It’s a sad fact of unlife that not everyone wants to be a zombie. Despite the current pro-zombie craze perpetuated by the living, there are some undead fans who quite like the sound of their heart still beating. That’s fine with me – after all, we need food for the future.
But it’s not all about food. Despite Romero’s best intentions to portray us all as heartless, brainless, shuffling automatons there are a growing minority of us with radical views when it comes to the living. Jesse Manson’s recent experience is a good example.
Jesse, a good friend of mine who remains on the other side of the meal fence, had a close encounter with a few of my undead associates while on vacation and, suffice to say, it didn’t go well. Romero and his rotten ilk would have the world believe that, being of the non-breathing variety, I would take the side of the horde. This was not the case. Instead, I inflicted violent retribution upon her assailants and their severed heads, impaled on bamboo poles, currently add an interesting, if unusual, variation to my Japanese themed meditation garden. It was a satisfying result for both parties (although Jesse is at present unable to thank me personally) and what I hope is the first in a long and fruitful programme of cross-species collaboration.
Even ‘Zombie Watch’, the magazine of the anti-zombie movement, found Jesse’s story worthy of an article. Here it is, with kind permission etc (reluctantly given after I threatened to eat their CEO).
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR?
Jessica Manson loves a good zombie movie, but unlike the majority of the zombie groupies and wannabes lurching around our streets nowadays, she has enough sense to want to keep the flesh-munchers at baseball bat distance.
Not so her friend, Crystal ‘Butch’ Towers, a zombie-obsessed drag queen whose dream was to be ‘turned’ like her heroine Lady Gaga. Little did she know her dream was to come true while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico.
In a classic case of why you should always use Tripadvisor, Ms Manson and Ms Towers unwittingly booked their vacation to coincide with the Anti-Zombie Defamation League annual conference. This conference, as we know, ended in a full scale riot after a dogma disagreement between moderate zombies and a far-right fundamental wing of the Zombie Liberation Front escalated into violence.
After months of negotiations with the National Security Agency and Homeland Security we were given special permission to interview Jessica in the secure wing of a secret military facility in Norfolk, Virginia, where she told us her story. To avoid the delicate sensibilities of our readers we have edited the foul language Ms Manson uses in her everyday speech.
“It was f*****g awesome,” she said, her thousand-yard stare betraying the emotion of the day. “We were sat on the beach talking about our clown fetish when there was this smell, this real bad smell. I mean, this s**t stank.” Her face blanched at the memory. “I turned to see what the living f***k it was, and all these zombies – and I mean hundreds of the b******s – stumbled down the beach towards us.” Her cot shook as she suddenly became animated. “I nearly shit myself with WIN because I thought they were filming The Walking Dead.” (Ms Manson is the Prez of ‘Mommas for Reedus’, an all-female outlaw gang who follow strict celibacy laws in honour of the Walking Dead actor).
While she spoke, she repeatedly asked us to flick wayward strands of her long black hair and dayglo wraps from her face. “It’s these f******g restraints,” she complained, and rattled her leather and metal wrist and ankle cuffs for effect.
“Anyway,” she continued, eyes now wild at the memory. “I thought the makeup and special effects were totally a-f*****g-mazing. I’d never seen intestines and blood spatter so accurate – and I look at this sh*t a lot. It wasn’t until one of the b******s started chewing on Crystal’s face I realised they weren’t acting.”
The only other memory the deeply traumatised Ms Manson has of the vicious attack is drop-kicking a zombie’s head into the sea as she wrestled off the hungry horde. “I’ve not seen Crystal since, but I’m pretty sure it’s her scratching at my windows at night. Bitch.”
The interview unfortunately came to an abrupt end after Ms Manson began to froth at the mouth and attack our photographer. He still remains in intensive care as we go to press.