First Walk, Then Run, Then Stand: "Standers" & the Shambling Ambulation of Undead Behavior in Popular Zombie Culture

Reprinted with permission of Please Stand By Magazine

“The dead are standing on their graves”.

The overnight appearance of human corpses that just stand on their graves as presented in the upcoming novel “Standers” by Dale Brumfield (http://www.standersnovel.com/, Iron Cauldron Books) harkens back to stories that originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual system of Vodou (anglicized voodoo) that described people, dead or otherwise, as being controlled by an outside or interior force.

The concept of the walking dead first gained popularity in modern era fiction with the publication of H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Herbert West: Reanimator”, in which a medical doctor injects a serum into the dead that reanimates them. The 1976 book “Illuminatus!” describes Nazi SS officers who come back from the dead to slaughter a quarter million attendees at a Bavarian rock festival. Since 2000 a zombie craze took hold, and too many books to count have been published following the same basic descriptions of the undead portrayed as lumbering, murderous cannibalistic shells of their former selves, roaming the countryside and committing heinous acts. “Standers” breaks that mold.

There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, which comes from the Carribean term for ghost. Another possible origin is the word nzambi which in Kongo means ‘spirit of a dead person’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary claims the word zombie originates from the Louisiana and Haitian Creole word zonbi, which represented a person who died and was then brought to life without speech or free will.

The followers of Vodou believe that a dead person can be revived by a sorcerer, but after being revived, the undead remain under the control of the sorcerer because they have no will of their own. Another theory claims that a sorcerer uses a ‘zombie powder’ as a powerful neurotoxin that temporarily paralyzes the nervous system and creates a state of hibernation.

Very different from the vodou and the folklore zombies previously described, modern zombies follow a specific standard, similar as seen the plethora of books on the subject and in the movies. These ghoulish marauders are portrayed as mindless monsters who do not feel pain and who have an insatiable appetite for human flesh. They are characterized by being undead, cannibalistic (a misnomer, since they eat the living and not other zombies) and slow-moving, with a sole aim to either kill, eat or infect people. These reanimated undead show signs of physical decomposition such as rotting flesh, discoloured eyes and open wounds.

The Burning House from "Standers"

While these descriptions certainly apply to the zombie personification as portrayed in the cinema since George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and those movies and TV shows made since, the zombies portrayed in films prior to that groundbreaking film were portrayed more like those as described in early folklore. In the 1920 German expressionist classic “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, the victim, known as “Cesar” was referred to as a somnambulist but behaved according to the standards of zombie behavior as described by the Afro-Caribbean legends: a mindless hulk catering to the bidding of his master, the bug-eyed Dr. Caligari. The later films of the 1930s and 1940s, including “White Zombie” and the classic “I Walk with a Zombie” portrayed them similarly with more sinister instincts infused within by a more dastardly mentor. A smattering of forgettable films in the 1950s and early 60’s pretty much buried the genre until George Romero brought them up out of the ground and off the slabs to become murderous mindless hulks in 1968.

These modern zombies as portrayed in fiction and movies are often related to an apocalypse or Rapture scenario, where societal segments have broken down or entire civilizations have collapsed due to a cataclysmic man-made, natural or even a supernatural event. Background stories of zombie movies (and even video games) are purposefully vague in explaining how the zombies appeared in the first place. While some can blame radiation, air-borne viruses or disease mutation, none can explain how sickly, rotting corpses somehow break out of their coffins and get up out of the ground.

“Standers”, on the other hand, does not shy away from how and why the dead came up out of the ground – it is for very specific reasons that are quite terrifying.

In “Standers”, as is typical with almost all zombie or undead-themed stories and movies, overly-aggressive tactics are used to contain the (un)dead. Hard line government quarantining is utilized to stop potential infection, and in theory is hoped will result in eventual suppression. These results assume that the timescale of the outbreak is short. If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is a certain doomsday scenario: a potential zombie outbreak that results in the collapse of civilization in general.

“Standers” takes the zombie/undead genre a lurching step in a wholly different direction – it is zombie culture for grownups. Using the tagline “The dead are standing on their graves”, standers do not stagger, walk, run, moan for brains or even attack the living; with minor exceptions they just stand there. Society wakes up one morning to find all the dead are standing on top of their burial place, then everything collapses because people do not understand why the dead are standing, and cannot anticipate what the standers will do next.

A 60-second video trailer for the book on YouTube and Vimeo, directed by the author’s son Hunter Brumfield, shoots a country road through the windshield with the noise of someone twisting a radio dial, trying to find something other than unsettling news reports and bizarre government announcements reminding us in a chipper voice as the car turns into a field that it is illegal to “touch or otherwise engage a standing corpse”. The headlights eventually stop on 9 or 10 standers in an old family cemetery as the voice implores that we “have a nice day”.

Read “Standers” if you don’t mind sleeping with your light on. For a month.

Standers

Written by Dale Brumfield

Edited and published by Beth Brown at Iron Cauldron Books .

Standers Video Trailer #1 and the upcoming trailer #2 directed by Hunter Brumfield; starring Doug Dobey, with John Ferguson, Zack Ferguson, Grace Huddleston, Hollis Brumfield, Jake Brumfield, Melody Milliker, Joey “Pepperoni” Purvis, Tina Eschleman, Olivia Harrison as the standers, with Don Harrison as the Beaver. Kudos to Irene Ziegler Aston for the voiceover and Susan Brumfield for driving.

“Standers” will be available both as a paperback and as an ebook nationwide March 31, 2012.

Doswell Man Claims TSA Went out of its Way to Keep Him Out of the Body Scanner at RIC

Armentrout: the only plane passenger allowed
to carry a pipe bomb in his anus

In light of recent news reports of an attractive woman at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport forced to pass three times through the body scanner to the delight of the male officers present, butt-ugly Blanton Road resident Harry Armentrout claims the TSA officers at Richmond International Airport “went out of their way” to keep him away from the full body scanners after numerous alarms sounded after he passed through the first stage metal detector.

“When I went through the first detector every bell and whistle on it went off,” claims the shirtless and repulsive Armentrout, sporting his “Git-R-Dun” forehead tattoo in the den of his squalid mobile home. “Don’t know what set it off, but shoot, all the security officers were females, and I figured what the hell – give me the wand, the scanner and the full-body patdown – the works! Hell, I woulda stripped buck naked had they asked!”

But apparently the TSA officers had second thoughts about touching, scanning or even approaching the squat, hairy man who is as attractive as Jurassic-era road kill and reeked of greasy flatus and spoiled milk. “They tried to say I was ok and just wave me through but I wouldn’t budge,” said the lascivious Armentrout, licking his cankered lips, “I even winked and told ‘em I maybe had a pipe bomb up my butt and I’d a bent over and showed it to ‘em but they said that didn’t matter, and would I just please get out of the security line and board my plane. Hell, I was gonna do a little dance in that scanner!”

A TSA spokesman at RIC shuddered at the mention of Armentrout’s situation and tried to deflect the questions surrounding his being let on a plane after his admission of carrying an explosive device onboard. “Oh, look at the time,” he finally answered, “I told my wife I would rotate the tires on the Bonneville on the way home. Bye.”

Armentrout said that eventually he was forced at gunpoint to be escorted around through the exit, then let back over so he could catch his flight to Orlando. “I had a accident at work and they offered me a cruise instead of worker’s comp – can you believe it?” he said. “Wanna see my tan lines?”

Chop Suey Bookstore Owner Named Ultimate Ellwood Thompson Shopper

Winner Teft before accepting award

Ward Teft, owner of Richmond’s Chop Suey Bookstore on Cary Street, has been named “The Ultimate Ellwood Thompson’s Natural Market Shopper” in a unanimous decision announced by the staff of Ellwood Thompson’s market.

“We are proud and thrilled to name Ward as the ultimate Ellwood Thompson’s shopper,” says store manager Todd Taylor, “and even more proud that the winner is a fellow business owner right down the road in Carytown.”

Taylor says that Teft “epitomizes” the type of shopper most likely to come into the store. “Ward has that unique combination of spectacular beard, black frame glasses and that vaguely Havana-1960 clothing style that practically exudes natural whole grains from his very pores,” Taylor said.

While of course the natural foods market tolerates and even welcomes clean-shaven men with 20-20 eyesight, Taylor claims the “overwhelming majority” of the typical male shopper is bearded and bespectacled, especially with little wire frame glasses that sit crooked on their face. In fact, the store briefly in 2010 experimented with offering clip-on beards to men who for whatever reason would not or could not grow their own.

“Ward has gone above and beyond what we expect, or even stereotype, from our off-the-street male shoppers,” Taylor said as he bestowed on Ward his prize – a year’s supply of Barlean’s mango-flavored fish oil concentrate and a pallet of Dr. Smearex’s all-Natural Cracked Suet Hair care products. “And we hope he continues to naturally cultivate that lush, organic beard without any artificial Monsanto-made genetic hair enhancers.”

“I am both thrilled and awed by this award,” says Ward, “And happily looking forward to years of all-natural beard growth, gradually disintegrating eyesight requiring hip glasses, and to stocking Dale Brumfield’s horror novel “Standers” on the shelf of Chop Suey Books, beginning in March.”

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109-Year-Old Black Doswell Man Insists he is not a Blues legend, Despite Name and Nearby Guitar

109-year-old Doswell resident “Gumbo” Lightnin’ Mud insists he “never played the blues”, never jammed with Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan, and to his knowledge never even influenced any modern-day rock or pop stars. 

“Why is it every time you news people see an old black man who happens to have a guitar in his house you assume he sings the blues?” asks the cantankerous Mud, after a rather fierce explanation that the guitar belongs to his grandson. “I don’t even like the blues – never did. And I can’t even hold a guitar, much less even play it. I did play the French horn as a teenager.” 

This reporter, however, openly doubted the French horn claim and refused to be swayed by the objections of the Flat Iron Road resident and kept pushing the point, connecting the dots between the name, the heritage and the guitar. “You’re a racist bigot, is what you are,” claimed the excitable Mud, wagging a shaking finger in my face, “You assume I sing the blues because I’m old and black. You also assume I’m on welfare? That maybe I got the gout and the diabetes? Wrong again, I got none of those. I’m a vegetarian and I’m Jewish.” 

“You white reporters always think too that I must be a blues artist because of my name,” Mud went on, “My grandfather’s name was Gumbo Lightnin Mud too, and he was born the son of a freed northern slave in 1851 and died wealthy in 1933 – how does that fit with your idiotic blues narrative? Shit fire, boy.” 

In addition to the obviously bogus French horn claim, Mud also insists his son, Gumbo Lightnin Mud Jr, is a wealthy cosmetic surgeon in Atlanta, Georgia. “That’s Doctor Lightnin’ Mud to you, you, pretty boy.” Mud said. “And does this look like the shack of a dirt poor blues artist?” Mud waved his hands through the den of his 7,000-square-ft brick rancher, pointing out the 68” HD TV, Blu-Ray player and home theatre sound system. “It’s way past time for you to go.” 

“The pundits are right,” Mud said as his driver picked me up to take me back to the office, “Low expectations is the softest of bigotries.”

Welcome to Doswell!

Untitled from Hunter Brumfield on Vimeo.