Apparently,
there is rest for the wicked. You see
all these zombie movies where all these shambling horrors are milling about and
moaning. And there are times where I wish it was like that. I truly do. Unfortunately, that is not
the case. The farther out we venture, especially into the more remote
areas, we have discovered a disturbing trend.
If you go back to my article about
zombie power expenditures, we noted how the zoms’ number one instinct is to
feed and how they power down in the absence of food. And this fact makes them
even more dangerous. Zoms respond to external stimuli. I
imagine this works the same as with any hunter. Sights, sounds, smells, etc.
We’ve covered in previous entries how we think these beasties hunt. However, if
a zom experiences no external stimuli over an extended period of time, they
begin to shut down. Not die, mind you, but shut down. Let me explain.
Let me give you an example.
Farmer Frank lives
out in the middle of a wide swath of pastureland with no neighbors around for
miles. He gets bit by one
of our initial shamblers that came staggering out of that nursing home. So all
the hubbub of the zombie news stories have not broken out. He
gets back to his truck and drives back to his farm, not realizing that he is
now infected. He gets back
to the farm and barricades himself inside his home with all sorts of locks and
chairs propped up underneath doorknobs and such. His standard 48 hours pass.
Farmer Frank dies from the virus and the body reanimates.
When
his body reanimates, he will get up and walk around to look for flesh to feast
on. Stumbling through his home, he will consume any scraps of meat from the
trash, the family dog (if he can catch it), or that leftover turkey if he is
somehow fortunate enough to get the refrigerator open. Remember, zoms are about
50/50 on figuring out how to work an open doorknob. A locked door with a
deadbolt and security chain latched tight? Farmer Frank is in for a long wait.
Now
one can argue that he might be able to smash through a window and escape the
house but that would mean Zombie Farmer Frank was capable of cognitive thought
and he is not. If there was a fat little butterball nine-year-old on the other
side of the window, a hungry Zombie Farmer Frank might punch through a window
to get at him. But if there is no meat – no prey – on the other side of that
window, he is not going to be smart enough to realize, “Hey if I punch out of
here, I might find food.”
So,
once all meat sources are consumed and he has sufficiently explored the space,
eventually, that zom somehow manages to get it through that decaying brain that
there is no food and no escape. They probably don’t think of “escape” the way
we do but their brain tells them, “No food.”
Zombie Frank “powers down.” Zoms are
basically dumb animals but eventually they figure out some things… So Zombie
Farmer Frank basically goes into a state where it collapses. We have seen some
zombies do some sort of instinctual thing where they may sit down on a couch or
even lay down in a bed. Others may just collapse on the floor.
Now, if something comes along and
triggers that zom, it will get up and start shuffling about, looking for that
stimulant. Noise still seems to be the biggest trigger. Gunshots that echo for
miles seem to be a pretty big trigger.
Say someone walks up on Zombie Farmer
Frank’s front porch and the wooden steps creak when heavy weight is put on
them. Zombie Frank hears that noise and he will get up from his catatonic state
and start shuffling towards the direction of that noise. Now, if that stimulant
goes away, eventually Zombie Frank powers back down. But if someone approaches
silently, it will take some other stimulant to “reactivate” Zombie Frank and
get him chomping away.
A fair warning though. What stimulates
one zom may not necessarily stimulate another. It has been my
experience that zoms are not too much different from people in that some people
need glasses and hearing aids. Others do not. Some zoms are incredibly
perceptive. Others, be it natural abilities or the degeneration brought on by decay,
are not. If one or both
of a zom’s eyes rot out, obviously visual stimulation is no longer present.
Okay, so now, let’s get to the meat of
this. Zoms are dead. This means they do not breathe. This means a powered down
zom and a corpse lying on the street are impossible to distinguish. This means
if you want to be safe than sorry, you have to put a bullet in every corpse’s
head you come across.
So,
here is a good general rule of thumb. Avoid all corpses that still look to have
their brain intact. If you have the capacity (i.e. ammo and silencers), put a
bullet in any corpse’s head lying around. It will make sure and give you a
little extra target practice with those head shots. Otherwise, any corpse could suddenly
rise up and try to take a bite out of your leg as you walk past. And by now,
there are a lot of corpses out there…
