By and copyright Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Cover by Conaire McMullan
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!
I’m not going to tell you anything about me at all; not my name, country or even where I live. This tale affects each and everyone of us at some point having lost our parents/parent figures like our 47 year old orphan friend you met earlier.
We all think bout the cold touch of death at some point especially as the years gather and the shadow of mortality falls over us. Sometimes we see it if we get sick enough to be hospitalised or through the death of a friend or family member. Youth keeps such scary thoughts at bay for most of us. Eventually they slither up behind us coldly tapping our spines making us shiver enough to claim someone has walked over our graves.
For me that moment was when my parents died; there is no one that doesn’t think about how many years they have left before them when that happens. They wonder will they live longer than their late father or will fate take them younger? If I start training in a gym and change my eating habits to a more healthy scope will that help me live longer? What habits did my Dad have that made him die when he did? Or maybe he didn’t do anything and his time was simply up? Are we born with an internal countdown that slowly measures our time here on Earth until our bodies give up? Or is it how we live that determines how we die? I’ve heard of footballers dropping dead on the football pitch only for a later autopsy to reveal a previously unknown heart condition or for no reason that can be found. People all over the world die at different ages daily including kids, babies and teenagers so there is no given gauge on how to live longer but these deaths are shocking nonetheless. To sit and think of the scale of how many people die every hour and every minute would drive you inane and add to your frenzy so it’s best not to dwell on it.
As I said my Dad died. He died of brain cancer which of course terrifies you straight away. All sorts of thoughts run though your head during the wake and after the funeral has died down. I was drawn to the internet to find out what causes cancer and what I could do to prevent it. I wasn’t a smoker but my poor eating habits married to a meagre exercise programme could be radically different. But like conspiracy theories the internet can be a muddling repository of a confused mish mash of information from all kinds of ‘reliable’ sources. Sadly in this culture most people suck this stuff in. The internet has turned their collective tiny brains to mush and spawned a delusional world of self diagnosing headers.
There are so many pills and supplements out there; exercise programmes and promises from picture perfect specimens of the human race to make you foolishly part with your money in order to live longer. People will spend hours at the gym to stay healthy while others simply go for brisk walks to keep the cardio pumping. I began to explore foods that could contribute to cancer and what diets could benefit us as a species. However I am not going vegan for no one. I like my meat way too much for that path. If I died chewing a succulent steak rather than a celery stick, I’d die happy.
But it’s this battle to cheat death a little bit longer that drives us in those times of grief to dumb ideas and part foolishly with our cash.
My Dad suffered until he took his last breath to the point it was a relief for him to pass on. He had lost his dignity to this disease, diminishing him in ways I could never have fathomed. We should all be allowed to die with some degree of dignity.
Such things spark conversations between us about how we would like to die. Most of us want a death full of meaning making some great sacrifice and going out like a hero. Unfortunately unless you’re a super hero or living the life of a super spy there is no chance of that. The other popular way to go is to die in your sleep and not even know. People make the joke that if they suddenly woke up dead they’d be mortified but that statement does hold a grain of truth to it. Add to that you’d ideally want to die in your bed peacefully surrounded by your loved ones. I say loved ones because you don’t have to be blood to be family in my house.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 