by Adrienne Lecter

If you take all the special ops guys and gals from the popular novels in the genre, they must be ten times as many SEALs or Rangers than exist in real life. Maybe even a hundred times that number. And why not? Who wouldn’t want any of them on your zombie apocalypse team? It’s awesome to read the end of the world through the eyes of someone who has the skills and training to roar right in the face of the zombie horde.

There’s just one problem: things get a lot more interesting when the main character in a story has no fucking clue how to survive!

Of course, there are a lot of real-life combat veterans out there, and people who know how to handle themselves in a bad situation, but most of us likely never had to deal with a disaster of the scale we all so love to read about. We’re smart cookies and equipped with the number one advantage over the characters in every B movie—we will make intelligent choices that let us survive longer than the next five minutes and a predictable jump scare. But we’re hampered by a million of small details that put us at a disadvantage compared to a Delta operator—like being stuck in a minivan on the highway while getting the kids from band practice, or realizing we won’t get to our bunker with all the survival gear because the zombie apocalypse hit us in the middle of Walmart.

And that’s when you realize that neglecting cardio for the past couple of years will bite you in the ass—maybe even literally. You’ll have to be stealthy and resourceful to stay ahead of the undead crowds, and make unconventional choices work for you. Heck, you might even have to learn to be paranoid and not trust anyone you meet before the end of the day! But when you do learn how to fight, when smart thinking and being quick on your feet make a difference, the reward is a sense of accomplishment like few other things can convey.

As much as we love railing at the dumb idiot on screen who gets savaged on minute two of the movie, we enjoy rooting for the underdog who, against all odds, beats them and gets to live another day.

Check out Affliction or begin the Green Fields series at the beginning now.

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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