Undead Delight

Every Halloween my friends and I put together a horror-based roleplaying game just to have a bit of fun. Generally, people die, and much fun is had. A few years back I ran a particular game about a zombie apocalypse. It began with everyone creating each other as characters, and then everyone got to play themselves. I, being the GM, was the first person to be killed and their first introduction to zombies. Appropriately, I think Mary killed me, both hating zombies and in particular being my nemesis. The group had to escape Brian and Mary’s house, find transportation, and then navigate the dangerous route to escape. I had no long-term plans, just put them in a world of zombies and see what happened. They headed for the airport. In a fight near a fueling station at the airport, Dan was killed and came back as a zombie. Things got hectic, the fuel ignited, and I don’t remember how many people survived.

I don’t know what it is about zombies, but I love the concept of them. It might be my fascination with post-apocalyptic stories or survival stories or dealing with a situation that seems so hopelessly beyond your ability to survive and somehow coming out alive. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to get enough of them. I wanted to talk about three treatments of zombies that I consider among the best out there.

First is the movie 28 Days Later. For me, this was the trigger to my really enjoying zombies. Before this they were just lame horror monsters, but this was the first movie I saw where I was really freaked out by the zombies in it. It was pretty much exactly what I look for now in a good zombie adaptation. Focus on a small group of survivors and the terror that they particularly go through. The zombies form a backdrop for the story and help propel the characters forward and through different scenes, but the focus is really on the characters. I still can’t listen to the soundtrack (In the House – In a Heartbeat) without my heart racing. It spawned a few follow ups, but none of them came close to the original.

Second is the comic Walking Dead which started being published in 2003 by Image comics, a year after 28 Days Later came out. I can see the similarities and style. While Walking Dead has more traditional zombies that shamble slowly, again, the focus is entirely on the characters and how they deal with an impossible survival situation. Often times, humans are far more dangerous to each other than the zombies themselves are. People die all the time and sometimes in very unexpected ways, and through it all, the characters keep struggling to survive.

Finally is the book World War Z by Max Brooks. I admit I never read the book myself, I only heard the abridged version on the books on tape. But even with that treatment, it was fantastic. It’s a book that takes the form of a documentary. The author is interviewing people from all over the world who survived the zombie apocalypse that ended just years ago. Each person recounts their own horror stories and how the world responded to such a bizarre situation. Humanity is stripped away and many people cringe still at the things they had to do to just survive. Some of the parts are not for the faint of heart.

If you are a fan of character-driven stories and zombies, all three of these are musts. Enjoy!