Don’t believe COVID-19 is a zombie pandemic?
Please consider the tropes of the zombie genre:
- Zombies represent a force of nature, indifferent to your pain, suffering, and death.
- As the contagion spreads, many people are in denial at first. “This can’t be real. It’s a hoax!”
- Scientists who warned of the looming disaster are not believed.
- Then, “It’s a plot!”
- “It’s not my problem until the infection comes for me.”
- Normal life as we know it is over, yet some try to pretend otherwise.
- Two tribes: “Working together, we can save more people,” versus “I take care of me and mine.”
- Traveling large distances is suddenly a huge challenge.
- Healthcare systems become overwhelmed and economies collapse.
- Though the virus can infect everyone and anyone, the privileged try to cling to their privilege.
- Riots. When the rich do it, it’s called scavenging for survival. When the poor do it, it’s called looting.
- People with power and/or authority abuse others.
- People who were previously undervalued are suddenly prized for their survival skills.
- People without useful expertise experience a sudden plummet in their self-esteem and question their role and identity in these new, dire circumstances.
- Many hoard and hide, determined to wait it out “until this thing blows over.” (But it doesn’t blow over unless you’re watching Shawn of the Dead.)
- Some turn to religion, others to drugs. Coping styles vary widely. Some don’t cope at all and hurt themselves and others.
- Weapons, weapons everywhere.
- Bored and frustrated, some act out in very unhelpful ways.
- Governments respond too little, too late, or not at all while reassuring their frightened citizenry that everything’s going to be okay.
- The dead we know personally are mourned. We become numb to the huge statistics of the butcher’s bill.
- People try to hold on to normalcy, focus on minutiae, and cry in private.
- Some infected deny they’re infected, endangering the rest of their group.
- With no end in sight, depression and anxiety are heightened while we put on a brave face for the benefit of children.
- Some vocal and angry slice of the populace is pissed off at Nature but instead aim their rage at the brilliant virologist who is trying to save them.
- Conspiracy theories, conjecture, and rumors replace the news media.
- Some take change as a chance at a reset, aspiring to change the world for the better.
- Others, looking backward through a rose-colored lens, reject the fresh start, wanting nothing more than to get back to their routines as they were.
- People value their units more, whether that unit is family, friends, or loyal connections.
- Some regret what they didn’t do with their lives. Others find new meaning in rising to meet the challenges of their new circumstances.
Years ago, someone on a Facebook webinar dismissed me as “just one of those zombie writers.”
Three things about that bit of dickishness:
First, neener-neener-poo-poo. I’m not “just” anything, balloon head. Read a little more and a little deeper and toss your assumptions in the trash. This Plague of Days is the slow burn that strikes at the heart of our highest hopes and our greatest failings when confronting a pandemic. AFTER Life is packed with fast-paced action and still digs deep into the choices we make and what it means to be human. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, dumbass.
Second, z-lit can serve as a rich metaphor for Nature, uncaring and brutal as it can be. Infection and contagion are unrelenting existential threats, and they are always with us. Life and its mortal limits are the constant subtexts of the human condition. World pandemics elevate those threats so they are no longer subtextual. Unless you’re reading this post from New Zealand, you’re soaking in a zombie apocalypse scenario right now. (See above.)
Third, zombie novels are not about zombies. It’s the human response to existential threats that makes the drama. How we respond to stress, whether we help or hurt, die with grace or go out in pain and regret…these are all human stories in which thoughtlessness kills, cowards are exposed, and heroes rise.
So, what’s it going to be today?
Will you bravely and carefully venture out into the Badlands to beyond your walls in search of food? Will you shelter in place and act in the spirit of kindness to comfort others to ease our collective burdens? Or are you going to be a selfish superspreader who goes out without a mask to spread disease and add to the suffering, death, and mayhem?
Hint: In fiction and in real life, things often do not end well for the cowards and malicious disease spreaders. Choose wisely and wear a damn mask. After all, if you’re an unthinking, unfeeling creature who lacks empathy and forethought, you’re already a zombie.