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ZOMBIES ARE OVER

I was having lunch with a landscaper the other day and she told a story about how meter readers are discovering little colonies of frogs and salamanders in the dark and dank places where meters for homes and businesses are often located. This was apparently a sign of something, but I missed the moral of the story because I kept thinking about parting the overgrown grass surrounding a meter and seeing some shaky looking baby frogs hiding out in an Anne Frank-ish way. People exchange stories of these sorts of recent developments and deliver them with an intensity that warns "heads up, we're probably all gonna die soon. There are frogs living in the spare tire in the trunk of my car." I have been adding up, and sharing clues involving what I can only assume is an inevitable zombie apocalypse. I recently went to the library to reserve some books that my local branch didn't carry, and one of them was

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The Walking Dead Compendium: Volume 1

. I was both shocked and annoyed to find that after completing my reservation, I was informed that I was 15th in line to receive that book. That very night, while making my rounds on Facebook, I found the following exchange on a friend's profile: Friend: Oh man, I've been watching

The Walking Dead

and it rules. Commenter: Zombies are no longer the "hot" monster of choice. Everyone likes werewolves now. Friend: Why does everyone have to shit on everything?? Commenter #2: Zombies are over!!!! I take these two things, the library book and the Facebook convo, and consider them as clues. In the case of the book, it's clear that the people in my town want a shared "guide" or "manual" for how to become better zombies, and they don't want to have to suffer through some lengthy propaganda in textbook format, so they voted on a graphic novel as their tool, like, for fun. Regarding what I saw take place on Facebook, I can only assume that my friend drew too much attention to zombies, and awoke the quick tempers of a few flesh eaters who were, unbeknownst to him, lying in wait in his Internet world. I went to check his profile this morning, just before I started writing this, and found that it had been deleted. SILENCED. I no longer need to just assume that zombies are on the horizon in terms of shitty things to worry about, because trumping all of the evidence I've gathered so far, I saw one in the lobby of my apartment yesterday. As I was walking down the interior stairs of my apartment building, I saw a middle-aged lady, dressed in all white scrubs, wandering around near my mailboxes with a confused look on her face and a humongous kitchen knife sticking blade up out of her pants pocket. When she noticed me notice her, she went out front and hid behind a bush. I told my landlord about this and he was like, "Oh, that's ###, she cleans out the ashtrays and the junk mail bucket. She's shy." Yeah.

Right

. KELLY MCCLURE