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| http://nintendoenthusiast.com/feature-articles/zombies-on-nintendo-systems-through-the-generations/5490/ |
I have an excellent imagination. This is a great quality when casting about for a new bit of character development for a novel, but it’s a perfect nightmare when, say, I’ve made the foolish decision to watch The Ring.
Yes, I saw it back there in the early 2000’s, on DVD and in the comfort of my own home, and I was terrified for years afterward, I tell you. For Absolute Years. Here’s what I learned from that little bit of cinematic horror: televisions should never turn on of their own accord, and people on TV should never come crawling out of the TV.
Not Ever.
For better or for worse, I’ve always been like this. The house I grew up in had a set of wooden stairs leading to the basement, and the basement itself housed, among other things, a real live juke box. Sometime or other, my parents found and purchased A Christmas Carol for it, and over a series of five or six double-sided 45’s, my sisters and friends and I could listen to that glorious and harrowing Christmas story play out whenever we wanted to.
As a result, from the time I was eight until I was… well, until my parents moved out of that house (I was in my early twenties), I was Very Afraid of the basement. Even walking past the threshold of the basement’s open door was enough to spook me, for who knew when I might hear the clank of Jacob Marley’s heavy chain on the bottom of those wooden stairs, and his heavy, sin-haunted step make its slow ascent into the kitchen?
An excellent imagination.
So it shouldn’t surprise you then, should it?, that I am still keeping my eyes open for the Zombie Apocalypse. I know, I know. Zombies and their horrors are so 2013. We’re over it now, aren’t we?
That’s exactly what they want you to think, people.
Unfortunately for me, I am rather better educated in all things zombie than I might have chosen to be, but this is because I have sons. One son, in particular. Will, in fact, who–in the height of the Zombania (I just made that up: the “b” is silent) Loved Zombies.
I don’t know when it started. The zombies crept in through the basement (as zombies might be wont to do), into the space that Everett refers to as their “man-cave,” the space that holds a variety of musical instruments, the XBox, and also sadly, perhaps, in this case, the laundry machines. Which turned my friendly-chatting-with-my-son-while-I’m-folding-laundry-and-he-was-playing-XBox into a kind of unlooked-for education: Turns out (who knew?) that Will was fighting zombies.
I had no idea what I was in for. The fighting games (yes, we had talked about it) that we allowed them to own (when they were old enough; when we had given it considerable thought) weren’t (suddenly) some kind of search-and-seizure, overthrow-the-bad-guy thing that I thought they were. At least this one wasn’t. This was about zombies: slack-jawed, drooling, and decidedly un-dead, coming at us relentless and innumerable and in a persistent state of decay.
Yes, it turns out the Black Ops game had some zombies, and then there was Black Ops 2 Zombies–because one video game in which they are coming at you, in which the onslaught of zombies is unyielding–wasn’t enough. Call of Duty 5, I hear, is all zombies, and there are rumored to be other games out there, ones we don’t have: Left for Dead and Left for Dead 2 and, ominously, The Last of Us.
Back when it was popular, Will loved this stuff. Just loved it. He saw them all: Sean of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead and Land of the Dead. He hasn’t yet seen 28 Days Later, but he was sure to catch Zombieland and couldn’t wait, last summer, for World War Z. Of course, in the case of the latter, he had already read the book. And he has also read Zombie Survival Guide, which is, I’ll be honest, somewhat comforting.
Why comforting, do you say? Because, immersed as I was in all of this zombie violence and lore, I began not so much to believe in the inevitability of the Zombocalypse as to just sort of brace myself for it. I mean, I don’t believe in zombies. I don’t. I’m an earnest Christian, for starters, and so have some pretty established beliefs about life and death, and it’s difficult to find space for un-deadness in all of that. I don’t believe in zombies anymore than I believe in vampires or werewolves.
But, as I have said, I have an excellent imagination. And with all of the zombieness that has gone on around me–and despite the fact that both here and in our culture, zombania appears (despite the persistent popularity of The Walking Dead) to be decidedly on the wane–it’s difficult not to sort of start thinking along those lines, to maybe put into place my own “survival plan,” if you will.
Which I have done, and which is relatively simple: I do not plan to survive at all.
Now before you tell me that I need to “think positive” or that I’m selling myself short, let me explain my reasoning: I’m a pretty fast runner. I know this about myself. And I’m a relatively clever person. I know how to Lock Things. I can Climb. And, based on the aforementioned and relatively thorough if inadvertent education on zombies that I’ve received via Will’s “studies”, I also know that Getting Away From Zombies Is Nigh-On Impossible.
Oh, sure, one can try. One can run. And hide. And climb. And lock doors and bar windows and retreat into spaces where you know–you absolutely know–you are safe. And just when you believe yourself to be Escaped and even Rescued, There They Come. Slowly. Surely. Innumerable. Drooling. They are limping, scraping, crawling their way toward you. They are decayed and rotting, jaws unhinged and slack. Their eyes bug out, their limbs hang barely attached or missing entirely. Movement, motivation, drive– these seem impossible. And yet Still They Come.
And now you cannot escape. Now you have only one option: To Wait It Out. And what is it you are waiting for, I ask? I tell: You are waiting for that rotting, gaping maw to close down on you, to clamp and close and make a slow and rotting end of things. Only to become one of the un-dead yourself.
I Do Not Want This At All.
And so my “survival plan,” to which Will is the linchpin.
Because, you see, Will–who has read the books and played the games and seen the movies–will be leading the rebellion, and he will survive. And that is why, at the outset of the Zombocalypse, he is instructed to shoot me. Just end it. Right there.
I was very satisfied with this and, because of my imagination, I recently decided to clarify. To ask him about it just, you know, to make sure we were on the Same Page.
“Will,” I said, “when the inevitable Zombocalypse happens, you’re going to shoot me, right? That’s the plan, yes?”
And he said, to my Horror: “Yes, I will shoot you– After you are bitten.”
Oh. No.
“But,” I protested, “it’s the Whole Approach of the Zombies that I was hoping to avoid. When the zombies start coming, I want–immediately and without delay–to be put out of my pending misery!!!”
We do not, I have discovered, have an understanding At All.
(again) Horrors.
But Will explained: When the zombies make their (inevitable) appearance, how will we know where we stand? Where, he reasoned, is the line between *Outbreak* and *Insurgence*? And from there, how do we know that an actual *Apocalypse* is underway?
One can’t jump the gun, so to speak. We need to watch How Things Develop.
“What if,” he went on to say, “we heard that the outbreak had begun and, according to our plan, I shot you, only later to discover that the zombies were localized in Kansas, or Utah, and everything was under control? We wouldn’t want to be hasty,” he said.
Oh.
This, I realize, is excellent rationale. This little bit of reason, coming to counteract my fear, is rooted in good civic responsibility, and ethical reflection, and plain old common sense.
And, perhaps– even likely– genuine regard for his mother.
Which is nice.
And so I am having to readjust. I won’t say that I am working out more. Not trying to increase my running speed. Not looking for Excellent Hiding Places. Not adding to my zombie-fighting gear, not building an impenetrable stronghold in the basement, not stock-piling weapons.
But definitely thinking less about zombies. Definitely relaxing that ol’ imagination of mine. Definitely noting that most people don’t seem so concerned, so maybe I shouldn’t be either.
And comforting myself that my son, even in the panic of the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, sorta kinda wants to have his mother around.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll rise to the occasion.
