Braaaaaiiiiinnnns!!!

Zombies are so hot right now. Everywhere you look, the living dead are shambling around,  oozing and moaning, wanting nothing more than to feast on the juicy innards of those unfortunate enough to have been spared death or zombification. Weary bands of ragtag survivors stay one small step ahead, knowing that a gruesome death, or worse, is just a bite away. The Walking Dead is a perfect example of the genre, as is the cheesy B-grade “Sy-Fy Original” Zombie Apocalypse. People just can’t get enough of the malicious undead these days.

Or can they? I’m sure a lot of writers are waiting for the inevitable zombie backlash, wondering if they should get in on the trend now or if it will be all played out by the time they achieve a submittable draft. I know, because I am one of these writers. I’m always worried that what I’m writing is going to end up sounding cliched by the time I finish it (in fact, the novel I recently finished has some striking resemblances to TV’s Breaking Bad, a show that didn’t even exist when I wrote the first draft). I’d rather not compete in a marketplace that is already saturated by stories just like mine. And yet … I’m going to try to write an original zombie story.

What makes mine so original? Well for starters, my zombies aren’t actually dead. Yes, I know, the zombies in 28 Days Later weren’t technically dead, either. They also weren’t technically zombies — they were “infected”. But in most ways, they fit perfectly into our idea of what a zombie looks like and how it behaves.  Yet nobody in the movie ever refers to them as “zombies” (at least not that I remember — feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). To me, this is implausible. The zombie is a huge part of our current culture. It’s America’s monster sweetheart.

A character in the short story my novel is based on has a line of dialogue that reads, “Nobody has a plan for the zombie apocalypse.” But upon reflection, I realized that this could not be further from the truth. Everybody has a plan for the zombie apocalypse. Don’t bother to deny it — you know exactly what you would do. So when a large percentage of the world’s population starts to behave in a zombie-like fashion, the knee-jerk conclusion is obvious: Zombocalypse! Whether or not they are actually dead is a nuance that is lost on most of the heavily armed, fully conscious survivors. They react, doing just what they had imagined themselves doing while watching scores of movies and TV shows about zombies.

So that part is plausible, but how do I turn ordinary people into zombies without invoking the supernatural? The most obvious solution is a virus. My particular zombie-virus attacks the cerebral cortex, rendering its victim unconscious. But not knocked-out unconscious, just lacking of that inner voice you think of as “you”, the one who makes the decisions based on your best interests (or selfish desires, depending on your personality). This is a neurological phenomenon rather than a supernatural one. I got the idea while reading neuroscientist David Eagleman’s excellent book, Incognito. He refers to the various parts of our brains as a “team of rivals”, each vying to have its own needs met. Our consciousness acts as a CEO, deciding which action to take (or not–the question of free will is hotly debated among those who study the brain) based on its goals or predilections. The example Eagleman uses is a person’s reaction to a freshly baked, mouth-watering cookie. There is a primitive and very powerful part of your brain that wants nothing more than to seize that cookie and shove it into your mouth, accessing those sweetly nourishing calories and converting them into lifesaving stores of fat. But another, more evolutionarily recent part of your brain knows that your body has enough fat already — more than enough, in fact. That part has along-term goal of maintaining a fit, healthy weight, thus prolonging and enhancing the quality of your life. Your consciousness is the one who makes the call between, “The hell with it, I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, I’m eating the damn cookie.” or “I really shouldn’t eat this now, so I won’t.” But what happens if the CEO who calls the shots goes missing? Who will lead the team of rivals? People infected by my zombie virus still have impulses and urges, only there is no inner voice or conscience to hold them back. Whichever urge is strongest is the one given priority, meaning whatever they want the most is what they try to get. As supplies get scarcer and the infected get hungrier and more agitated, they do start to behave an awful lot like zombies.

If I’m diligent and very lucky, this story will make sense and strike a chord with fans of the zombie genre. If I’m very, very lucky, I will manage to break new ground in a genre that has been done nearly to death. And even if the story ultimately falls flat, I think it’ll be fun to try my hand at making zombies. There’s just something about them that I love.

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