. Also, thanks go to Oliver Facey who took a lot of the photos you see here and Thomas Greenwood, who took our Morris dancer's team photo. You can also read my guest blog What I Learned by Actually Role-Playing at Zombie LARP over at the zombie LARP website.

It was a cold winter night and I was ready for a peaceful night’s sleep. I had put on my Super Ted pyjamas, and had read a bedtime story to Mr Fluffy Duck. The two of us were spooning up, waiting for slumber to take us, when suddenly the windows blew open and I noticed a gaunt and terrifyingly pale figure looming over the foot of my bed.

The figure, a sallow waste of a human being, raised a single, quavering finger towards me and intoned “Christopher! MEND YOUR WAAAAAYS!”

“Tom?” I asked, started. “Is that you? The Hello Bear bassist plus regular punching bag and butt monkey for my apocalyptic fiction blog?”

“Indeed, it is I, back from the grave with a terrible warning!” Tom groaned. “Also, I really wish you’d stop introducing me like that. I mean, I thought we were friends dude.”

“You’re not dead. I mean, at all. How did you get into my room?” I asked. “Is this about that photo of you looking like a chimp that I keep trying to get to the top of your Google results?”

This picture.

“Question me not!” Tom boomed. “Tonight you will be visited by three spirits. Mend your ways! Mend your ways! Mend yoooouur waaaaaaays...” he said, drifting back through the curtains.

I sat, alone in the darkness except for Mr Fluffy Duck.

“Are you still behind the curtains?” I asked the darkness.

“No,” said Tom.

I lay back in bed, trying to get some sleep and ignore Tom’s mouth breathing from behind the curtain. And that was when the first ghost visited me...
Later that evening I was woken by a sinister looking black man standing at the foot of my bed.

“I am the Ghost of Zombie Christmas Past!” declared the apparition.

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and said, “Really? I mean without even beginning to dissect the phrase “Ghost of Zombie Christmas”- That’s what you decided to go with? Not its origins in vampire myths, or the fear of the great plagues, but plantation owners worries about Haitian Vodou?”

The sinister looking black man said nothing. He simply waved a hand, and the vision began...

Jingle All the Way

By the head of the Friar’s Mall Morris Men
The 34^th annual performance of the Friar’s Mall Morris Men was, on balance, not the most successful of our annual performances. The turnout was lower than it had been in previous years, several of our number had unfortunately passed away in the days leading up to the dance, and an attempt by some company called BioFlex to introduce a new holiday had unfortunately the mall had been taken over by a vicious horde of undead cannibals.

We found ourselves allied with a band of heavily armed survivalists. Now the Friar’s Mall Morris Men have played some pretty tough crowds in our time, but these guys seemed particularly reluctant to be saddled with a people dressed in ribbons and bells who made a habit of shouting “Hey Nonny Nonny!” at inappropriate moments.

Talking amongst ourselves we decided that, despite our best intentions, Morris dancing was not actually ideally suited to a combat situation. All we could do was wait until the right moment, then draw the horde towards us with our highly choreographed pagan fertility rituals.

The plan to nobly sacrifice ourselves to save our fellow men failed however, due to one crucial flaw.

It turns out Morris dancing is fucking badass.

This

Bad

Ass.

Somehow the four of us made it out alive, and went on to have a very merry Christmas...

As the image wobbled and faded away, I looked up at the Ghost of Zombie Christmas Past and said “I really don’t get the point in that... Why were they Morris dancing at Christmas? Isn’t that more of a May Day thing? I really don’t see what I’m supposed to be learning here. It’s almost as if this is some sort of poorly constructed framing device your using to crowbar in a bunch of Zombie LARP stories...”

But the Ghost of Zombie Christmas Past was already gone.

I tried to return to sleep, but as I turned over in bed I was disturbed by wafting smoke crawling across the room, I coughed and sat up, to see the smoke begin to clear. In the midst of it sat a kindly looking old man with a white beard and a greying ponytail.

“George A. Romero? You’re the Ghost of Zombie Christmas present?”

George nodded sagely.

“But you’ve not made a decent zombie movie since 2005... and haven’t made a truly great one since 1985...”

“You shut up!” George Romero said, and blew of a cloud full of cigar smoke into my face.

Thus begun the second vision...
A Very Corporate Christmas
By the CEO of Organiflex

Organiflex is one of the leading companies in the applications biochemical, genetic, nanotechnological and occult technology in the fields of military, industry, cosmetics and nutrition, matched only by the Bioflex corporation in terms of market penetration and Presidential campaign contributions. Often, our two firms have worked well together.

Following notable outbreaks of so-called “zombie” outbreaks, we collaborated to put forward the case that the best way to avoiding apocalyptic pandemics of undead cannibals is to reduce the restrictive regulations on the industry and let the invisible hand of the market prevent the total collapse of all human civilisation.

That said however, we have often objected to the non-competitive practices BioFlex has engaged with, in terms of the subsidies it has received from several governments and world religions, and have lobbied heavily against them while encouraging prudent investment in Organiflex products.

This approach has seen an impressive payoff, and so I saw fit to reward my top staff with a weekend of corporate team building at the Friar’s Walk Mall. Among my staff was Alina Sandu, my Resource Utilization Consultant, Matthew Barnes, our Envisioneer, and the new office boy and corporate butt monkey whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head.

This picture won't make it into his google results

No sooner had we arrived at the mall and begun some healthy bonding exercises based around the murder of zombies, when we discovered our long-established rivals, BioFlex, still had a recruitment office operating in the mall.

I took a unilateral decision and decided that the Christmas team-building exercise should experience and paradigm shift into more a hostile takeover exercise. We headed straight over to the recruitment office, carrying a heavy machine gun, and explained how the optimum use of BioFlex resources would be in the realisation of core Organiflex directives.

Unfortunately our utilisation of heavy firepower was disrupted by a band of boy scouts trying to get something called a “pacifism” badge. I explained that Alina had killed boy scouts before, but the scouts were pretty resolute.

As it turned out, there was no need to take out the BioFlex representative, he willingly told us about their project to give over a set of three “White Knights” (products highly derivative of Organiflex’s own “Bright Nite” project) to an apparition known as a “Nightmare” that had taken up residence on the top floor of the Mall.

By Matt Barnes, Organiflex’s “Envisioneer”
"When we've delivered the 'toys', what's to stop these nightmares just eating us?" I asked

"Erm, nothing really." the recruiter cheerfully told us.

Well at least that was now out in the open.

Taking down the White Knight was actually easier than I'd expected, largely thanks to Alina's fully automatic machine gun which she could barely lift, but couldn't half tear through zombie flesh (for a few seconds at least, before it ran out of ammo). We then confiscated his axe and began dragging him upstairs to the nightmares' lair.

I'd now like to introduce you to the most terrifying monsters I've ever had the pleasure to encounter. They're dressed all in red, have horrible bloody masks on, and they DON'T DO ANYTHING. We arrived with our prize, and they stood there, leaving us alone, and cheerfully beckoning us in through a child-sized gap into the murky playpen. Call me paranoid, but there was no way in a million years I was going to go through that gap.

By the CEO of Organiflex
After surveying the situation and observing the overall emotional climate, it was decided a tactical market withdrawal was the best way forward. By this point many of the undead were beginning to gather and I regret to say my staff didn’t rise as well to this occasion as I would have liked- I was forced to kill three zombies with my own gun. The zombies on the other hand, performed admirably, and I left my business card with one of them.

We continued into the bowels of the mall, but soon found ourselves circling around to the children’s play area where the Nightmares were still in residence.


By Matt Barnes
My next encounter with one came a few minutes later, as I came down the main stairwell and suddenly found myself face-to-face with that familiar smiling mask. After warily circling each other a couple of times, it intoned, "Do you like games? What's your favourite game?"

Too nervous to summon a clever, witty, or indeed any answer, I waited for his next move. He stepped slightly towards me.

"Do you like... RUNNING AND SCREAMING??"

I didn't need any more encouragement than that, and I set off as fast as my little legs could carry me into the main hallway and past several zombies too slow-moving to come near me at this point. Just when I thought it might be safe to check behind me and slow down, I could suddenly hear running footsteps behind me and the cry of "Yay! Running and screaming!"

By the CEO of Organiflex
As Matthew ran screaming into the darkness, I reflected up on the fact that I’d always been a little unsure of him as employee. He didn’t adhere to the dress code as well as I’d have liked, and didn’t really seem to “Feel the win” as I always encouraged my team to do.

I turned to Alina and suggested that OrganiFlex had been in need of some downsizing for a while now. We turned around and calmly walked away in the other direction.

Rather surprisingly we found Matthew alive and well later. I reluctantly rehired him, and we headed back to the BioFlex recruitment centre. I arrived in, I will admit, an aggravated state. I pulled my pistol on the BioFlex employee, asked why he hadn’t warned us just what the Nightmares were like. At this point, I decided the time for collaboration had ended. I took his desk, and providing what I like to think was the calm, confidence-inspiring leadership that has always been my hallmark.

As I surveyed the room, I noticed a certain young go-getter who reminded me of a young me.
 
By Dave the Plumber (Of The Zombie Shop)
I switched on the camera we use for the drainage an' that and point it at Jimmy.

"How you feelin' about this?" I ask.

He shifts, all agitated like.  "A bit nervous to be honest with you Dave. I've had easier jobs." He looks worried. "To tell you the truth, the blockage in the basement is gonna be a bit of a bugger to clear."

"Too right!" I says, as one of them groaning freaks comes barrelling at us.

We sprint, ending up in a crowd in one the HR geezer's offices.

A posh bloke in a suit trots up and gives me his card.

"I think I like you son,” he told me.

"Alright fella." I tells him. "You need anything sorted; you give Jimmy an' me a shout mate."

All of a sudden things go mental. People runnin' and scream' all over the shop, well messy.

"Jimmy... what we gonna do?" I ask.

Jimmy swings a sawn-off and yells. "We'll give 'em both barrels. Wallop. Sorted!"

"Effing wallop mate." I agree, hefting a crowbar.

"Like you an' me sister last night," adds Jimmy "I heard you mate..." He winks. "I was on yer Mum."

"Cheeky slapper!" I says. "Let's get out of here. Anyone seen Mr Farnell?"

By the CEO of Organiflex
As news that an escape route had opened up spread through the office, people began to flee, including several members of staff I’d thought better of. I realised it was time for me to leave as well, but before I left there was one, crucial task remaining. I turned to the Bioflex representative and asked. “So, we don’t really need you anymore?”

“Well, I don’t know about that...” he prevaricated, as the zombies began to close in on the door of the office.

I drew my pistol and shot him in the stomach, before turning and running. Sadly, in taking the time to eliminate my company’s competition, I had given the zombies too much time to get close. A swipe to my shoulder knocked me to the ground, and the horde enveloped me entirely.

“Wait! Stop!” I cried out, and for a moment, they actually did. I pulled a cigar out of my pocket and popped into my mouth, savouring the taste. “There,” I said, satisfied. “Bring it.”

The image faded as the corporate CEO was ripped apart by slathering monsters, I turned to George A. Romero, confused, and asked, “Was that supposed to be satire?... I mean, it wasn’t exactly subtle was it? It made Land of the Dead look underplayed...

George Romero blew another puff of cigar smoke into my face, and disappeared in a sulk.

I stood, alone in my room, waiting for the final ghost to appear. When nothing happened I climbed into bed... when suddenly a Rage infected zombie leapt through the curtains and ran at me. I jumped from the bed and legged it down the landing, the running zombie hot on my tail, only just making it as far as my apartment building’s lift, as the door shut on the zombies greasy, gore stained fingers, the third and final vision began...

The (slightly less than) 12 Deaths of Christmas
As I watched I saw many a heroic demise as an evil looking creature stalked the halls of Friar’s Walk Mall. I tall, dark figure, dressed in black and white and carrying knifes as long as your arm. Bullets simply bounced off him as if they were made of foam, many a poor soul died at his blades.

I myself on two occasions was so overcome by fear that I fled my own team mates to hide in silence in the dark corners of the mall, praying for the creature to pass. Meanwhile, elsewhere there were players in the dark for an entirely different reason...

 

By Matt Barnes
I had a special event for this run - when I (inevitably) died, I was to come back to life with my eyes gouged out and completely unable to see. Tying a blindfold around my head for verisimilitude, I crept through one of the dark corridors, hoping the first thing I came across was still alive.

As luck would have it, he was, and I clung onto his arm. "Don't worry, I'll guide you through", the disembodied voice assured me. He led me along a bit, and I could tell from the light coming through by blindfold that we must be moving back out into the main hallway.

"Sorry about this", the man mumbled to me under his breath.

"Sorry about what?" I was about to ask, when he shoved me forwards, shouted "Everyone eat him, he's blind!" and ran off into the distance.

As it happened, I miraculously stumbled all the way into a safe room, and in the hope of finding a slightly more reliable guide, asked "is there anyone alive in here?"

There was a few seconds of silence, and then a very emphatic:

"Nope."

"Not us."

"Definitely no-one alive round here."

I didn't survive that run. Can't think why.

By Tarnia Mears
“Well, Father Flexmas doesn't have any concept of good or bad, you see,” chirped the Bioflex employee, “just sort of, alive or dead.”

That's how it started, really. Twelve of us crowded into a small office, demanding to know the whereabouts of the nearest escape route from a man who - given the apocalyptic circumstances - seemed remarkably unperturbed. As it turns out, the exit was not only being blocked by a growing mass of shambling walking dead, but also by the nest of Father Flexmas, Bioflex's latest experimental psychopath. He'd set up camp by the main doors and, whilst he lived, we were trapped. To kill him, we were told, we would have to trick him into eating silver tinsel. Black is his favourite, but were we to mix it with enough silver, he would become poisoned and die.

We searched the complex. One piece of silver tinsel found its way to Flexmas' lair, but we needed more. After nearly an hour of searching, all we had to show for it was a string of black. “If you give that to Father Flexmas,” someone had told me previously, “he will spare your life.”

“If Father Flexmas kills you while you have it,” someone else told me, “he will destroy your soul.”

I don't know who was with me when we left the basement. I had the black tinsel in one hand and led the group into the dim light of the first floor. Father Flexmas was waiting. A tall, round, masked man wearing black robes and a bloody apron, dual-wielding butchers knives. The party split, screaming, and the only thing I could do was throw the black tinsel at his feet. He stopped. “Ah ha ha HA!” He picked it up, and began to walk away in the direction of the main exit – in the direction of his lair.

“We need to kill him, we need to kill him now.” No-one heard me. They were all running in the opposite direction. I might have followed, had I not then seen, leaving C&A, a zombie grasping two long strands of silver tinsel. I beat the creature to the floor and tugged the tinsel from its arms. There were more of them behind me. A White Knight joined them. I was alone. I dodged its axe and hit it back with a hammer, which gave me enough time to sprint towards the still-retreating Flexmas. Near his nest, littered with Christmas lights, was another ball of silver tinsel, a remnant of some other brave soul who didn't quite make it. I picked it up and began to yell. Father Flexmas had reached his nest, but before he could turn around, I grabbed him by the neck, and forced the wads of tinsel down his throat.

“EAT IT, FLEXMAS,” I screamed, “EAT IT!”

He struggled, and wailed – a terrifying, echoing sound – but soon, he was silent. The zombies were upon me, then. I tried to fight, but the White Knight was back, and I knew then that I was finished.

Still, I had done it. I had killed Father Flexmas. When I fell, I landed on his corpse. The tannoy was playing Silent Night as my eyes closed for the final time. Sleep, in heavenly peace... rest in heavenly peace.

I watched as Tarnia lay dying on the floor of the mall. Then, miraculously, I was back in bed again.

“It was all a dream!” I shouted gleefully jumping out of bed. “I’ve learned some sort of non-specific moral! I will change my ways!”

I ran to the window, throwing the curtains open, ready to give Christmas spirit everywhere. The Norwich skyline was burning, and screams could be heard as people ran through the street before being torn apart by half decomposed monsters. I went back to bed.


Merry Christmas Everybody!