Last week, one of our sortie teams
came across a collection of zombies that were feasting on the corpse of a cow.
I contemplated this fact as I wondered how a pack of zombies could bring down a
cow. I mean an average person against a cow? The cow is winning that battle. If
you have never been close to an animal of this size, their power is
unbelievable. I mean a mature Black Angus cow can weigh 1500 pounds. Put that
up against a 150 pound zombie? The zombie doesn’t stand a chance.
I have been out walking in the pasture
with my son and when the cattle get spooked and take off, the ground shakes.
You may not realize this but cows can move. They can haul if they need to and
any shambling zom could be easily trampled underfoot by these things. There is
a reason why the stampede is used in all those Western cowboy films. Still,
what was bugging me was I could not wrap my brain around how these things could
drag down a cow. The only real weapon that zoms have are their teeth. Now, the
bites are savage and they can tear apart living flesh like it is a cooked
chicken. But a cow? That is a lot of mass stomping around. How do zoms take
down a cow? Well, I have a theory.
Cow tipping is real. You can do it.
Granted Tommy Boy gave a humorous
take on the thing but if a cow is asleep, you can kind of creep up on one.
Granted, zombies smell like putrid death but if one got close enough, it is
possible that a zom takes a chunk out of this thing. We have seen already. One
bite is all it takes.
So a zom shambles up and takes a bite.
The cow snaps awake and gives a kick, crunching the zom’s chest into oblivion
but that does not kill it. So the cow takes off across the pasture, bleeding
out like crazy. There are no bandages, no medical treatment, no emergency
veterinary dispatched.
And that leaking blood trail is easily
tracked by zoms. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Zack Snyder’s take on zombies in Dawn of the Dead but those zombies would
have torn the dog “Chips” to pieces. Meat is meat.
Back to the point at hand, the zoms
shamble after the bit and bleeding cow. Eventually, that cow is going to bleed
out and collapses in the field. And, eventually, those zoms are going to catch
up to the cow near death and – voile – they have an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, we have never seen a zombie cow or a
zombie dog. Most dogs seem smart enough to smell these things coming from a
mile away and bolt the other direction. We have yet to see an undead cow
feasting on other members of the herd. Try to imagine defending anywhere from a
contaminated mouse or rat. A Kharon-infected mosquito?
At this point in the game, whatever
this virus or microbial infection is it seems to only trigger in the brain of
the homo sapiens. Only the human brain is reanimated because of the disease. I
wonder how that works? But I have to admit, that does really lend to my theory
that this is some form of man-made disease. How else could you explain it? What
if this was some biological agent designed in some secret government facility
that was released accidentally? I guess we may never know…
But here is my concern. Kilo is Eric’s
German Shepherd. What happens in defense of his master if he takes a bite of a
zom?
