Knowledge, as they used to say on Schoolhouse Rock, is power. It can also be protection for you and your loved ones. In the interest of keeping my readers (however few of you there are) informed and safe, I have decided to include a new feature on Words of the Weasel Sort: the Zombie Apocalypse Watch. This feature will be designed to keep you in the know about zombie outbreaks: when and where they occur, how many were affected, if they were successfully contained by local authorities, and what (if anything) you should do about it.
I have been paying attention to these small occurrences over the last few months. Thankfully, not too many outbreaks have been reported and all have been quashed pretty easily and swiftly. But a recent outbreak over the weekend - in Chicago, no less! - made me sit up and take notice.
Zombies overran Millennium Park... and WENT ICE-SKATING!
No attacks on the living were reported but this gives us all much greater cause for concern. I will explain.
Given humankind's previous experience with zombies, we were made to understand that they were merely capable of walking and consuming human flesh. The fact that this crop of zombies displayed fine motor skills, thus defying the studies of Dr. Millard Rausch, must be seen in one and only one way: as a conscious show of force! This is a coordinated mass-demonstration of higher intelligence, which means that the day we have all feared has arrived: zombies have begun evolving!
This prospect has kept me awake at night many a time and the fact that it now stares me in the face, with photographic evidence provided by the Chicago Sun-Times, chills me to my very core. In much the same way that life evolves to adapt to changing surroundings, so too have the zombies, advancing in such a way as to blur the line between the living and the dead, thus making it easier to bait and eat the living under the ruse that traces of the living people they once were remain. It is safe to assume that zombies are becoming skilled hunters. I don't quite know how to react, nor do I know what to tell you. It is very likely that everything we currently know about the zombie has, in one day, become outdated.
Perhaps I am being a bit rash. Maybe this is an isolated incident and this isn't the shape of things to come. Maybe a specimen or two were taken in Chicago and kept re-animated in order to study this anomaly further. One can only hope. In the meantime, we must all act as if this is the new order of things and now, more than ever, we must be strong and vigilant in the face of our enemy. Remember the words of Dr. Rausch (whom I have quoted on this site in the past and cannot do so enough): "We must not be lulled by the concept that they are our family members or our friends. They are not. They will not respond to such emotions." If and when you see a member of the undead operating with seemingly higher brain function, you have but one course of action: destroy its brain. Or if you are a trained professional with the means of catching and detaining a zombie for the purposes of scientific research, by all means do so (unfortunately, many outbreaks begin when average people who think they have the skills and tools necessary to safely take a zombie into custody find out that they do not, so please leave it to the pros).
It is with a due sense of fear that I look out of my office window on Wollman Rink in Central Park today. I have no binoculars with which I can more closely examine things and determine if the sight I behold is but happy people partaking in a weather-appropriate (though not so much on this unseasonably warm mid-December afternoon) activity, or a similar demonstration of the advanced undead in my beloved city. All I can report from this bird's-eye view is that no one is running from the rink in terror. This means that either there is no threat...
or that there's no one left to run.
