Being creative doesn't always mean being erudite, or even sane. Thus this bit of musing brought on by the pandemic. To test what is available in the Wix toolbag, I chose this GIF. It's from "Warm Bodies," which wasn't such a bad movie for a zombie flick.
For some time now, and for some reason I cannot understand, many Americans have had an interest or affection or some relationship with Zombies. Without deep research, I cannot be certain if this is cultish, faddish, or if some people really think there is a possibility that such creatures exist. I have, myself, enjoyed a few movies, maybe TV shows, concerning the “undead,” but never felt the need to think about them beyond the plot.
It is with humor, then, that I must relate the odd feeling that the pandemic has given me a sense of how it would be to react to a plague of Zombies. In my surface memory of them, they ravage the bodies of people that they encounter or seek out. It is for their sustenance, I believe. Any virus is the same; blindly attacking the host to give itself life. But the thoughts I have today, go beyond the similarity of the virus itself. My mind wandered to thinking about how dealing with other people now, during the pandemic, is also similar.
Just as in my memory of the Zombies of fiction, humans bar their doors and hide away in hopes of avoiding contact. When there is a knock on the door, is it the (I hope) harmless man wanting to sell me pest services or is that man not so harmless and has within him the means to potentially take my life. This morning, I thought I heard the opening of the box that says, “Place Packages Here,” and that is when this idea took hold. Her I sit inside my house, wondering who or what might be approaching and what risk they are to me.
Of course, flights of fancy took hold (perhaps the thunder, lightning, rain, and darkness of the day is contributing) and I started applying this to what we are about to undertake in the world. We will be furtively scurrying through our lives, not wanting to linger for fear the Zombie, er virus, will lurk nearby. Because of the masks, we will not be able to easily evaluate our fellow citizens to know if they are stricken with Zombieism, I mean Covid, or not. This is where the image diverges. Zombies walk oddly because their bodily structure is deteriorating and, generally, they seem to have whatever passes for Zombie features. So, this pandemic villain is more dangerous, more insidious, and more anonymous.
To me, that seems to be much scarier than any monster apocalypse. I’ve met a few through screen and page. I don’t go so much for the guts and gore, but the ideas of psychological and science fiction have held sway over my mind since I was a teenager. Witchcraft, outer space, inner space, Them, They, It; all experienced in my head as directed by the words and pictures. Now, here I sit with a real-life science non-fiction monster that can walk the street beside me just by hopping on a friend, or stranger. Rather than having to stalk me or trap me directly, this monster has the ability to float through the air from that person over there into my eyes, nose, or mouth.
One of my favorite sayings, developed by me, through all of this has been that, “I have seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.” This morning, I had a shudder as I realized how easy it is to never want to venture out because there are Zombies amongst us. Just as the fictional characters, they do not know that is what they are, but they are just as driven to seek their hosts. What an odd feeling to think about scurrying into the nursery with a list of plants in hand, grab what I need, and rush back out; all the while attempting to avoid any contact with other beings. Oh no, there is a garrulous group who seems to think themselves immune and wander around as if this was 2019 and there was nothing to fear. I must find a place to hide so their potential parasitic passenger is not transferred to my body.
The constant of stories created through the ages, especially science fiction, is that there are neither prescient nor apocryphal. They do, however, plant seed of thought that ring true sometimes in life. No, there are not any real Zombies and, I like to think, never will be such a thing. But a Zombie can stand for something that has nothing to do with the described form. It can represent groups of people who have, through no fault of their own, become the carriers of “a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought” (found via Google). Here’s an aside. Zombie is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and I learned that the term was coined in 1871 as related to a supernatural voodoo power.
This, too, can be a virus. Capable of movement – check. No rational thought – check. Seeming supernatural because we cannot see it – check. Definitely no rational thought because, if it did have such, it would not kill the host. It does not realize that by hopping from one to another and replicating and spreading that it actually can lead to its own demise once all the hosts are gone. Just like the Zombies. Once they turn everyone into the same sad creatures or eat all the other humans, they are doomed.
Anyway, it is Saturday morning and I have time to delve into the folds of my brain. In my youth, Saturday was THE day for the science fiction movies that I so enjoyed. Queen of Outer Space was one of my favorites, The Amazing Colossal Man was unfathomable, Journey to the Center of the Earth spurred imagination, and The Time Machine provided an image of future possibilities mixed with terror, but Them! was the one that really frightened me. Atomic age impact on ants to make them a giant man-eating scourge.
Wouldn’t it be great if beating the Coronavirus was as easy as trapping it in a storm drain and blasting with flame throwers? Ah, back to Zombies. The ants were destroyed because they were organized, there was a queen, and they could be contained. Our Zombie virus is and has none of that. It is a wanderer, simply seeking a human host. The host becomes inflamed, loses rational thought, exhibits altered levels of consciousness, and may even seem “fine” as they walk among us. The modern-day Zombie is scarier because we cannot see it. And I sit here wondering who might be lurking outside my door, skittering away from acquaintances when I go to the barn, and generally feel suspicious of the humans who want to engage with others when the monster still wanders the earth with nothing to stop it. Zombies exist.
