SECTION 1
Leadership Lessons: Learn from the Enemy
A lot of people think zombies approach their tasks lazily or without deep personal investment simply because they move slowly. In fact, zombies could not be more invested in their work. If a zombie moves slowly, it is because its muscles and tendons are rotted away, and attempts at quick locomotion would cause the zombie to come apart entirely. The smallest actions often require supreme effort for a zombie. A zombie lurching awkwardly toward its target may be tantamount to a person with a severe disability walking in spite of it. If a zombie is legless, it crawls. If its eyes have been gouged out, it feels its way forward (arms outstretched and flailing). If it’s nothing but a skull and some spinal cord . . . fuck it! It’s still crawling forward like some nightmarish inchworm.
A zombie does not stagger or crawl because it’s some kind of slacker who isn’t invested in what he’s doing. On the contrary, a zombie is so invested that it staggers or crawls despite hardly being able to move. The focus and dedication necessary for this feat are remarkable.
For a zombie, each task it performs (opening a barricaded door, finding a way to circumvent a barbed-wire fence, herding a group of humans into a corner) is really just a subset of a larger task (eating brains). A zombie is a successful leader because it never loses sight of this ultimate goal, and it never compromises (like by eating just part of a brain, or a monkey’s brain if no humans are handy).
Don’t believe what you may have seen in the movies. Effective leaders do not need to be physically present in order to help their soldiers win the day. Some of the best general-ing has been conducted from comfy armchairs next to warm, toasty fireplaces. Whether you’re commanding an army of actual zombies, or just an army of human troops who fight like zombies, you’re going to want to do one thing above all when it comes time for actual combat: stay the fuck out of their way.
Sending an army of zombies into battle is like unleashing a chemical or biological weapon. It’s like setting off dynamite. It’s like pushing the red button and choosing the nuclear option. The best thing to do is to unleash them, duck and cover, and hope that the wind is blowing the right way (because zombies are smelly). Your zombies will know what to do, and they will do it until they or your enemy are completely defeated (and possibly eaten).
Getting out in front of a bunch of zombies and attempting to “lead” them (in your little kepi and dress jacket) is just a stupid idea. You’re not going to inspire them to fight any better, and you’ll probably just make things worse. If you’re commanding an army of actual zombies, then the zombies will likely try to eat you. Maybe you could run away from them (toward the enemy or something), but still, if they somehow catch you, you’re just fucked, and then what was the point? If you’re a warlock or voodoo priest and you’ve got some kind of spell on the zombies so they don’t attack you, then that’s one thing—but you’re still just going to be getting in the way. Your presence won’t suddenly make zombies want to eat brains any more than they already do.
1. Never Outshine the Master—When a “master” warlock or mad scientist creates a zombie, the zombie doesn’t try to become a warlock or mad scientist himself. Nope. He’s off the table (or out of the grave) and on the hunt for brains. Scientists and warlocks already have their thing. As a zombie, you’ve got to go out and find your own.
2. Distrust Friends; Be Prepared to Use Enemies—Gee, would this be another way of saying treat everyone equally, friend or not? Because that sounds an awful lot like what a zombie already does.
3. Conceal Your Intentions—The first time you see a zombie lumbering toward you across some misty, blasted heath, you have no way of knowing it wants to eat you. By the time you’ve learned your lesson, it is, of course, too late. . . .
4. Always Say Less Than Necessary—Zombies tend to say only what is necessary. Necessary to them. Which is your brain. Period.
5. So Much Depends on Reputation—Zombies are “reputed” to be relentless bloodthirsty killers who will hunt you unceasingly without rest or hesitation until you are physically dead and digesting in their stomachs. Kind of makes Donald Trump look like a great big pussy, doesn’t it?
6. Court Attention—Zombies get attention instantly, wherever they go. (No one, anywhere, has ever said: “Oh, that? It’s just a zombie.”) Granted, the attention they get is usually negative, but it’s still attention. That’s the important thing.
7. Get Others to Do the Work While You Take the Credit—Zombies aren’t known to court credit. However, since the work zombies do is more or less interchangeable (eating people) it’s really hard to say which zombie ate which villager, and so forth.
8. Make Other People Come to You—Higher-functioning zombies have often posed as ambulance drivers, small-town sheriffs, and members of the media in order to lure more victims to where zombies already are. Also, zombies tend to naturally hang out in cool places (graveyards, swamps, malls) where people already want to go.
Zombie Tip—Be Respected and Feared: A misconception dating back to medieval times is that a leader must choose either to cultivate an aura of respect or fear, but that both are not possible concurrently. This is patently false, as evinced by zombies. True, most humans are afraid of zombies, and in their presence will run screaming towards the nearest subterranean military base, cold war bunker, or abandoned mine shaft. However, these same humans, when (from a safe distance) observing a zombie who has just crawled across a bed of hot lava, dodged sniper-fire, or survived a catapult attack, are apt to remark: “I know they’re zombies and all, but damn, I gotta respect that.”
9. Win through Actions, Not Arguments—A zombie has never won an argument. It has never had to.
10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky—The notion of infection (as well as the pure unmitigated evil of this sentiment) is, of course, right up a zombie’s alley. Zombies know that not everyone deserves to be turned into a zombie. Some losers deserve to be eaten entirely.
11. Keep People Dependent on You—You can “depend” on zombies to do certain things better than anybody. Say you need all human inhabitants removed from a tropical island before dawn, or you require that every corpse in a graveyard should be unearthed in a single night. Or even that a cannibalistic infection should spread from person to person until governments crumble and anarchy replaces the rule of law. Where are you gonna go for that, the Wolf-Man? Hell, no. There are some things that only zombies can be depended upon to do correctly, and everybody knows it.
12. Disarm Your Victim—Especially if he has a samurai sword or a nailgun. Those things hurt.
13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Not Their Mercy—Again, this despicably wonderful sentiment could only have come from one inspired by zombies. No zombie has ever appealed to someone’s sense of mercy. No zombie has ever shown mercy, for that matter.
14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy—Higher-functioning zombies are quick to impersonate living humans, especially when it will allow them to learn where more delicious humans might be. (They will also “spy” on unsuspecting victims before striking.)
15. Crush Your Enemy Totally—Zombies don’t do anything halfway. No zombie ever ate “part” of someone’s brain and called it a day. If you want your enemy literally decimated (and digested), there’s no better agent for it than a zombie.
16. Use Your Absence to Increase Respect and Honor—Wise words. When zombies split the scene, all anybody ever seems to be able to think about is where they went and when they’ll be back. The absence of zombies is never ground for presuming that no additional zombies are on their way. Also, there’s no higher form of respect than building barricades and nailing windows shut.
17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror by Being Unpredictable—Check. Zombies personify the perfect marriage of terror and unpredictability. Because, hey, when you’re cowering with a shotgun inside a boarded-up farmhouse, you don’t know what the zombies are going to try next. They might crawl up through the s
ewers. They might climb down the chimney, or make a group assault on the front door. The only thing you’re sure of, bub, is that they’re comin’.
18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself—A zombie never built a fort (or anything else) to protect itself. Zombies, you see, are too busy ransacking the forts of others to think about paying architects or contractors. The zombie is the antifort.
19. Know Who You’re Dealing With—Zombies are excellent judges of character. Like whether a human is the type to run away screaming, pick up a garden hoe and put up a fight, or just faint dead away as you lumber closer and closer. Eat enough humans, and you get good at picking out these sorts of details.
20. Do Not Commit to Anything—Zombies are not bound by anything, and they certainly don’t make commitments. Not to say that zombies are unreliable. When a zombie is out to do something (eat you), it’s getting done. It’s just a question of when. Could be today. Could be tomorrow. Zombies are mysterious and have their own agenda.
21. Play a Sucker/Seem Dumber Than You Are—Zombies obviously inspired this rule. As a bunch of slack-jawed, shuffling grunters (who move slow and think slower), zombies appear confused or even dim-witted. There is very little about them to tell an onlooker that they are, in fact, dynamic and powerful killing machines. It’s easy to underestimate a zombie, and those who do so are usually the first ones to get eaten.
Zombie Tip—Get an Early Start: The executive who makes it into the office while it’s still dark out has a chance to answer emails, read industry periodicals, and catch up on work without the constant distraction of coworkers. The zombie who attacks in the pre-dawn hours has a chance to surprise people in bed while they’re still groggy and much less likely to have a sawed-off shotgun at the ready. So, either way, it’s good.
22. Transform Weakness into Power—The author of the “forty-eight laws” notes that humans can take power from situations that are not to their advantage by refusing to act in accordance with the wishes of their opponents. Zombies don’t act the way their opponents “want” them to . . . ever. Even when zombies are facing utter ruin at the hands of humans armed with laser-guided RPGs and machine guns, zombies just keep coming. Sure, the humans would appreciate it if the zombies would come to their “senses” and just surrender. But hey, that’s not how zombies work.
23. Concentrate Your Forces— Yes, do. Especially in shopping malls, abandoned military complexes, and graveyards.
24. Play the Perfect Courtier—You might not think of zombies as going in for a lot of froufrou courtly-manners-type stuff. And you’d be right. But being a perfect courtier doesn’t just mean stylishly supplicating yourself in front of a king or queen. “Courting,” broadly defined, just means to go after something. To pursue what you want. What zombies want is brains, and they go after it as directly, effortlessly, and yes, perfectly, as is practicable. (Sure, if your goal is to be appointed special envoy to Genoa, then by all means don a periwig and lead-based face powder while tittering at the king’s pedestrian attempts at humor even as you flatter the plain, long-toothed queen. That’s your business. But if your goal is to achieve something important, like the chairmanship of a corporation, then just go right after it like a zombie.)
25. Re-create Yourself—A zombie is a master of re-creation. One minute it’s a desiccated corpse resting comfortably in a historic New England graveyard, and moments later it’s a supernaturally (or sometimes, scientifically) reanimated monster on the hunt for human flesh. This, really, is the ultimate “makeover.” And zombies never stop remaking themselves. They lose clothing or body parts, often in hilarious or inconvenient ways, but they always adjust and keep going. They can go from “relatively human-looking” to a “mass of bone and guts sliming its way forward on its own entrails” in the instant it takes a land mine to detonate. This re-creation is just a fact of “life” for a zombie. The zombie accepts it and keeps moving.
26. Keep Your Hands Clean—While some have interpreted this law to mean that it’s wise to avoid involving oneself in seedy or inappropriate activities, zombies take a much more literal interpretation. “Your hands” obviously refers to the hands that a zombie has collected from its victims. And you want to keep them clean because they taste so much better that way.
27. Create a Cultlike Following—As the many zombie cults around the world evince, zombies are masters of starting and maintaining cults. From the wilds of Haiti to the eldritch hills of Arkham, zombies put Scientologists to shame. A zombie is as effective at starting cults as L. Ron Hubbard was, but with the added benefit of not also writing terrible, terrible science fiction.
28. Enter Actions with Boldness—Verily, zombies are bold in thought and in deed. Zombies will attempt to ford raging rivers, make frontal assaults on reinforced military positions, and walk gibbering directly into large crowds. Zombies make bold entrances and exits and attempt bolder things in pursuit of their goals. For every turn-of-the-century hot-air balloonist who thinks he’s safe from the living dead, a zombie is patiently figuring a way to get up there and eat his brain. Bold? Yes. But that’s a zombie for you.
29. Plan All the Way to the End—What with recently geopolitical military actions not turning out so well, this maxim is more important than ever, and no one illustrates it like a zombie. Zombies see things through to the end—which is to say, the end of whomever they’re devouring. If you’re going to invade a country and fuck it up all to hell, then make sure you finish the damn job. Like a zombie.
30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless—The only way a really cool action can be improved upon is to make it seem like you weren’t even trying when you did it. Zombies make everything they do seem effortless. From easily sauntering along the bottom of the sea to shimmying through the tightest drainpipes, zombies do it all with the swagger of champions. And who knows? Maybe it is actually difficult for a zombie to walk miles underwater, or to contort itself to fit into tight spaces. If so, zombies aren’t letting on. Neither should you.
31. Control the Options—Controlling the options of other people is something at which zombies excel. Zombies do this a priori in most cases. You’re not going to negotiate with a zombie, or appeal to its greed, or its mercy, or even its sense of self-preservation. Those things were off the table a long time ago. With zombies, the options are get eaten or get out. The humans know it. The zombies know it. It’s a system that keeps things simple and efficient.
32. Play to People’s Fantasies—Especially the one about friendly zombies that aren’t going to eat them. That way, you can just walk right up.
33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew—Thumbscrews were medieval torture devices that did exactly what it sounds like they did. However, in a larger sense, they represent the one thing that unnerves or undoes someone. Sure, you could discover them if you want to—devote time and energy to rooting out what makes this or that person flinch. Zombies, however, are everyone’s thumbscrew. No one finds them anything less than unnerving, chilling, and terrifying. Which is to say, if you’re looking to find your adversary’s weak spot, look no further than a zombie.
34. Act Like a King to Be Treated as One—Okay, so you don’t see zombies walking around in robes and crowns. (Now and then, yes, a king’s corpse will be reanimated into a zombie, but these are rare cases, and they almost never get buried with the good jewels on.) Yet zombies are known to be the “kings” of the netherworld. They rule over all that they survey, and no one is safe from their wrath. Wherever they go, zombies amble forward with the confident, unhurried gait of the regal. And for centuries, they have tormented peasants (not with taxes and wars as much as by eating them). Many how-to-succeed-in-business guides advise dressing and behaving like a supervisor in order to give your bosses the “feeling” that you would be appropriate for promotion. But nobody promotes you to the top position. That one, you just have to seize. Like a zombie.
35. Master the Art of Timing—Knowing when to strike is key to being powerful and getting ahead, both in business and
in life. Zombies provide copious examples of exactly when and where to strike. You can sneak up and eat the brain of the dedicated cop anytime during his beat, but if it’s on the night he just proposed to his girlfriend and found out he got into law school, then trust me, his brain is going to taste even sweeter.
36. Disdain Things You Cannot Have—Complete sentences. Sexual intercourse. Wind sprints. There are lots of things that, while fine for other people, just don’t work for a zombie. Do you see zombies pining after these things? Or complaining about how they wish they could deliver lengthy soliloquies, be porn stars, and win the hundred-meter dash? No way. Zombies go after what is still accessible to them (your brain), and completely eschew everything else.
37. Create Compelling Spectacles—If methodically stalking and eating a bunch of people—brain first, no less—isn’t compelling, then dude, you really are getting jaded.
38. Think as You Like, but Behave within Group Norms—This spineless bit of advice is perfectly suited to zombies (who sometimes do physically lack spines). When a horde of the walking dead approaches you, one or two of its members might be having some doubts about the whole “eating-your-brains thing,” but if they do, they damn well keep it to themselves. Group norms ensure humans end up as the entrée every time.
39. Stir up Waters to Catch Fish—If by “waters” you mean “humans,” and by “catch fish” you mean “eat their brains,” then, yes, this is very sound advice.
40. Despise the Free Lunch—Did you ever hear of a zombie eating a brain that wasn’t inside somebody’s head? No? That’s what I thought. There’s a reason that zombies aren’t breaking into anatomy labs or turning on corpses that aren’t zombies. A free lunch is at best suspicious. Be like a zombie and hunt your own lunch.
The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and Survival Page 2
