Zombies: A Hunter's Guide Page 4
DRAUGR
In most ancient and medieval societies, discussions of the undead were considered taboo and in some cases heresy. For that reason more than any other, few tales of ancient zombies have survived to the present day in any complete form. However, the Vikings are a notable exception, and many of their stories contain encounters with various forms of undead. While the stories of the zombie-like draugr must be read with a skeptical eye, the similarities between these creatures and revenants seem too close to be coincidental.
Sometimes called aptrgangr, meaning “after-goer,” the draugr are literally walking corpses. While they tend to show few signs of decay, their skin is normally described as either “black as death” or “corpse-pale.” Draugr are also often described as giants or able to change their size at will. Some animate necrologists have argued that this could be the result of corpse bloating, but it is perhaps more likely a simple literary device to explain the strength and toughness of these creatures. Certainly there is no other corporeal undead that has ever shown such an ability.
In the sagas, the motivations of draugr are rarely explained, as they are often presented merely as a foil for the hero. That said, most have a tendency to haunt a specific area or continuously attack one family or village. Considering the commonality of blood feuds in medieval Norse society, it is easy to see these “hauntings” as the continuation of a feud from beyond the grave, an idea that fits well with the drive of most revenants.
There is one subvariety of draugr, the haugbui, or “mound-dweller,” that displays a very clear drive. These creatures always stay in, or very near to, their burial mound in order to guard their burial treasure. While it is nowhere stated in the sagas, it is likely that these haugbui were notably greedy or miserly individuals in life, persons who valued the accumulation of wealth above all other things. It is a sad but not uncommon formula still occasionally seen in modern revenants.
Despite their literary flourishes, the Norse were a practical people, and if they didn’t always explain the origins or motivations of draugr, they were at least clear on how to dispose of them. Since normal weapons were mostly ineffective against draugr, the heroes of the sagas generally had to wrestle them into submission; a fine idea for your ancient Viking heroes, a particularly bad idea for any modern hunter. Once the draugr was subdued, the Vikings would cut the head off it, which seems to have caused temporary paralysis much as it does with modern revenants. The two pieces of the draugr would then be burned down to ashes and these ashes were then buried or tossed into the sea.
Complete incineration – it worked for the Vikings; it still works today.
Previous page: Revenant
In the animate necrology community, the terms “reanimate” and “reawaken” have distinct meanings. A corpse reanimates when it becomes a zombie through magical, chemical, or viral means. Revenants, on the other hand, are said to reawaken due to their greater intelligence and awareness.
Most revenants reawaken within a year of their death, but this is by no means a certainty. The record for the longest period of “initial death dormancy” is held by the World War II Japanese soldier, Tadamichi Giichi, who died on Okinawa in 1945 and returned to battle the Allies again in 1992.
Cremation also serves as the best form of prevention; ashes do not reanimate. Otherwise, preventing a revenant remains incredibly difficult. Despite vast amounts of research, predicting who will return as a revenant remains a fool’s game. Even if you did know or suspect a specific person will return, if you aren’t willing to cremate the body, then the next best thing is to wrap it in the strongest chains available, a rather tough sell to the next of kin.
In the final analysis, there is little that can be done to prevent revenants. Even if they are not fully understood, they seem to be a natural part of this world. We can only deal with each one individually as and when they claw their way up out of the ground.
9 Many leading animate necrologists still argue that there is a metaphysical element to the process. However, discussions of Satan or other embodiments of evil are beyond this investigation.
10 Despite many rumors and reports to the contrary, revenants are the only zombie type whose severed limbs often continue to move independently of the rest of the corpse for more than a few seconds.
11 Found in Chapter 32 of L. Murdick’s Memoirs. The unpublished manuscript is held in the special collections department of Appalachian University.
Atomic Zombies
The world changed on July 16, 1945, the day that Robert J. Oppenheimer and his team test-fired the “Gadget” on the White Plains Proving Ground in New Mexico. The detonation of that first nuclear bomb heralded in an “Atomic Age” for mankind, but it also caused a subtle change in the chemical makeup of the planet. Through means that are still not clearly understood, the nuclear explosions of 1945 caused an “excitement” in the molecules of the atmosphere. This in turn excited the water vapor in the air, which fell to earth, infecting the rivers and seas and eventually the ground itself. The effect was not a cataclysm as some had predicted, but a slight change to the physical and chemical laws of nature. It changed the boiling point and freezing point of water by one-hundredth of a degree. It made certain types of metal alloys impossible to cast. And perhaps most importantly, it brought about the birth of a new variety of zombie.
The term “atomic zombie” is slightly misleading. The explosion of the first atom bomb did not create any zombies, nor did the bombs dropped on Japan. Instead, they affected the world in such a way that future chemical processes would produce zombies. In fact, “chemical zombie” would probably be a more accurate term. While radiation remains the most common stimulus for an atomic zombie outbreak, it is not necessary. Nor are most atomic zombies radioactive (see notes below on “irradiated zombies”). For example, the Amazon River basin has seen several atomic zombie outbreaks due to certain combinations of nonradioactive industrial sludge being dumped into the river. Still, perhaps the “Atomic Age” deserves its own zombie, and by now the term is in common usage and would be difficult to change.
There are many who argue that 1945 was the most important year in the war against the undead, as it marked a vital turning point. With the defeat of Nazi Germany, the forces of necromancy were scattered far and wide, and many of its premier practitioners were killed. Yet out of the ashes of World arose, a nightmare not born of human evil, but of the seemingly random misapplication of science. The zombie threat no longer hid in the shadows, but instead, it waited peacefully in graveyards and morgues. Its potential now hangs in the air all around us, waiting for a chemical spark to bring the dead back to their feet.
IRRADIATED ZOMBIES
While various forms of radiation can play a hand in the creation of an atomic zombie, most of these undead are themselves inert. However, because zombies are immune to all but the most powerful forms of radiation, it is possible for them to become irradiated. Irradiated zombies, or “rad zombies” for short, are walking dead that have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and now carry that radiation inside their lifeless shell. Depending on the level of irradiation, these zombies can burn or blister flesh with their touch or even with their breath. Even low-level rad zombies are incredibly dangerous, as prolonged exposure in their vicinity can lead to radiation sickness, cancer, and death.
The first reports of rad zombies came from Russia during the Gulag Uprisings. Sensing crisis, the Soviet military attempted to employ targeted nuclear weapons to stop the threat. Although these weapons effectively fried zombies within a limited “lethal zone,” the fallout irradiated most of the rest. Since the military didn’t realize this at the time, huge numbers of soldiers were exposed and died needless, painful deaths due to radiation poisoning. Since then, most countries have removed nuclear weapons from their anti-zombie arsenal. These days, rad zombies are most commonly found in the vicinity of nuclear power plants or nuclear waste dumps.
Becoming irradiated appears to have little or no effect on the
zombie. It becomes neither stronger nor weaker. Theoretically, any type of zombie is capable of becoming irradiated, though to date there have been no reports of revenant or necromantic rad zombies.
Due to the ongoing possibility of rad zombies, most government-sponsored zombie-hunter teams now carry Geiger counters as standard equipment.
Looking back, it is now apparent that atomic zombie outbreaks began as early as 1946. These proved to be small, isolated incidents. Most were written off as the work of rogue necromancers and quickly forgotten. Then, in the 1950s, rumors began to leak through the Iron Curtain of massive uprisings in the eastern gulags of the Soviet Union. The underground press was filled with sensationalist tales of prisoners going wild, tearing their guards apart with their teeth and hands, and even turning to cannibalism. The Soviet Union called it Western propaganda; the Free World hoped it marked the beginnings of a revolution. Only a few knew the truth. In 1958, the Soviet military surrounded and closed off the city of Magadan as part of a special “military maneuver.” Only in the last year or two have a few accounts of the Magadan disaster made it to the Western world.
Meanwhile in America, a series of small outbreaks in California and Illinois alerted the scientific community to the fact that some new threat had arisen. With only sketchy reports and a few samples, a small group of universities worked together to found a new branch of science, Animate Necrology. While animate necrology would later encompass the study of necromancy and other varieties of the undead, it formed for the initial purpose of studying this new type of zombification. Many theories flew around in those early days. Some said it was a virus; others claimed that chemicals or radiation were eating away at the brains of the living, bringing on the appearance of death. The debate continued among this small community of scientists in America and abroad until 1968.
In 1968, an American satellite in low orbit hit a small piece of space dust and exploded over rural Pennsylvania. Over the next few days, the local press reported a spate of mass murders. The situation quickly spun out of control and the state government called in the National Guard to stabilize the situation. Officially the government has never commented on what happened in Pennsylvania in 1968, but many witnesses survived and have come forward to tell their stories.
It began in the hospitals and mortuaries. The recently dead stood up and attacked the living, stopping only to feast on those they had killed. As people died, they in turn rose up and joined the ranks of the zombies. Thousands died in less than a week, before the soldiers and local militia formed a cordon around the infected zone and, slowly tightening the circle, killed every zombie they could find.
Pennsylvania ’68 is now a rallying cry for those in the animate necrology community. It is both proof of the dangers of atomic zombies and a test case for the effective overwhelming response needed to contain and eliminate a threat. Since 1968, the world has averaged nearly a dozen atomic zombie outbreaks a year. Most of these are small, and in the developed world they are quickly handled by specialist containment teams. However, the Third World remains extremely vulnerable to outbreaks, and it is often only with the assistance of the United Nations that an atomic zombie outbreak can be contained.
CREATION
The atomic blasts of 1945 left the world vulnerable to a particular form of contamination. The contamination can begin in either the air or water, but it will eventually spread from one to the other and into the ground as well. Unfortunately, the process of contamination is still only partially understood. It is a complex chemical reaction, often involving forms of extraterrestrial radiation. However, cases of contamination usually involve so many different chemical combination possibilities, that a true “source” has yet to be discovered. That, of course, assumes there is one source, and that contamination isn’t achievable in multiple ways. In most cases, contamination can be traced back to the legal or illegal dumping of industrial waste combined with a particular cosmic event, although there is evidence that both have caused contamination on their own as well.
The area of contamination is highly variable, depending upon the spread of chemical waste and/or the power of radiation. To date, no charted contamination zone has covered more than 100 square miles. Thankfully, contamination zones have a limited duration. Most last only a couple of days, though a few have been known to carry on for weeks. Only the Chernobyl event has lasted more than a year, and it currently stands as the largest continuous zombie-contamination zone on record. Again, the reason behind the duration of a contamination zone is unknown. Scientists and animate necrologists rarely get to visit a “hot zone,” and the Ukrainian authorities are still refusing to let international investigators near Chernobyl.
Since the process of contamination remains obscure, it has proved impossible to predict where a hot zone might spring up. That said, once an area has become contaminated, the spread of zombification follows a predictable pattern. Unlike necromantics, atomic zombies only form from the recently dead. As a general rule, around thirty days seems the cutoff point for a corpse to be reanimated by chemical means. By then, much of the internal tissue of the body and many organs have turned to mush and escaping gases have ruptured the skin. The first to be affected in a hot zone will be the most recently dead. Hospitals usually form ground zero for an atomic zombie outbreak. One moment everything is business as usual; in the next a man who just died on the operating table gets to his feet and attacks the surgeon. Within a few minutes of the contamination, the corpses in the hospital morgue also reanimate. In less than an hour, funeral parlors and crematoriums are also affected. By the end of the day, corpses will be battering their way out of mausoleums or digging themselves up from their graves.
There is a grim irony to outbreaks commonly starting in hospitals. Not only are they places where death and corpses are common, but they are also generally full of the ill and injured who can offer no resistance to an attacking zombie. Thus a single zombie can kill numerous people in a short space of time. These victims, now part of the recent dead, will also reanimate and join the rampage. In such a way, the number of zombies caused by contamination can easily multiply in the first few hours.
Previous pages: The Peoria Outbreak, 1958
One of the first major atomic zombie outbreaks in the United States occurred just outside the city of Peoria, Illinois in the spring of 1958. The contamination began when a nearby paper mill illegally dumped several vats of industrial waste in a creek near a family-owned graveyard. Soon after, three recently deceased members of the Jeffries clan clawed their way up from their graves and wandered into the city. Over the next thirty-six hours, the hordes swelled to over 100 zombies, including most of the members of the local high school football team. Local law-enforcement and emergency services eventually contained the outbreak before military help arrived. Over 150 people died during those three days of terror, not including the Jeffries family who were dead to begin with.
IDENTIFICATION AND THREAT
Because atomic zombies were the first zombie variety commonly accepted by the modern media, they have shaped the public perception of the undead threat. If you ask most individuals on the street to describe a zombie (and they don’t run away), they will most likely describe an atomic zombie. Put simply, an atomic zombie looks like an upright corpse that happens to be wandering around. They are generally deathly pale, have vacant, slack-jawed expressions, and walk with a limping, shambling gait. They will often extend their arms, groping the air in front of them, trying to grasp any living thing that comes near. Even from a distance, anyone who has any knowledge of zombies should be able to recognize them by their odd stance and movement.
Atomic zombies have only one motivating factor: the need to feed.12 While zombies have no metabolism as such, the chemical process that animates their corpses also slowly burns at the meat and tissue that holds the zombie together. Consuming more flesh gives the chemical process an alternate fuel source that will keep the zombie going. While no exact studies have been done, it is estimated
that just a small handful of flesh or a small animal like a bird will keep a zombie going for at least a day or two.
In their quest for flesh, zombies wander aimlessly until something catches their attention. Atomic zombie eyesight is incredibly poor and is based on movement. They will react to anything that moves faster than their own shuffling walk. For the most part, these zombies rely on their hearing, which remains acute even in death. They generally notice any unusual sound louder than a slight breeze and will move in the direction of the noise. The louder the sound, the quicker they react (although “quick” is a very relative term here). Atomic zombies also possess a sense of smell, though this sense has only one setting. Once they are within a few feet of a living creature, zombies can smell it. It remains unclear exactly what scent zombies smell, though sweat remains the strongest contender.13
The smell of living prey triggers this type of zombie’s famous “moan reflex.” Those unlucky enough to have heard the moan of a zombie wish only to forget the experience. Many who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder relating to zombies have reported that it is the moan, more than anything else, that haunts their waking dreams. Zombies create this sound by pushing the excess gas generated by the chemical reaction up through their throats. The result is a dry, warbling groan that can be heard from several rooms away.