by Thomas M Malafarina

There seems to be an ongoing debate among fans of the Zombie genre in both books and film as to whether zombies should be portrayed as slow and awkwardly moving as in George Romero movies and the Walking Dead TV show or if they should be wild and fast moving as in World War Z. The determining factor is up to the creator of the work. Likewise, it’s up to the individual zombie fan which they prefer.

I can agree that there is something terrifying about a flesh eating former human with blazing eyes coming at you like a speed freak, bent on devouring you. And the worst part of such an attack is you still have to shoot them in the head. Any police officer will tell you when it comes to the use of lethal force they always go for the largest body mass. Head shots are simply not that easy, especially when the creature coming at you at incredible speed accompanied by erratic movements. So needless to say, I’m not a major fan.

Me, I like my zombies slow, stupid and decomposing. If there ever were such things as zombies, I feel slow would have to be the only option. You might not agree, which is fine with me. But let’s think about it for a minute. Even before that, we have to accept that some external force is capable of reanimating a corpse. You have a dead human body with no blood circulating through it’s veins; no oxygen being carried to it’s brain or muscles. Still this creature is able to stagger around and identity living humans as its main course.

The key word there in my opinion is stagger. I can’t possibly imagine that any reanimated corpse would be capable of the sort of  speed and agility I’ve seen in these fast zombie movies. Most of the time in these films and books, the zombies’ speed exceeds that of living humans. But then again it’s all fiction so it can be whatever its creator chooses it to be. And although I agree it can be terrifying, I still find more horror in the creeping, lurching, rotting variety of zombie.

For me there’s something so much more horrifying about a zombie shuffling ever close to you, its arms reaching to grab you. I like the idea of long bony fingers slowly stretching out to dig into your skin and tear your ropy entrails out by the yard. And when the creature finally overpowers you, what could be worse then seeing the creature’s gaping mouth filled with a chipped and decaying collection of chomping tombstone teeth getting ever closer to your face? And let’s not forget a rotting face with maggots crawling just under the skin and dropping off, falling into your own screaming mouth.

Yes my friends, there’s something special about a nice disgusting crawling zombie that gives me a warm feeling all over.

Check out Thomas M Malafarina’s Dead Kill series with the latest book 3: The Ridge of War.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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