Several afternoons a week, I sit at our local coffee shop, sipping a chai, writing, knitting, and watching customers come and go. Though I’m not a stalker or psycho (okay, shut up), I can’t help but eavesdrop on other customers’ conversations if they are close enough and loud enough, because hey, they’re close enough and loud enough. And hey, I can’t help myself (okay, shut up). I’m a writer who is curious about people and how and why they think the way they think. When two guys at the table on one side of me start talking about politics and how we damn-well need to get our nation back to where it was (wherever that is, whenever that was), or the women at the table on the other side of me begin complaining about their jobs, or the gray-haired Swedish guy in the corner with the Bible leans over to tell the guy next to him how you can’t find a “godly” woman anymore, I tune in.
It’s fascinating. People are fascinating. I’m drawn in, wanting to learn about and better understand those with whom I agree and those with whom I disagree. People of all ages, all cultures, faiths or non-faiths, political leanings, educational backgrounds, economic statuses, recreational and entertainment preferences. Why they think what they think. Why they do what they do.
zombies, pixabay
Which brings us to zombies.
Zombies don’t think. They are reanimated muscles and occasional synapses (or at least the synapses that require food…warm, living food). They shamble, they bump into one another, they grab, they snarl, they chow down. I don’t know if they defecate or fart; perhaps they do. In some cases they can run. They don’t think. They don’t remember. They just zombie on.
Which got me to thinking.
What if a zombie, a killed and reanimated being, maintained enough brain matter to think, or at least have occasional, sputtering thoughts and memories of who he was or who he had been? What would that thought process be like? What jarring, disjointed thoughts would rattle around in his brain? What kind of emotions would rise up from this struggle? Fear? Anger? Hatred? Frustration?
Hope, perhaps?
And so, in my novel Desper Hollow, not only do I have the mindless, murderous, marauding meanderers, but I also have Armistead. He’s not your ordinary zombie, which is clear from the start. But who he actually is remains a tormenting mystery to himself as well as his captors. He fights the urge to kill humans and fights to connect the pieces of his memory together. In creating Armistead, I imagined what I might learn from him if I were near enough to watch him, to tune in and listen in to his mutterings and became conscious of his struggles. I wouldn’t offer him a chai (I doubt that would be as satisfying as brains) but would pay close and careful attention. Because he would fascinate me. I would be drawn in to learn more about him.
And so I did. And then I took what I’d learned about him and shared it in the novel, making the story as much his as Jenkie’s, Kathy’s, and Jack’s.
Thanks for asking. And now I need another chai. Yeah, I know, I just had one. Shut up.
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