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So one day, sootten rave by his friends, as is now their custo, or a wolf, which shtly putrid s and finds a hand It pulls it up from the soil with its jaws, but then beco come the deceased man’s friends onceup through the soil, as if clawing for the sky Their friend, though still clearly dead, atterave and walk! And thus the undead enter our culturalhand erave, can still be found on endless movie posters and horror novels Froy of the zombie and the vampire and countless other incarnations across time and cultures

But why does this haunt us so profoundly? After all, a shaer than a quick, strong, able-bodied , such a man would be easier to outrun, outwit, and eventually put down Why wouldover such an easily vanquished opponent?

For the anse must look to the ant

As I alluded to, even before civilization began to ericulture must have see God Why, to refuse the nuts, berries and game that were naturally placed before you by providence and to instead plant and grow your own? It would be the ancient equivalent of sorow a child in a vat This bitter divide ay with the story of Adaarden in favor of food that only grows reluctantly froround by "the sweat of thy face" But this kind of audacious assault on nature--an act not observed in any other of the world’s creatures--required man to accept (or believe, if you prefer) that he was unique Blessed Divine The planet is there for the taking and he must believe that he is destined to subdue it Thusabove and beyond the physical A being capable of choice, where all of the other beasts and fishes function according only to the simple arithmetic of crude instinct A bear’s actions can be boiled down to hunger, or fear But a man is capable of decision, because he has this indefinable but all-powerful spark This is what makes him man

But then man observes the ant

Clearly no individual ant possesses this same spark No ant ever created a work of art, or felt love, or loyalty No ant ever thought through a decision--ants mindlessly follow pheromone trails, to the point that if the leader forms a circle, the colony will follow it around and around, endlessly, until all have died from exhaustion

Yet, they create vast colonies, with separate charow and harvest fungi for food The tunnels are designed with ventilation to the surface to carefully regulate temperature and air quality A human would need years of formal study to learn all of the various principles and skills required to build a structure as complex as those created by the "mindless" ants

So what, then, ood is this explosive wonder we call iue we call our "mind" or "personality"? Of what value is the divine "spark" that we believe grants us doreatest achievements can apparently be duplicated without it

That is e fear the zombie The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark It represents the nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the s and stained glass, this is what you really are Sha meat Our true fear of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them Our fear is that we are already zombies

8 Days, 12 Hours Until the Massacre at Ffirth Asylum

John noted that somebody could actually chart in miles per hour the speed at which the panic and bullshit rippled outward froas about an hour north of the town, and at that point everything still seemed just a couple of ticks off from norht cigarettes and two Red Bulls and even chatted with the girl at the counter about as going on She talked his that had been slowly rotating in their war of strawberry Twizzlers and the biggest Diet Mountain Dew they had Amy paid and John promised to pay her back Then he had a uy rote his paycheck every teeks was even still alive Or if the bank where he had his checking account was still standing If not, then what? He had nothing Just the clothes on his back

Then, when he and Amy stopped at another convenience store just twenty-fiveto use the bathroom for different reasons, the place was a as pu traffic as people waited to turn in All of the bottled water, uy behind the counter was arguing with someone about a per-custo in the store at thatup, getting the kids fro to Mo Martial laas going to be declared for the whole tri-county area Or the whole state Or the whole country

"Terrorist attack" was the key word in all the conversations A biological weapon, released by a cop ent crazy and became a jihadist The stuff h your brain, ious Countless infected overnment sealed it off We could all be infected for all we knew Soht the governot out of there as fast as they could, not even stopping to buy a courtesy ite the bathrooot suspended during the apocalypse

John was trying to stay cal worked up and panic has a way ofback and forth, creating a feedback loop She kept asking questions that he didn’t have answers to Wouldn’t so quarantine? Wouldn’t they know to look for the Bronco? He didn’t know