A Fistful of Zombies

          So, word is from Kansas that I'm gonna need a bigger Zombie Apocalypse Handbag. Much bigger. Also, apparently, a well-equipped and -staffed biomedical research lab. The Kansas Anti Zombie Militia (this is an actual group, and they truly believe in the Coming Zombie Apocalypse*) said, through its spokesman**, and I quote: "Can a natural person change into this monster that many fear? The possibilities are yes, it can happen. We have seen incidents that are very close to it, and we are thinking it is more possible than people think."

Because if the zombie apocalypse really is coming
(and it's not. Truly.), I am going for the absolute most
to-die-for Zombie Apocalypse Handbag of the
Spring 2013 fashion season.
(You can find this photo at this website.)

          Just for the record, I've also seen "incidents that are very close to" zombification, but since all of them involved insufficiently caffeinated persons who were subsequently restored to humanousity by the administration of Starbucks, I just wrote it off as a lack of coffee. Silly me.

          The Kansas Anti Zombie Militia (direct quote: "We are not crazy.") believes that zombification, with its concurrent zombie apocalypse, will arrive as the result of a virus pandemic. It could happen. I recently read a lovely science fiction short story*** that posits starlings as a kind of hive mind or superintelligence, and also carriers of a virus (the starling apocalypse) that either kills humans, or causes them to mutate in such a way that they become part of the hive mind. That could happen, too.

          But it probably won't. That's why they call it fiction****.

          However, just to be sure, you might want to go ahead and build that backyard biomedical lab. Because you—yes, you!—could be the one who finds the cure for the zombie virus after seven-eighths of the world has been killed and nobody left knows how electricity works so fire is pretty much the cutting edge of technology, never mind that you have no science or medicine background and really your only skills are playing video games which no longer exist and whining.

          But probably not. Hope you at least have a truly fabulous handbag.

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*No, I'm not going to link to their website because lordy do these people not need any additional encouragement.

**Whom I am not going to name because see above. Also because I bet his family is dying of embarrassment.

***"A Murmuration of Starlings" by Joe Pitkin. It will be published in The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2013. Make a note and pick it up when it hits your bookstore; it's a great story.

****Quick review, just in case (because I have a Really Bad Feeling about the current general consensus on the meaning of "fiction"): fiction = NOT REAL.