Lucas Cole

I wrote a book about zombies…well, a book containing zombies.  Sort of.   A book that prompted a question from some readers–purists, I suppose, when it comes to science fiction/horror literature: when are zombies not really zombies?  They’re not…if they can run, talk, plan, learn, they (the readers) say.  I’m not sure I agree.

My zombies can talk–under the right circumstances.  They can ambulate–not well, but they get around.  They can use tools (how they use them is rather ghastly and often ends in the demise of their victims), and they can think intelligently. “Intelligently” being above the level of an animal.  But even an animal can learn and has to use a basic cunning to survive.

Not convinced?  “Listen” to this:

“It’s very hard to describe the effects of this drug and others like it. That’s why we use strange words like ‘zombie.’  But in my case the experience became sheer torture.”

That was testimony by a schizophrenic patient describing the effects of a psychiatric medication called Thorazine.  (The quote is from a book, “Toxic Psychiatry” by Dr. Peter Breggin.)

In my younger, ‘cruder and ruder’ days, I (and many other folks in medicine) would describe such a patient, above, as doing the “Thorazine shuffle” as they passed.  These poor patients looked like zombies: slack-jawed, emotionless, shuffling their feet in slow, dragging steps, their arms stiff by their sides.  They might look toward you–turning their entire bodies to do so–when you called to them, and saliva might run down their cheeks if they tried to speak.  Zombies.

To me–the scariest thing was seeing one of them really aware of it’s–his–condition.  He cried.   Even his crying was blunted; he could only manage a few tears and a crease in his forehead to show his sorrow.  Now, that’s a horror show.