Once Upon a Zombie

I'm just like anyone else. I like a good zombie story when I hear it, but lately every Tom, Dick, and Harry is reeling off tales of naked dead bodies consorting with all kinds of filthy monsters. I prefer the classic zombie story as presented in "The Night of the Living Dead," when a family of normal humans with x-ray vision and a macaw trained to bite off the arms and legs of anything moving face off with a contingent of soft-spoken, drooling zombies who recently clawed their way out of their respective graves and marched down a four-lane super highway looking for a Walmart. Along the way, however, they chanced upon this humble family--Mom, Dad, and the bionic babes, Ghoulish and Goulash--and challenged them to a power contest.Things got complicated and the two sides negotiated a power package that peaked with a raft challenge down the snake-infested Amazon. But Zombies don't deal well with water events as their exteriors tend to slough off skin layers when in the presence of venom-spewing creatures. So the power package was dumbed down to the following: Whoever could smite the most zombies would win an all-expenses-paid trip to the third circle of Hades where they would enjoy all the comforts of hell's newest ten-plex cinema and cyber arcade. They would watch the abridged version of "Dante's Inferno," and sit back in the lushly cushioned scab-colored loungers and munch on sweet and salty earthworms and fried brains.Popcorn and Bloody Marys are extra, but so what. If you're already dead or packing a death wish, these expenses are wildly incidental. Besides, just make like a deaf-mute and use your zombie credit card, which, as you recall, was issued at the first crack of the coffin. To all those non-believers of zombies, how can they not be real if Mastercard recognizes them? Still, it's true that certain scientists and uppity suburbanites may doubt the very existence of zombies, much less fear a Zombie apocalypse, but then most of these ignoramuses also haven't spent time in county morgues or, for that matter, the Russian Tundra. If they had, they would accept the reality that things never really die--their atoms just morph into different forms of life. Today a human, tomorrow a zombie. But there's a secret to making an ID of a zombie that even Rod Serling/Twilight Zone types don't know about. Just check their ligature equipment for strangulation purposes. If it's not a designer scarf, you're not dealing with an authentic zombie. But it might just be your third cousin Essie from Yonkers.

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