In our run-ins with the living dead, something I always find upsetting about them is that, when all is said and done, they’re people. It’s what separates them from the other movie monsters. Zombies don’t become zombies under the full moon. They don’t turn into dust when you drive a stake through their hearts. Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney and Christopher Lee never played zombies, because walking corpses are not fancy or nuanced. They’re just human beings, only the script got downgraded and the stunt wires are showing. Our first zombie horde was a group of college dance majors, and the second was a cruise ship full of tourists. Both were dead, and ugly, and ravenous, but they were people. How did George Romero put it in Dawn of the Dead? “They’re us, that’s all.” Which means this is, or was a long time ago, a person. It was us. Which means things have taken a terrible turn in this place. The cave zombie on the wall is a skeleton wrapped in gray chipped skin, its fingers long and knobby, its dusty eye sockets black and empty.
