My family and I return to our annual argument around this time of year: what are the best monsters of all time. Today, in the spirit of the season, I present my case for Zombies. Lets see if you agree with me.
Counting down, I’ll start with reason #10
When your mother/partner/child turns on you like a rabid dog and starts to eat you, that is scary. When the people you are emotionally and physically closest to, who you have shared your life with, protected, loved, and helped raise, think nothing of ripping open your abdomen and eating your entrails, that is scary. When threats, pleading and/or squealing for your life is futile against your loved ones, who are hell-bent on EATING you, that is SCARY.
#9. Cannibalism is DISGUSTING and morbidly fascinating at the same time. Did you read Alive by Piers Paul Read or any of the numerous books about the Donner party? I rest my case.
#8. Zombies are UGLY. Maybe not at first, but give them a couple days in the hot sun and well, dead flesh will rot and it is not pretty when it does. Add on festering wounds and untreated injuries, and it’s hard to find residual human cuteness. Maybe those laugh crinkles around the eyes? That shiny white smile? Nope.
#7. Zombies travel in PACKS. You can not fool yourself into thinking, oh, there is only one or two, I can take them down. ‘Cause, there is always more around the corner, and more, and more.
#6. Zombies MOAN, but even worse, when they eat you they make those CHEWING and SWALLOWING noises while you are still alive enough to hear it. Now admit it, that is some major stomach rolling grossness you hadn’t thought of before.
#5. Zombies have a FIRM GRIP. They are just hard to shake off. Once one gets hold of you, he is not letting go. Separate his hand from his body with a machete and that hand, with those vise-like fingers, is still wrapped around your ankle trying to take you down.
#4. Speaking of down, Zombies DONT STAY DOWN. Shoot em, club em, hack away at em and they just keep getting up with that single-minded purpose of chowing on your flesh. Yeah, I know you have read and seen the movies, and you know if you shoot one in the head, then he is down for the count, but here is a thought: he was dead before you shot him in the head, and now, afterward, he is supposed to be REALLY dead? Just saying.
#3. Zombies DONT SLEEP. Sorry, but this is a major advantage. You have to sleep some time. You do not need to sleep well, but you have this living cell thing going on which requires at least some sleep on a semi-regular basis. It bears repeating, Zombies don’t need to sleep and you do.
#2. Zombieism (spelling?) is CATCHING. Transmittable, contagious, infectious, however you want to say it, but it is easy to become a zombie: one little bite.
And the #1 reason Zombies make the best monsters is .
SMART PEOPLE SURVIVE. You betcha! Ultimately, its a waiting game in the war between humans and zombies. Time, the environment, and a million bacteria are on our side in a few months, a year at most, those zombies will do what every corpse on earth eventually does: DECOMPOSE. All you have to do is stay alive until then. Good luck to you all.
Next time we can address which Zombies are scarier, your traditional slow-moving, foot-dragging, dazed zombies or the ones who can sprint.
Photo © Chrisharvey
@JazzyBlue it’s never too late! And you’re right, those cave dwellers were awfully scary. But I still think zombies have them beat. Zombies follow you out of the cave. They can be anywhere. Zombies show up at the mall
Hope it’s not too late to chime in here. I think any monster that eats you is a scary good monster. My personal favorite are those monsters in the caves in the movie Descent. I jumped out of my seat in the theater.
@KarlieMac you have some good points, but vampires have been unconditionally and irrevocably glittered for me. Just don;t look at them the same way I did when I read Salem’s Lot for the first time.
@APParker, Slither is one of my favorite campy horror movies. It definitely has zombie elements. Didn’t a teenager in that movie kill one of those leaches with a hot curling iron? As always, I like it when the smart ones survive.
I got zombies and vampires both beat. That alien in the movie SLITHER tops them all. It starts out as a spiny, needle that shoots out at you from a meteorite, digs into your chest and turns you into a body-absorbing ameoba. You grow hose appendages that you stick into another person’s abdomen so you can impreganate them with thousands of your offspring. Your progeny swell their host to the size of a swimming pool, bust out as salami-sized leaches that enter people’s brain through the mouth and turn anyone infected into a zombie. A worthy monster if ever there was one. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439815/
Do zombies eat vampires?
I’m going to have to disagree. Vampires are the best monsters. The old fashioned ones, not the new-fangled sparkling kind. Smart people can beat traditional vampires too. Find the coffin and bring a stake. Wear a cross. Go in the day. As long as you remember the rules, you’re fine.