# Zombie-lovers, a moment of your time...



## Caged Maiden (Jan 22, 2014)

I hope research is the right area, though I know my "research" is into a fictitious thing.

If anyone is particularly knowledgeable about zombies, zombie apocalypse, what things make a zombie, etc... would you please PM me?

My reasons for asking these questions, are that last year, I wrote a short chapter to a novel, one I never intended writing.  However, I am kinda excited about the concept, so ... maybe it's worth a go.

BUT... I began with an underground lab in the middle of rural Missouri...  it could be either government or private-funded.  In fact, I think I made it private for now... but my question is, "What happens there?"  I have some pretty sick experiments going on right now, and it occurred to me, I need something weird, to balance out the tone of the novel.

So... this morning, inspiration hit... what if I did ZOMBIES? Let me explain...

First off, the chapter is in my portfolio.  It's titled, "Untitled Dream Chapter".  So you can read it there if you wish.  The elements I have in play, are Harvey, my MC, who has no memory.  He works in a lab with other people who have no memories, too.  They remember their youths, and sort of like Memento, they don't make new memories.  My explanation for this is bacteria, something on the line of syphilis and Bovine spongiform encephalopothy (BSE, Mad cow disease) which both eat holes in your brain.  Sure, both of those kill you, but for instance, when you administer penicillin, whatever damage syphilis has caused remains, but the disease no longer does further damage.  I'm playing on those concepts to create a similar effect, whereby my characters can not form new memories for most of the story.  Not sure whether I'm going to make it a sort of monthly dose of drugs given my the office... so once they break free, their symptoms slowly fade, or whether I prefer the damage being permanent like syphilis...

Anyhoo... back to zombies.  I needed something for the lab to be doing.  Why would they do this to their employees?  Why the super secrecy, beyond security clearance and all that?  This morning, I started thinking of zombies.  What if, underground in this lab, they already have a disease created, which turns people into zombies... for the purposes of maybe being used as marines or something?  They can withstand roadside bombs and a ton of gunfire damage?   But right now, the office won't use it until they find a way to counteract it?  So the current phase of the project is to use certain people who seem to be immune to the zombie bacteria, to nail down a sort of antidote to "contain" the disease if it were to get out.

Okay... so how stupid does it sound?  I admit, I'm no great fan of zombie movies (mostly because they're thinly disguised gore-fests with little to no reasonable plot), but I need to keep in mind that people who read books about zombies might expect a certain thing... I'm not sure whether I'm way off in the parking lot, or at least batting in the park.

The story would follow Harvey and Rita as they discover their own identities (Rita remembering a woman who is her sister... and then they discover she's a Missing Person).  They run from the office, learn what the lab is really doing, and try to expose its danger before anything can go wrong.  I have no plans as of yet to actually follow these events with a sort of zombie apocalypse (since the idea only hit me this morning and I only have a chapter and no outline), but I wanted to pitch the idea first and see whether lovers of zombie entertainment even enjoy this concept.

Any thoughts would be really helpful.


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## Nagash (Jan 22, 2014)

Hey CM !

Well, while i'm not a frequent reader of zombie-based novels, nor a huge fan of the genre, I thought your plot made sense and has everything it needs to actually be compelling for any actual die-hard fanatic of brain-dead wanderers, out there. You might be interested to know that the whole concept of "creating" zombies has actually a strong place in religious culture, more accurately in haitian-voodoo. Many believed powerful witch-doctors were able to raise the dead (nothing ground-breaking here) through spiritual magic and interference with the "other" world. While nobody actually every saw corpses emerging from their grave, a few rumors and testimonies accounted that some weird-looking fellows wandered around, clueless...

Recent investigations made the hypothesis that so-called witch-doctors did in fact manipulate concoctions of herbs, liquids, hallucinatory toxins and psychosis inducing drugs, which could turn any sane individual, into a brain-dead puppet. Witch-doctors commonly fed their target with a mixture of specific toxin, sending said target into a deathlike state for a while. The man/woman would be buried, and wake up moment later, in a psychotic state and, according to popular belief, completely unwilling, subjugated by his master, the witch-doctor...

Anyways ! Love the zombie-crafting part !


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