Everyone Un-Died + My Gardener Bit Me: The Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse

Foreword - A Makeshift Jail That Smelled Like Feet

Marietta was found guilty on all counts, plus a few extra ones the jury just made up for spite, like "First Degree Fiddle-Faddle" and "Aggravated Horse Pucky." (Pro tip: When you're on trial for mass murder, do not taunt your jury.) She was sentenced to triple-life without the possibility of parole, which she had to serve in Judge Latin's shoe closet, because the robots had reduced all of the state's penitentiaries to rubble.

It should not have been surprising that Marietta's dire words fell on deaf ears. Humanity — what was left of us — had barely begun emerging from the ashes of the Robot Apocalypse and we were certainly in no mood for her zombie hysteria. Everyone was physically and emotionally exhausted, kind of like when a Marvel movie goes into its second hour — Jesus, how much longer is this fucking fight sequence going to last? — and all we wanted to do was was resume some semblance of normal life.

And we did.

Not right away, of course. The first few months were mostly spent illegally lynching people who worked in tech, followed by a few more months spent legally lynching people who worked in tech after the passage of the Smartypants Prohibition Act (SPA) which outlawed computer interconnectivity, "smart" devices and any and all studying, teaching or researching computer programming, Artificial Intelligence and any related field, all of which were classified as capital crimes.

But eventually, we ran out of Silicon Valley types to murder and we turned our energies to rebuilding our houses, our roads, our businesses. These were good times, simple times, worry-free times. We lived happily, gratefully, in a low tech, un-augmented reality where if someone started screaming that they found a Snorlax or an Exeggutor, they were carted away to a mental health facility. Which, honestly, should have been the rule all along.

Years went by without a single zombie sighting and Marietta's grave warnings, which were not taken seriously in the first place, were now completely forgotten. But then, when our guard was completely down, the zombies came.

In theory, we should have had no problem dealing with the undead. Zombies have long saturated our popular culture. Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Night of The Living Dead, Return Of The Living Dead, Land Of The Dead, Juan Of The Dead, Dead Set, Night Of The Comet, Ravenous, Pandemic, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, World War Z, REC, Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Ash vs. Evil, Resident Evil, Santa Clarita Diet, Z Nation, Pontypool, Train To Busan, The Rezort and, of course, Marietta's raison d'etre, The Walking Dead. Not only that, we had Zombie Apocalypse survival camps, Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guides, Zombie Self-Defense Classes and Zombie Apocalypse Workouts.

Plus, we had already faced a much more fearsome enemy. The robots were technologically advanced, they were fast and they were intelligent to a degree that we could not even comprehend... and yet somehow we survived. The zombies, on the other hand, didn't move any faster than we did and they couldn't even work a toaster, which was very frustrating for them, because it turns out they absolutely love toast. So what happened?

One problem, I think, was that because we were familiar with fictional zombies, we subconsciously believed that we understood real zombies. In a sense, it's like meeting your favorite celebrity in person. You see someone who looks and sounds just like, say, Empire's Cookie Lyons and instinctively you treat her like Cookie Lyons, peppering her with questions about rap music, women's prison and the meaning of the word "bougie." And then you're shocked when she starts eating your innards. Why? Because she's not Cookie Lyons, she's actually Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe winning actress Taraiji P. Henson. You thought you knew her, but you didn't, and now you're dead.  Likewise, the zombies were in some ways similar to what we expected, but in some ways, not at all. And the difference between our assumptions and reality got a lot of people killed. And then un-killed. And then, frequently, killed again.

But the biggest problem was this: While the robots were always them, the zombies used to be us. Or maybe — and this, along with a my neighbor's yappy Shih Tzu keeps me up at night — they still are us. That, after all, is the reason Marietta found herself in a makeshift jail cell that smelled like feet, because she thought she was killing zombies, but a jury of her peers thought she was killing people. Which begs the question: When exactly do people stop being people and start being zombies? Or put another way, what makes a human being a human being?

It's a profound and hugely complicated question, but I intend to answer it. Of course, I won't be doing it alone. An undertaking of this magnitude is too much for one man; it requires at least two. And I, for one, could not imagine a better partner for this endeavor than my erstwhile assistant Lucas Hargenrader. And I am pleased to announce that when he heard about my new undertaking, he enthusiastically volunteered. Or, as Lucas melodramatically described it, he was "tazer-ed in the neck" and when he woke up he was "in a steel cage" and felt like he was reliving his "worst nightmare." Either way, it's great to have him on board! Welcome back, little buddy!

What follows is an oral history of the Zombie Apocalypse, voiced by the people who lived, died, and un-died in it. The sum of their individual experiences will hopefully give us a clear picture of what happened and why it happened. But more important than that, we will be taking a long, hard look at humanity itself, in the hopes of understanding what it really means to be human.

Oh, and Lucas wants you to know that the creatures in the Evil Dead series were technically Deadites, not zombies, the term "bougie" means "aspiring to a higher class than one is" and I used the phrase "beg the question" completely wrong. God, I missed that guy!