by Roger Ma
External Factors
Several other vulnerability factors can help influence your attack strategy prior to engaging an undead adversary.
AGE: Estimating the age of the human before it reanimated into a living corpse can help you determine the difficulty of delivering a finishing blow. The skin of the elderly tends to be thinner and their bones more fragile than an individual who was reanimated during the prime of his life. Likewise, children and teenage zombies tend to have skulls that are more delicate because of a lack of completed osteopathic development.
APPAREL: Just as your own clothing may serve as a defensive barrier to a ghoul’s attack, the garments an individual was wearing just before reanimation may unwittingly serve it well in its undead existence. This serviceability is most evident in infected professional soldiers who have reanimated wearing full combat gear, or civilians who, in looking to protect their brains, donned bicycle or skateboarding headgear before they expired. These types of attackers will be difficult to quickly dispatch, so plan your combat strategy accordingly.
DECOMPOSITION: Zombies that have been reanimated for an extended length of time will be easier to eliminate than those that have not been exposed to nature’s elements for longer durations. If disintegration has reached the point where areas of the scalp have dissolved, exposing the bare skull underneath, these uncovered areas become particularly fragile targets and are key indicators of where you should pinpoint your strikes.
HAIR LENGTH/QUANTITY: Does the zombie have a full head of hair, or a short, cropped buzz cut, or is it completely bald? As minor a consideration as this may seem, studies have shown that it is ten times more difficult to fracture a skull covered in scalp than an exposed skull.5 Add to that a full head of long, matted hair, and it may take formidable strength to deliver a single destructive blow.
COMBAT REPORT: JOSEPH GARTNER
Dentist, 7th Combat Sciences Group McLean, Virginia
A secretary seats me in a conference room on the floor of the Biological Analysis Division, where I’m to meet Joseph Gartner, Team Leader of the 7th Combat Sciences Group. She apologizes and tells me that, as is typical of his scheduling, Dr. Gartner is running late. When he does arrive fifteen minutes later carrying a thick manila folder, he apologizes profusely and explains that he was gathering the file for our discussion. “Not sure how geeky you wanted to get with this stuff,” Gartner says. He is an unassuming man, balding, and wears thick, dark-rimmed glasses. His demeanor is gentle, with an underlying hint of sadness in his voice.
JG: To tell the truth, I ignored the e-mail when I first received it. This was when the Net was still operating on a sporadic basis, and I assumed it was either a prank from one of my associates or some new variation of the Botswanan scam. Even though the age-modified draft had been in effect for more than six months, I thought my specialization would keep me 4-F, and, well, you can see that I’m hardly built for the front-line effort.
Gartner pats his paunchy belly.
It was only after receiving the second certified notice that said, “Failure to comply constitutes a violation of the Federal Emergency Health Powers Act and will result in immediate suspension of medical licenses and/or possible imprisonment,” that I figured I should show up. Still, I couldn’t believe that I would be of any use to them, given my subspecialty.
ZCM: And what was your subspecialty?
JG: Pedodontics—pediatric dentistry. One week I was knee-deep in baby teeth and anxious parents, the next I’m sitting in front of the director of the CDC and the Health and Human Services Secretary discussing this new division of the Combat Sciences Group. I’d heard of the CSG from what I read in the papers, mostly about the work done to analyze the virus’s pathology and its neurological pathways, but the more they discussed the concept of the new division, the more it made sense.
He unfolds the manila envelope and removes several x-rays.
JG: Working with the teeth of children, you’re privy to their chronological dental development—how the molars are forming, the developmental relationship of the maxilla and mandible and any associated pathologies. One of the issues the team realized with the virus was that when a human is first infected, the brain isn’t the only human tissue that undergoes an evolution. The fundamental cellular composition of an undead specimen is altered after infection, including the teeth. See here, this is a panoramic x-ray of a normal noncontaminated adult. Now take a look at this one, six hours after infection. Here . . .
Gartner pulls out an enlarged scan of the infected specimen’s upper teeth. Using the tip of a pencil, he points to a series of minute fibers protruding from the root of each tooth.
JG: Notice these tiny, cilialike projections? Remarkable. What do they look like to you?
ZCM: They almost look like . . . tiny hooks?
JG: Precisely. Or anchors, if you will. Even before the victim has fully turned, this transformation is already taking place. What this x-ray doesn’t show you are the transformations of the supporting structures—the periodontal ligament, the gingival fibers, the alveolar bone. The entire infrastructure responsible for the retention and reinforcement of our teeth undergoes a rapid evolution. We realized that whatever mutations this virus causes, it isn’t as rudimentary as bringing a dead body back to life. It alters the infected’s anatomy to withstand cellular destruction in arctic temperatures, resist decomposition at sea, and reinforce its fundamental weapon: its teeth. The only way this transformation could be worse is if the infection caused the victims to become polyphyodontal—growing new sets of teeth to replace the lost ones, like a shark. Thankfully, we haven’t seen any variants of that sort, yet. It is for this reason that our division was formed: to determine if we could approach the conflict from a different angle, by fighting the enemy’s primary means of attack and infection.
ZCM: What ideas were you expected to develop?
JG: What weren’t we expected to develop? If I could tell you some of the esoteric, exotic, and straight-up crazy ideas we kicked around, I tell you, feeding them candy wasn’t too far off the mark. Our marching orders were to attempt to do the opposite of what I was educated to do and have done all my life. Instead of protecting and nurturing enamel and dentin, we were now attempting to reverse-engineer and potentially accelerate their decay.
ZCM: The government wanted to rot the zombies’ teeth?
JG: Don’t laugh, it isn’t as crazy as it sounds. At the point when our group was developed, large-scale outbreaks were reported on all seven continents; analyses were making their way into the President’s Daily Brief showing that for every one zombie that was destroyed, four were created. The brass thought that if we really got our heads underwater on eliminating existing specimens outright, we should try to see if there was any way to minimize the risk of new infections. This was just one of many tactics.
It was all about analysis in the beginning: what happens two hours, six hours, twelve hours after infection. After we determined that post-reanimation, cellular evolution seems to cease, we went on the offensive. We worked closely with the Chemical Weapons Division, on what was called the Methuselah Project. We labored for months, trying to develop an airborne accelerant that could be dropped on a hot zone and defang an entire colony of specimens within thirty days. We never really got it to work right—either the gas would be ineffective, or the dispersal agent would fail to dissipate quickly enough and drift into neighboring safe regions. Any isolated human survivors in the area would also be affected. That’s when the brass drew the line. “Fighting a living corpse is bad enough, but subjecting innocent civilians to tooth loss is too much for anyone to bear,” is what the defense secretary said. The only compound we created that seemed to work was a topical agent that caused extremely rapid decay within forty-eight hours. The Infected Subjects Research Division used it for a while on their cases. I hate to think of the research assistant whose job it was to apply the stuff. This is before we developed the “Tommy.”
ZCM: The Tommy?
JG: Short for TME, or Tactical Mandible Extractor. Once the higher-ups put the thumbscrews to us about our “unacceptable failure rate” on chemical initiatives, our department head decided to change direction and had the team work closer with the manufacturing division. In hindsight, it was the right move, particularly because of the extensive use of tools like the Tommy. It’s probably easier if I just show you.
We walk down the corridor through a set of lab doors that opens up to a hallway with a thick glass partition, separating us from a large, open examination room. Contained within the room are five zombies, positioned several feet apart. A steel cable runs from the wall and connects to a carabiner latched to a leather harness around the torso of each specimen.
JG: Put these on.
He hands me a packet containing a disposable lab coat, a pair of blue nitrile gloves, and plastic goggles. We don the safety wear and enter the room. The subjects immediately begin to stir. Gartner picks up a long, fiberglass staff with what looks like a miniature bear trap on one end and pruning shears on the other.
JG: The trickiest part is getting the timing right.
Gartner steps closer to one of the subjects. The zombie extends its hands and moans. Using the pruning end of the device, he snaps off all four fingers of the creature’s left hand. The digits scatter to the ground like bloated caterpillars. With another snap, the fingers on the right hand fall to the floor. As the ghoul continues to moan, Gartner jams the bear trap end of the device into its mouth. He pulls a lever on the handle, which releases a spike through the bottom of the subject’s jaw. With a single yank, Gartner pulls the ghoul’s jawbone clean off the skull. It skitters across the floor. Gartner casually picks up the mandible with the trap end of the device and tosses it into a red plastic-lined bin marked Biohazard, followed by its detached fingers. I look back at the creature. The remainder of what was once its tongue now lolls out of its mouth, quivering back and forth.
JG: No muss, no fuss.
ZCM: Who uses this tool?
JG: Research groups mostly—any division of the CDC that conducts regular experimentation on undead subjects. I also heard that Special Forces uses it when they conduct live-fire room-clearing or mob-control exercises. There was a plan at one point to start dropping them into compromised security zones for use by the defending population. I guess the logic was, if we couldn’t completely eliminate the threat, could we at least make them less dangerous? I couldn’t imagine how that would work—people walking around town, going about their normal, everyday lives, with jawless, fingerless specimens meandering about. That idea got zeroed pretty quickly, but some of the Tommys did make it into civilian hands through some black-market channels.
He sets the contraption down quietly and sighs.
JG: My wife put me through dental school. Worked as an executive secretary for this private equity bastard for years while I finished my residency. If she were alive to see this, I don’t know what she’d think. I was supposed to use my knowledge to help people, not to do this kind of work. They tell me I’ll be cycled out soon, given the safety declaration in the States and all, and that they’ll call me back if additional projects “require my expertise.” At this point, I’m not sure what I’ll be going back to. I guess there’s my practice. But I have to wonder, what are the people in my town going to benefit from more: my skills working with children, or my experience with the living dead?
III.
CONDITIONING AND PREPARATION
Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.
—PLATO
An often miscalculated aspect of preparing for a zombie assault is the rigorous toll it takes on both the body and mind. Many individuals plan for every other factor in an undead out-break—weapons, supplies, fortifications, and transport—while ignoring the most fundamental element: the body’s condition. Research has shown that during a zombie infestation, the first wave of casualties is composed largely of those who are just physically unable to weather the onslaught. Regardless of the strength of your fortification or the resilience of your weapon, if you are not mentally and physically hardened to contend with a walking corpse, your chances of survival will be poor. Do not, however, interpret conditioning to mean that you must be in elite-caliber physical shape. As we will explore shortly, individuals with a wide variety of physical characteristics and body types can successfully defend against an undead attack.
PHYSICAL SELF-ASSESSMENT
Just as there is no single weapon appropriate for all combat situations, there is no one ideal zombie-neutralizing physique. Every individual has unique attributes that translate into strengths or liabilities when confronting the living dead. In order to properly tailor your conditioning regimen, you must first objectively assess your own physical build and understand both the benefits and limitations that it may present in undead combat. In the 1940s, psychologist William Sheldon developed three classes of human physique, called somatotypes , based on the corporeal qualities of the human body. To assist you in your self-assessment, we have developed three combatant categories based on Sheldon’s somatotypes—the ectocombatant, the mesocombatant, and the endocombatant.
The Ectocombatant
TRAITS: THIN, LIGHT MUSCULATURE STRENGTHS: ENDURANCE, SPEED, STEALTH LIABILITIES: LACK OF STRENGTH AND POWER; EXTREMELY LOW BODY FAT
With a wiry frame and lean physique, the ectocombatant’s greatest assets are his or her speed and endurance—two of the most important physical benefits during an undead siege. Surviving during a zombie outbreak has often been likened to a marathon race, so what better physique to have than that of a long-distance runner? With an abundance of energy and stamina, the ectocombatant is able to constantly stay a step ahead of his or her hungry predators. Because of their narrow build, ectos with superior dexterity have been known to effectively navigate through a room packed with zombies and still avoid being mauled.
In offensive maneuvers, ectocombatants need to be more cautious. Their lighter frames often do not pack a large quantity of muscle, making it more difficult to execute combat techniques that require a greater amount of strength or momentum. Long-distance techniques generally do not work as well for the ectocombatant, as these weapons are often heavier and require some degree of centrifugal force. Engaging multiple attackers is also discouraged, as the ectocombatant may not be able to execute a long series of consecutive, neutralizing blows repeatedly without becoming exhausted. Interestingly, combat statistics reveal that ectos are often more successful in close-quarters engagements against the undead, perhaps because of their speed and their thinner appendages, which may be more difficult for a ghoul to grasp.
The ectocombatant also needs to be almost neurotically vigilant with his or her food supply during large-scale zombie infestations. The lack of adipose tissue on the body means that without a consistent supply of energy, individuals with this physical type will rapidly begin cannibalizing muscle tissue for fuel, leaving the ecto dizzy, light-headed, and in a weaker and more vulnerable state. It is difficult enough facing attackers that seek to devour your flesh; there’s no need to prompt one’s own body to do so as well.
The Mesocombatant
TRAITS: ATHLETIC, SOLID MUSCULATURE STRENGTHS: BALANCED LEVELS OF STRENGTH AND SPEED LIABILITIES: LOWER BODY FAT LEVELS
The mesocombatant has the benefit of being the most adaptable body type to all forms of zombie combat. This physique has the strength and weight to execute techniques that require greater amounts of power, as well as the stamina to endure extended evasive maneuvers. It is no wonder that individuals involved in various types of combat activities—boxers, soldiers, and martial artists—often exhibit this type of body structure.
Given the balanced nature of the mesocombatant, individuals with this body type can choose from a variety of offensive techniques to suit their personal style. Mesos typically perform equally well at all combat ranges—long, medium, and close c
ombat. However, this equal physical distribution also means that mesos may suffer from being a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” when it comes to battling the undead. They may never be as fast as the lithe ectocombatant, nor will they have the weight to execute long-range techniques that the endocombatant can perform flawlessly.
Like ectocombatants, mesos need to be keenly aware of their food supply during an outbreak, given their lower body fat levels. This may be an even greater concern for the mesocombatant, as the larger amount of muscle on the frame means that the body requires a greater caloric intake simply to maintain weight. Any loss of muscle due to lack of nourishment means a less effective combatant.
The Endocombatant
TRAITS: HEAVIER BUILD, ROUND PHYSIQUE STRENGTHS: ENERGY STORAGE, POWER, LEVERAGE LIABILITIES: LACK OF SPEED AND ENDURANCE
With a larger build and ample energy stores, the endocombatant is well suited to survive a supply shortage during an undead plague. Athletes in the endocombatant class include sumo wrestlers, football linemen, and some professional wrestlers.
