By and copyright of Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Concept art by Stephen Mooney
The zombie rollercoaster continues as the undead continue to give us their view of being a rotting corpse under the control of Mother Nature.
This time round we meet Comic Book zombie and the zombie who thinks the ending of Toy Story 3 is sacrilege. What happens when a zombie’s faith in God is rocked to its very foundation and why is the spirit of Elvis Presley still going strong in the vast
roaming herds?
A zombie tells why the covid pandemic was much preferable to being undead and why having a club foot makes you feel normal as a zombie. Plus more zombie characters than you can shake a stick at.
Available on Amazon now!
The Zombie Who Left the Building
For all the royalty on this planet there was really only ever one real king worth honouring.
No member of any majestic household has ever lit up the world like he did nor touched peoples’ lives long after his death. He was flawed like the rest of us but when you have that much indefinable raw power to reach into peoples’ souls from every level of society, there will always be a price that comes with it. Even kings bow before the will of gods.
As I said he touched millions across the globe of all colours and creeds. There are numerous movies and books about him and thousands of impersonators.
I am one of those people. I am Elvis Tuhoe Presley to honour my heritage as a Maori from Brisbane Australia. It is a tribute to the impact the King had on me and celebration of my culture to the world. The legend that is Elvis Aaron Presley from Tupelo Mississippi lives on in me.
I am the zombie who left the building.
As a kid growing up I quickly became painfully aware of racism. Others saw us as different and had made no attempt to hide their dislike of us. It didn’t understand with me as a child why my friends at school had different skin colours. We had so much fun together learning and playing without a care in the world. Yet when the parents arrived at the end of the school day, everything changed. Something furtive cloaked in the adults’ customary smiles and small talk descended at the school gates in the afternoon. There was a shiver in the atmosphere. I could see something flicker behind my father’s eyes every time he came to pick me and my sister up. It was a shadow that was never there when we were at home.
Even in their weak attempts to maintain a pleasant façade towards my father or whichever member of my family picked me up from school, it danced like a smoky wraith around them. It wasn’t just Maori I noticed but Aboriginal too. My young brain simply failed to process it. It didn’t affect us kids the way it did the grown ups so maybe it was a grown up thing we would have when we were adults. I just knew the white folks seemed to look at us very differently. While I know it wasn’t every white person but that was the impression I got as a child. My friends were my friends full stop regardless of what colour they were.
We all played soldiers, football, swopped collector cards, rounders, cricket, super heroes and every other game anyone has ever played while at school. Our adventures in the woods and creeks behind the school were all of us together, all for one and one for all. We were the kids that fought the smugglers and stopped the alien invasions that came form the creepy woods.
Our lives were a fictional cross between Stranger Things and the Goonies as we set up our secret hides in the woods. It was our own clubhouse built from wood and scrap metal we found in the copses; our sanctuary that looking back was how the world should have been. We were just kids from different backgrounds seeing nothing but the friends before them and the imaginary world we created around us. We were the team that would stand against the monsters. As time passed what we didn’t understand was just how the world would creep in and send us all off in different directions. We were friends forever like those guys out of It but how little we knew.
I always thought racism was just aimed at black , Indian or Chinese people. It was something that dominated the news but little did I know that the foul bile of racism was a poison apple that spared no one.
As I got older and saw the divide through older and slightly wiser eyes, my obvious questions of why we were being treated differently brought me no concrete answers. After all, this country had always been our home long before the white men came.. Those that openly practiced racism were descended from those that had entered our land long ago brazenly and without permission. Prison ships had brought them from other countries to our shores centuries before. Mrs Trent told us so in our history classes. Others had emigrated here over time too seeking a better life but had arrived with this attitude of entitlement to another’s home. We had welcomed them yet they had spread like a virus. Now our communities were diluted from what we once had and looked down upon.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 