Guide to Zombies, Flesh-eaters, and the Undead

MARAUDER

OK, the apocalypse is here and it’s brought some exciting new creatures to be friends with. Since this is the golden age of hurting people to take their stuff marauders would be a good bet. You might think with all the mongoloid types you see around, it’d be hard to hook up with a really good raiding crew, but actu-ally, the high turnover rate ensures there’s almost always a free grunt-helmet you can pry a skull out of.

OLD ZOMBIE

Up till the M.A.L.’s scientists fig-ured out the Gabbler Effect, it was really a mindfuck to see all these golden oldies tear-assing around, ripping the flesh off people while their younger counterparts could barely lumber. We’d always assumed undying meant staying undead at whatever age you were prior to “the change,” but evidently zombie physi-ology operates on the same principle as Mork from Ork’s.

COCKROACHES

It’s long been a chestnut that no matter how bad the shit goes down at the end of days, cockroaches would somehow survive the successive round of fallout and chemical dust-ings that obliterated the world as we previously knew it. What nobody realized is that it would give them heat vision.

CATCAM

If there’s one unquestionably good thing that we learned from the zom-bie apocalypse, it’s to quit being so gay about the boundaries between technology and living organisms. Pussyfooting around all the Cronen-bergian implications isn’t going to unscorch your beloved cat’s retinas, so might as well sew the sockets shut, run a couple AV cables in the back, and slap a vidlens on her nog-gin. Good as new. No, wait. Better.

HAZMAT

More like AZZMAT if you get what I’m saying. These dickheads act all high and mighty just because their parents weaseled their way into the A.R.K. facility before all the Spyder charges started going off and they’ve got a full set of unbotched chromosomes (for now).

ESCAPED CHILD SLAVE

If you thought what kids wore before the zombie apocalypse was obnoxious, you are going to be enraged by the shit they call fashion po-zo-poc. You can’t even chain them in the engine room of your dune barge or breed them down to lizards the size of an apple without one of them turning your manacles and coffee-cup lid into designer accessories.

MUTANT HOBO-VET

To everybody in the past who insisted that genetics have noth-ing to do with who you are and what you do as an adult: Fuck you. Try selling the whole “product of your environment” argument to the people lining the North Colombian Superramp whose panhandling genes have basi-cally been irradiated into super-powers. They will literally beg you senseless (say it out loud).

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTY KARACAS

SHAMAN TRAP

To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember the last shaman hut I saw that wasn’t occupied by some third-quadrant hustler and a hired mute. It’s become such a given by this point that the only people who really fall for it are tourists and drunken Hazmats on leave.