Brraaiiins . . . .

We've got plenty of good brains around here (and prefer to keep them intact inside our skulls), which is why it's much better to observe zombies from a distance (and in fiction) than to interact up close. Last spring I wrote about the CDC's emergency packets on zombie invasion preparedness, and added a reading list for the zombocalypse.


Little known, though, is that in the alternate version of 19th century Seattle, in Cherie Priest's steampunk Clockwork Century series, a mad and greedy inventor named Leviticus Blue used a powerful machine to bore underneath the city to rob a bank. He died in the event, so we never find out whether he knew that the digging hit a vent of noxious gas, releasing it through the city and destroying the population. This gas, you see, turns anyone who breathes it into a rotting, mindless thing solely focused on hunting and eating the living. Consume enough of a mind-numbing drug called sap, made from the gas, and you'll become more than just numb. Called "rotters" in Seattle (Boneshaker), "wheezers" in Virginia (Dreadnought), and "zombis" in Marie Levau's New Orleans (Ganymede), these doomed walking dead may just become a harder force to beat than either the Confederate or the Union armies.

Perhaps inspired by the coming invasion, a group of Emory students, including Paideia alum Emma Calabrese '97, entered a short film in the Campus Movie Fest student film competition last year. Look at This F***ing Zombie! (I might cuss too, if faced with a real-live walking-dead zombie) was a campus finalist, and has the second highest views of all the Emory entries. Emma is the supportive roommate, and heroine, in this funny star-crossed romance between a brainy coed and a life-challenged student in her philosophy class. Check it out below. Congrats, Emma!