I know it may not seem like it to look
at me (or I guess in your case “read what I write”) but before all of this
happened, I was a country boy. I may not have been a country boy in the fact
that I never wore a cowboy hat or cowboy boots. I had my “sh*t kicker” shoes,
which are to say the old sneakers that I wore when I did yard work. But when
you grow up in a town of 800 people, it is impossible to be classified as
“city.” I will admit I like my air conditioned and I can tell you more about
programming HTML language than tracking down whitetail bucks. But, much like
the town population of Adair, when you have 120 acres as your backyard, you cannot
be “citified.”
I had a riding lawnmower because my
lawn was too big to push mow, I would dodge snakes when running out in the back
pasture. I could lie in my bed at night and hear the coyotes howl. (In
Oklahoma, they are pronounced “kai-oats” not “kai-o-tees.”) And Alex and I
would often go down to the creek to measure how high the water rose after heavy
rains. I’ve separated cows into their herds, banded a few (don’t ask), bottle
fed a small handful, and helped my father-in-law put out feed. For those
reasons, I would say I qualify as more country than city.
As I mentioned, I would often run in
my back pasture. But being a big guy, it is embarrassing to run on the road. I
don’t want what few neighbors I have to see me attempting to exercise and when
you are from a small town and people see you walking on the side of the road every
other car will pull over to see if you need a lift home.
So I would run out in the back pasture
where the cows would graze and I saw my fair share of “herd mentality.” In many
ways, zombies are not too different from cows in their behavior. They utilize a
herd mentality.
I don’t know how the decided who the
alpha is but if you can get one or two headed in one direction (say chasing
someone) then it is not too hard to get all the rest of them shambling in that
direction. They can be lured.
And if they can be lured, that means
they can be lured away. Now, I do not want to lull you into a false sense of
security but please keep in mind that you are not dealing with rocket
scientists. They are not strategists. They are not smart. This means they can
be fooled, they can be tricked, and they can be lured into scenarios that can
give you the advantage. You just have to figure out what is the best scenario
for you to utilize your advantages.
You are fighting against an opponent
that is incredibly stupid but the yang to that yin is that you are also
fighting against an opponent that is crushingly relentless and more often than
not outnumbers you.
Find a way to exploit that weakness
and you gain a tremendous fighting chance. Treat these things like cattle that
they are because point of fact is they are dumber than cows. Use that to your
advantage…
More later.
