You know what’s really concerning and something that we should all be worried about? The zombie apocalypse. Anyone who’s watched a television in the last fifty years knows what I’m talking about; the undead coming back to life and trying to eat our brains. I’ve always found the concept very interesting and loving things gore as I do, I’ve found myself recently wondering if there is an element of premonition in our fascination for giving zombies primetime space on our television and movie screens, much in the same vein of The Matrix; that one day machines will harvest our species.
Part of me believes that the zombie apocalypse happened a while ago, but it appeared in a somewhat different fashion to what we were expecting. All one really needs to do to understand my meaning is to take a seat in the middle of a busy town or city and observe people for twenty minutes to see that, the undead are already walking amongst us.
I sat down in the food court at the mall in Rotorua with my Subway sandwich. For future reference, I like my Subway as follows:
Foot-long meatball on Italian herb and cheese
Swiss cheese
Toasted
Lettuce, tomato, capsicum and jalapeno’s
Cover that baby in ranch dressing
While we’re at it, let’s make it a meal and give me two M&M cookies with a coke zero, because I’m trying to be all healthy like.
Let’s be honest, if I knew I wouldn’t be judged on it, I’d skip the vegetables all together. Right, where were we? Oh yes, I was at the food court. I sat down to eat my sandwich (I like to start with the smallest half first, which is always hard to tell because they pretty much cut it smack bang down the middle, I’m sure they’re trained to get that right, sometimes you’ve just got to make a judgement call) and I’d already checked my Facebook and there was really no need to trawl through that again, so I began to people watch. Or, for the sake of keeping in line with the theme of this entry, Zombie watched.
The Zombies shuffle around, often with glazed over eyes. I sit in the corner booth, hunched over my sandwich daring not to move too much and inadvertently draw attention to myself. I simply observe. Not all of them are zombies, some of them are regular people who have not yet been infected. They travel in packs too you know. You can tell they’re infected because even though they’re together as a group, they spend their time with their faces buried in their phones, occasionally coming up for air to mumble something, before quickly retreating to their device.
Some Zombies were turned a long time ago, and have lost basic motor functions, especially in their faces. You can tell that they’ve been gone for a while now because they no longer possess the ability to smile, they simply speak in monotone and their sentence syntax has diminished greatly. “Yes” has become “yip”, “no thank you” replaced with “nah” and conversation limited to whatever is required to obtain a food source. But in this new world, Zombies can also be lurking behind the counter as well. You know them because they possess all of the aforementioned traits. These Zombies are especially dangerous, because they don’t have a vested interest in what they do or who you are, AND they’re preparing your food. And that’s why I like to see my food being prepared.
Not everyone is part of the undead army however, there is still hope that the infected will not consume us all. The antidote is a smile. Smiles are more infectious and the virus can be passed far more effectively and swiftly from person to person. Sometimes you can even bring a Zombie back. I reckon we should give it a go before the pandemic spreads beyond the the brink of no return, I’m gonna give it a go, who wants to join my army?
Song of the day:
Zombie – The Cranberries
Added to the blog playlist, scroll right to the bottom, click below to listen:
http://open.spotify.com/user/1231002198/playlist/5d1G5zVPkHJHODZRhsnnoI
The Ilum 