Zombies vs. Infected

    This is an addendum post to "How to Write A Zombie Novel" based on an observant reader's comment about the controversy over Zombies versus Infected. The difference may not be immediately obvious to the layman but is actually rather controversial in some circles.

    The difference is, in simple terms, Zombies (capital Z) are dead people who have risen from the grave while Infected are individuals who are sick yet now gruesomely savage. The latter was popularized by the games Left 4 Dead and 28 Days Later, both depicting a "different" kind of (lower case z) zombie which was both fast-moving as well as more intelligent than the Romero undead. Amusingly, the Return of the Living Dead movies predate both with their own version of an "intelligent" zombie. One might argue, indeed, they represent the initial split between the concept of zombies and Infected.

    There's considerable overlap between these zombies and Infected. Indeed, I actually just use the term zombie whenever I refer to them in my hash-tags. However, the differences between the two types of zombie can mean a major difference between how the monster is handled in the story. As mentioned, the Zombie is very much based on George Romero's model. They are dead rather than sick and are not required to follow much in the way of biological rules.

    Zombies can be shot, chopped up, and set on fire without causing them overdue distress. They also tend to be slow-moving because, obviously enough, they are rotting. There's a definite building-dread to these creatures that, ironically, is similar to how human beings became the dominant species on Earth.

    Everyone knows cheetahs are faster than human beings. So are a lot of animals. However, something I learned in college was human beings are actually much better at endurance walks. So, when they caught up to their prey, they were fresh and the latter were dead tired. Zombies are much like this. Our hero can spend the entire movie running away from them but they, unlike their pursuers, have to catch their breath and sleep. The Zombie is like death. You can escape it every day of your life but it will catch you.

    In this respect, the mindlessness of the Zombie is also part of its appeal. A Zombie is a very impersonal sort of killer. George Romero's movies even sympathize with the creatures to a certain extent, highlighting they're remnants of humanity rather than just purely evil. A Zombie's bite will kill you and turn you into a monster but it bears no malice or anger. Thus, a Zombie serves as a decent enough stand-in for death.

    Infected, by contrast, are a bit more hard science. While rising from the dead as a shambling horror is still, for now, in the realm of fantasy--we have people attacking people in savage ways all the time. Rabies, drug-cocktails, violent schizophrenia, and other conditions make it plausible (if unlikely) that something akin to a zombie attack could occur.

    In short, Infected are "living" zombies. This doesn't mean that Infected can be cured. Far from it. The majority of depictions have them as brain-dead but possessing only aggressive instincts and hunger. In short, they're living people have been reduced to a state of heightened mania. This, theoretically, means they're vulnerable to damage (even if they don't feel pain) and have a need to eat as well as sleep.

    Infected, due to the fact they're still alive, are not rotting creatures. They are able to run, attack, and reason to a certain degree. They are as intelligent as animals, for the most part, and may display some communal behaviors. Amusingly, this would apply to the first George Romero zombie who ran after Judith O'Dea's character in a cemetery before trying to break into her car with a rock.  

    Resident Evil shows some of the benefits of Infected in they can be adjusted to fit non-zombie motifs. Infected can be linked to mutants and turn into all manner of horrible and disgusting monsters. While Zombies can theoretically be turned into horrible abominations, in general, they tend to be associated with rotting and have no real bodily processes.

    The differences between Zombies and Infected have long-term consequences for each other. Zombies can stay animated forever or will, eventually, rot to pieces. They are supernatural beings and can follow any rules you want to establish for them. They have no natural life-cycle and thus can do more or less anything you want them to. The Infected, on the other hand, should have whatever sort of life-cycle (for lack of a better term) described.

    In most cases, the Infected don't have to last forever. The initial outbreak is terrifying enough as it is. However, unless you intend to have them die of "natural causes" you might want to think of a crude life cycle of the creatures as time wears on. Do they continue to wear the clothes they wore until they're tattered stinking remnants or do they put on clothing out of habit? Do they sleep, hibernate, or enter a kind of weird stasis? Do they hate the light and love the dark or prowl around during the day? These can add a lot of fun to your book if thought about to their natural conclusions as well as interject a kind of fun realism.

    There's no reason the two kinds of undead can't overlap, though. Zombies can run, the Infected can display almost supernatural qualities, and the two sides may blend however the author may desire. In one Call of Cthulhu scenario, protoplasmic aliens take residence in  corpses and then re-animate it despite "life" no longer following the functions of a normal human. The intelligent aliens of Dark City are animating the corpses of humans for similar reasons. Likewise, the use of Zombies as metaphors for disease predates the creation of Infected.

    There's no reason authors must keep a strict divide between the two in their books but if they want to, bearing in mind these qualities might benefit them. Thanks for reading, folks!
   
* Special thanks to Neil Cohen and Rob Pegler.

How to write a zombie novel

 
   So, you want to write a zombie novel.

    There's two ways of going about this.

    The first method is write a novel and put zombies in them. Bam. You've succeeded. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has two levels where you meet the ravenous undead. The video game isn't about zombies but they are a part of the story. This, obviously, isn't touching the real meat of the question (pun intended). How do you write a novel focused on the ravenous undead? Not as guest-stars but the main attraction.

    Well, the first thing you have to do is define what what a zombie is in your setting and what rules apply to it. While George Romero created the "modern" zombie, the roots of the creature go back much further. The first reference to the ravenous undead is in the oldest writing known to mankind with the Epic of Gilgamesh. Ishtar uses them as a threat to gain herself access to the Bull of Heaven.

    "If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven, I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living!”

    Sadly, we never get to see Gilgamesh versus the hordes of the dead and he fights the infinitely less-interesting bull. Amusingly, vampires were more like zombies in their original myths. They were ugly and disgusting creatures who rose from the grave to kill the living. Some small few looked like their old selves and sired children on their (still-living) wives but for a long time, zombies have been a favorite monster of storytellers. There's also the Voodoo zombie, which is a corpse raised by magic as a servant or a brainwashed human being depending on how you want to deal with the idea. This idea isn't quite as popular as it used to be but still has a place in zombie stories as the Anita Blake novels show.

    For the most part, I determine these rules to be the qualify of what is required to be a zombie versus some other form of monstrous animal.

* It is dead.
* It is decaying or corpse-like to the point it doesn't have vital signs.

    That's it.

    You can do intelligent zombies, mindless zombies, hungry zombies, zombies sustained by magic instead of flesh, zombies coming back because of vengeance, zombies coming back because of a curse, zombies which have destroyed the world, or zombies which threaten only a small fraction of people like Jason at Camp Crystal Lake. There's an infinite number of tales to be told with the ravenous dead and you don't have to stick with the classics. Hell, even Tolkien had the Barrow Wights and the hordes of the dead used by Aragorn to protect Gondor.

    Really, the big question is what your zombies represent. This will determine what sort of qualities you want to attribute to their existence. In Night of the Living Dead, George Romero's horde of the mindless dead exist as an excuse to force class-conscious and racially uncomfortable people into a house together. They're a natural disaster that can be adjusted or altered any way the storyteller wants. 

    In the original Dawn of the Dead, the zombies are representative of the mindless consumerism (pun almost certainly intended) which was afflicting American life. In the Resident Evil films, the zombies represent (however obliquely) the military-industrial complex's continued production of ever-more-destructive weapons for seemingly no reason.

    My favorite use of zombies is as a metaphor for plague and sickness. Zombie-ism (for lack of a better word) spreads like a disease from carrier-to-carrier. It knows no difference on class, wealth, race, or age. It brings sickness followed by death and, because of that sickness, the person becomes a threat to the people around them. The fact Zombie-ism is usually incurable only makes the situation more tragic.

    What's next to consider is that zombies, by and large, aren't actually characters. They're a plot device. George Romero subverted this by having a couple of his movies show the undead gradually recovering it's humanity. Warm Bodies was all about a zombie as a romantic figure (the humor coming from how ridiculous this is). Before it was the 1993 movie, My Boyfriend's Back, where an intelligent zombie must adjust to eating the flesh of the living to go on a date with the girl he likes.

   Perhaps the best use of intelligent zombies is in the Fallout games. Radiation causes all sorts of funky effects in the setting and one is that people killed by it during the war, as often as not, rose as deformed slowly-rotting undead called Ghouls. The thing is, aside from their appearance, they were perfectly normal people and subject to prejudice.  Fallout 3 added the fact ghouls were not immortal and eventually degenerated into the mindless undead they were feared to be (but only over the course of centuries).

    However, for the most part, zombies are unintelligent parodies of human beings.

    So where does this leave the writer? Well, the important thing to realize in these circumstances, the "star" of the work is probably not the undead but the humans reacting to them. This is a delicate balance to maintain because audiences who read zombie books are, as often as not, there for the suspense. 

    The heroes exist to be lunch until one or more of the group survives (or they all die). So, when crafting the protagonists of your zombie novel, you should question whether or not characters are meant to be expendable or not. By and large, there's usually a "Final Girl" or a small group of survivors to illustrate the dangers of the zombie threat.

    This too can be subverted but should only be when you have a reason for it. Peter Cline's Ex-Heroes novels are about superheroes versus zombies. The traditional narrative of plucky survivors against the undead is subverted by the fact the undead don't actually pose any real threat to the majority of them. Saint George is immune to being bitten, Zzzap is made of electricity, and Stealth is simply too talented to be defeated by the undead. 

    In this case, the tension is from the fact they are attempting to protect regular humans from the undead. They may face non-zombie threats which menace them but there's a class tension which emerges from the fact superior beings are thriving with "normal" human beings forced to exist in their shadow.

    How much danger are our heroes in? Who are we willing to sacrifice to the Grim Reaper? A protective narrative places the heroes as individuals trying to save others while a survival horror narrative is about living yourself. The two can be combined, as we see on The Walking Dead, but a real question is how menacing you want your creatures to be. 

    Bluntly, it is my recommendation you should always kill some of your darlings in zombie fiction lest you undermine the zombie's threat. Zombies are dangerous and nothing reveals this quality more than body count. When zombies have destroyed the world, as in post-apocalypse scenarios, the need to "prove" their danger lessens dramatically.

    Zombies don't have to all-powerful and dangerous to serve their purpose. Indeed, one of the appeals of the monster is they're rather crap by themselves. A common element in zombie fiction is the zombies, after an initial period of intense danger, become relatively easy to survive if you know what you're doing. 

    The traditional Romero zombie is slow because it requires the flaws of humans (overconfidence, treachery, or greed) to make them dangerous. This is why I prefer my zombies to walk rather than run. The thing is, though, zombies don't get tired and they can take all the time in the world (bwahahahah--ahem).

    Another element to consider when writing a zombie is whether or not it's a good idea to include psychos. "Psychos", as coined by the Dead Rising series, are individuals who have been driven mad by the events around them or are simply opportunists seeking to profit by it. Man is the real monster, blah-blah-blah. The thing is, that's actually a pretty effective lesson when it's obvious (more often than not) our heroes would be able to survive if they worked together. 

    Psychos offer an excellent opportunity to provide writers with villains who can talk. People often react poorly in traumatic situations and is there any more than cannibal monsters rising from the dead? People might do something insane like try human sacrifices (The Mist), kill their fellow humans so the zombies are distracted by the fresh meat, or even turn to looting as the breakdown of order gives them a chance to fill their material desires (Dawn of the Dead).

    There's also the question of the "Z-word." Zombies are pop-culture monsters more than vampires, demons, and so-on. In fiction, by and large, people have some idea what sort of powers and abilities a vampire possesses. Being intelligent monsters, the idea a vampire surviving unseen is plausible. This is less so with a zombie. You must establish how familiar the people of your book are with the ravenous undead.

    In The Walking Dead, George Romero's movies do not exist, and they never use the Z-word because the rising dead are a completely unknown quality until that time. In Thom Brannan and D.L. Snell's Dog series, zombies were created in direct homage of the creatures from fiction. Do people know "rules" of killing zombies or is it a completely inexplicable phenomenon? There's nothing preventing you from fiddling around with the concept either.  

    Alan Wake has the Taken, who are zombies with the serial numbers filed off. The Taken have their souls and minds removed while being re-animated by the black material of the Lake. A horrific fungus might re-animate humans as a monster like in The Last of Us. Mass Effect deals with humans who have been re-animated with nanomachines as cybernetic-corpses. Even changing small bits around can help your work feel fresh and new. It will also leave your reader wondering what sort of "rules" are being followed.

    Finally, the important thing to remember with your zombie novel is figuring out what sort of ending you want to go with. Once you have determined what your zombies are supposed to represent, how much damage they've done to the protagonists, and so on--you must figure out where the story will carry you. In Zombie Apocalypse scenarios, the ending is rarely anything but bittersweet. After all, it is rare for the humans to totally defeat the epidemic. More often, it is simply a matter of surviving to the next day.

    The genre is also famous for its endings where the entire cast is killed, though this is rare now and could anger readers. In short, my recommendation is to just go with what feels authentic versus what feels happy.

    I hope you've found my advice informative. If not, well, see if I help you when Z-Day happens.

Follow Up Article: Zombies vs. Infected

The Social Satire of Dead Rising 2

Note: This essay will contain spoilers for Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, Dead Rising 2, and Dead Rising: Case West.

    Video games have often been accused of not having nearly the same level of artistic value as movies or literature. It's a charge similarly levied at comic books, genre fiction, and other mediums over the years. Certainly, video games have a couple of strikes against them that other genres don't. For one, they're an interactive medium as opposed to a static one.

     You really can't make a video game about documenting a genocide, at least if you want anyone to buy it. I've always felt that video games can, however, serve as a viable look into the world of society. Both my Arkham City (here) and Deus Ex: Human Revolutions (here and here) reviews go into my feelings on the subject in depth. However, today I'm going to talk about a somewhat more controversial entry into this field: Dead Rising 2.

The scary thing about Terror is Reality is, if zombies were real, someone would make a similar show.

    I, honestly, feel this is one of the most scathing bits of satire to come out of video games in over a decade. Dead Rising 2, despite its occasionally surreal even goofy atmosphere, has a surprisingly sharp understanding of the problems currently afflicting modern America. I'll even argue the game manages to resurrect the overused and cliche "Evil Megacorporation" trope in a manner that works wonders for the game's biting commentary.

    The premise of Dead Rising 2 to those who haven't read my previous entries is personal as well as global. Chuck Greene, a motorcross star, has escaped the zombie outbreak of Las Vegas with his daughter Katey. Unfortunately, Katey has become infected with the mutated larvae that turns people into zombies and requires an expensive injection every 24 hours or she'll die. Chuck Greene is forced to compete in a bloody American Gladiators-esque pay-per-view event based around killing zombies in order to make enough money for his daughter's treatments.

    Not long after competing in the sick competition, Chuck Greene finds himself at ground zero for a second zombie outbreak. Discovering he's been blamed for the outbreak due to circumstantial evidence, Chuck investigates the true cause while working to acquire enough of the medicine to get his daughter through the next few days.

     After spending much of his time saving the survivors of the outbreak, he eventually discovers the true culprits are the pharmaceutical corporation Phenotrans. Phenotrans has caused the outbreak to create new larvae so they can continue marketing Zombrex as well as supply their existing (and influential) customers. Chuck Greene, eventually, manages to find evidence enough to clear his name but not enough to indict the corporation.

While Katey isn't as awesome as Clementine. I found her to be a suitable motivation for Chuck to do anything to protect her.

    Taken at face value, it's not really all that deep of a story. Chuck Greene is an innocent man wronged, he has to get a Maguffin, there's a cute little girl involved, and a corporation is ultimately the bad guy. Really, corporations have been a steady source of science fiction villains since Alien and are a 'safe' target. People might object to the government being the bad buys but a corporation is the perfect foe for most gamers. Even Ayn Rand had corrupt corporations in her works.

    However, it is the atmosphere of Dead Rising 2 that makes all of these elements shine. To quote the angry peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "Now you see the injustice inherent in the system!" The desperate circumstances our hero is forced to endure are the consequences not only of a cartoonishly evil megacorporation but a culture of consumption and greed laid out for gamers to explore.

    This brought home by the setting of Dead Rising 2, the aptly named Fortune City. Fortune City is a transparent stand-in for Las Vegas, America's adult playground and one of the great symbols of consumerism in America. Like a mall, casinos represent something specific to the American psyche. They are representations of an unthinking devotion to wealth and the need to acquire.

Fortune City looked more fun in the brochure.

     In the four or five casinos present in the game, Chuck Greene wanders past thousands of shambling zombies mindlessly shuffling about blinking lights and chiming noises that entrance the undead like children at a carnival. George Romero made use of the mall for the iconic Dawn of the Dead, invoking images of undead shoppers simply wandering around simply because they had no place better to go. It's the same sort of cruel joke as in Dawn of the Dead that the flesh-hungry patrons aren't that different from the way they were while alive.

    Dead Rising 2 doesn't limit its social commentary to regurgitating George Romero's observations on the human condition, however. It extends its social commentary to the hand full of survivors Chuck Green is able to rescue throughout the three-to-four days of game time he has to explore. Almost universally, the survivors of the Fortune City zombie outbreak are selfish egotistical twits.

    They aren't evil and certainly don't deserve to die at the hands of the ravening undead but in the short time Chuck gets to know them, he's exposed to a massive number of individuals more interested in trivialities than their own survival. Chuck encounters people who are embarrassed about being in their underwear, want food, intend to rob ATMs while the death toll rises, and even have completely missed there's a zombie apocalypse going on.

    Those rare few individuals whose primary concern is another human being's life shine like diamonds in the rough, even when it is a close personal relative. The Texas millionaire stereotype may be a cartoon but at least he wants to make sure his wife is safe before going off with Chuck. Otherwise, selfishness is all pervasive in the game with one of the earliest cut-scenes being a man abandoning his girlfriend during an attack to get himself to safety. The game brings home the self-destructive nature of these acts as he immediately regrets it but she's already dead.

    Chuck Greene, by contrast, is an exemplar of selflessness who is not unbelievable in his heroism either. His primary concern is to protect his daughter, a motivation most parents can understand but he's not unwilling to help others if it didn't conflict with this overall mission. His Good Samaritan status isn't preachy but simply relies on him being willing to extend basic human kindness to those around him. The fact he's virtually the only person in the game willing to do so makes it all the more tragic.

    The role of greed and self-indulgence as the enemy of Chuck's selflessness is brought home on numerous occasions. On a very fundamental level, Chuck's primary enemy isn't the zombie hordes around him but the fact the medicine his daughter needs is extremely expensive. Even during the worst part of the outbreak, Chuck Greene finds individuals willing to horde all of the medicine supply for themselves. Not because they fear being infected by the zombies, which would be selfish but rational, but out of a desire to sell it to the desperate people outside.

    If ever there was an argument against treating medicine as a 'for profit' industry, it is the fact that Chuck Greene is willing to sell his dignity for the purposes of caring for his terminally ill daughter. Replace Katey's zombie infection with any number of real-life conditions and poor Chuck is an all-too real example of many father's beggared by rising medical costs.

Fortune City is largely unchanged by Z-Day. It's still filled with mindless hungry consumers.

    The villainous megacorporation Phenotrans has been accused of being a transparent knock-off of Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation but I'd argue it's a more realistic example of how a corporation might profit off an outbreak. Well, semi-realistic. I doubt any real-life corporation would destroy a major American city (let alone two) when there are so many easier ways of making a fortune.

    Phenotrans, however, is motivated not just by a persistent need to drive up the need for its zombie-treatment but also please its political sponsors. Somehow, a substantial number of Senators and other important politicians have become infected with the zombie larvae and need Phenotrans to care for them. Phenotrans and the government are working side-by-side in terms of causal corruption, both making the other worse for the experience. Yet, because Phenotrans claims its working for the "good of the nation" it has employees who wrap themselves in the flag and justify their nightmarish actions.

    Yet, the game doesn't allow the blame to be squarely rested on the shoulders of Phenotrans or the government. In fact, it resoundingly condemns the whole of society for creating the kind of environment where the megacorporation's corruption can survive. The game's opening mission is to compete on a disgusting game-show called Terror is Reality. You literally slice through zombies using chainsaws attached to a motorcycle in a disgusting pool-like arena where cash is rewarded for however many you kill.

    What makes the spectacle so loathsome is that it's also implied to be a naked appeal to revenge for the audience. Like TV shows which exploit the War on Terror, zombies have become a public enemy to the public at large and there are people who smell money in utilizing it for a cheap ratings gimmick. The host T.K. and his two identical co-hosts combine sex and violence in a gloriously over-the-top spectacle which is only slightly removed from reality.

    Even the Psychos have an important role to play in the narrative as they illustrate human beings unable to cope with an emergency.  Rather than try and save themselves, the majority of them retreat into fantasy worlds where they are living out their previous meaningless lives. People who try and interrupt their fantasies are reacted to violently because these people cannot cope with a disruption to their routine. They have no inner self and are just cardboard cutouts imitating life. In short, they're philosophical zombies.

    Dead Rising 2 is a story about the importance of remembering what is really valuable in our all-too-brief existences. It's not wealth, fame, cheap sex, fast food, or mindless entertainment. Though all of these things are okay in small amounts, at least in my opinion, we shouldn't allow them to dominate our lives. Our lives, the lives of others, and our families are the most important things in this world, so we should guard them jealously. Maybe it's a self-obvious bit of satire but it somehow feels fresh in today's climate.

Why I love Zombies - Musing on the Mindless Dead

     Zombies.

    Since George Romero re-introduced the Arabian ghul to modern audiences with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, they have been a feature of B-movies and video games ever since. The typical zombie is slow, unintelligent, and hungry. Individually, such creatures pose little threat but they have a better history of overrunning the world than virtually any other monster. When was the last time you heard of a mummy apocalypse, for example?

     Some movies, like 28 Days Later or Resident Evil, modify their zombies. They're fast or semi-intelligent or can become hulking 8ft tall monsters. These creatures pose a greater threat than the somewhat pathetic Romero zombie, who just wants to go to the mall and hang out.

    At heart, though, I am a fan of the classic Romero zombie. Why, though? Why do I like zombies the most? Why not, say, vampires? The answer is simple, vampires have become a little too cool for their own good. Forget Twilight, the moment Bela Lugosi strutted out onto the stage, vampires have been a little too urbane for my tastes.

    The modern vampire is suave, sophisticated, and powerful. Even if they're a bunch of hillbillies like Lance Henrikson's bunch in Near Dark, they're still immortal and super-strong. If you're of a sufficiently amoral bent, killing people to live forever may not be unappealing. Hell, if you can survive on animal blood like Nick Knight, undeath is less of a curse than more of a lifestyle choice.

    Being a zombie, though, is a terrible fate.  They're ugly, rotting, and probably don't smell too good. If I was a vampire, I'd use my supernatural charms to cruise for tasty young morsels and hang out with my immortal equally hot wife. I'd be rich as sin because vampires always seem to have a never-ending supply of wealth. As a zombie? Well, I'd probably just shamble about my office or mindlessly stare at my computer all day. In short, being a zombie would be pretty close to my normal day only worse.

    That's the nature of the much talked about social satire of zombies. Whereas vampires get to be cool loners who represent socially unacceptable sexuality, zombies represent being part of a slavering horde of mindless consumers. I suspect everyone who can afford a computer probably thinks they might, just maybe, take more than they give back. Being a zombie just makes that quality about human flesh versus natural resources.

    Zombies also serve as a metaphor for disease and not even television has managed to make that sexy. As much as we've managed to conquer Smallpox and measals, there's still plenty of horrible conditions which can infect us. Unlike vampires, who get associated with syphilis or other sexuality-based conditions, being a zombie is more like getting the flu. It's a painful unpleasant situation that can come about from causal contact with the infected. Being bitten by a zombie isn't erotic, who knows what's floating around in the mouths of those things.

    If you think I'm harping on the vampire vs. zombie connection, it's actually because the two monsters used to be one. Surprised? You shouldn't be. People have been talking about the dead rising to consume the living since before Helen of Troy met Paris. The original vampire was a bloated, disgusting thing which didn't have much intelligence. It existed to feed on people and was associated with disease.

    Sound familiar?

    Whereas the vampire eventually got associated with Incubi, Succubi, Lilin, and Ingrid Pit; the zombie just waited for Hollywood to find an appropriate avenue for showing their particular brand of loathsomeness. It took awhile, the zombie not being particularly photogenic, but modern culture has become a little zombie obsessed.

     Like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, the mindless undead have become a part of our culture. Even in space epics like the video game series Mass Effect, one of the major enemies are the Space Zombie Husks while Star Trek's the Borg manage to combine zombies with gestalt intelligence. What makes zombies so appealing?

    I think part of this is due to the fact that zombies are the best monster for discussing death. Being a mummy or whatever is a triumph over death. Sure, you may be a monster but you aren't rotting in the ground. Unless you believe in an afterlife, in which you probably still maintain some doubts, dying  is scary. A zombie is as close to true living death as possibly exists. You're moving around, killing people, but it's not you.

    What makes zombies unstoppable is this metaphor. Dracula and the Wolfman are impressive physical specimens. So is Jason Voorhees. However, at the end of the day, they're characters. You can outwit or outfight them and they'll go down. Zombies, as a metaphor for death, are inevitable. You can kill as many as you like, more will come. It's why their relative weakness is such genius. We outrun death every day but, eventually, we tire and he overtakes us.

    It's why discussions about how the military would plow through your average Zombie Apocalypse sort of miss the point. Yeah, zombies are weak and stupid. However, it's not their powers that are a threat. It's the fact everybody dies.

     You can kill ten, twenty, or even a thousand zombies but the best you hope for is to survive another day. We all defy death every second of the day. It's just that he's always there, surrounding us. The zombies don't even have to take over the world to be scary because their threat is ever-present, serving as a reminder of our mortality. It's why Land of the Dead is one of my favorite Romero movies. People have learned to cope with the undead and life will go on, but the zombies aren't destroyed.

    How could they be? No one can beat death.