Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary Read online

  Dr Dale’s ZOMBIE DICTIONARY

  The A-Z Guide to Staying Alive

  DR DALE SESLICK

  Illustrated by Jack Knight

  Dedication

  Dr Dale wishes to thank all those who have been integral to the research that is included in this edition.

  With special consideration to Donald, Judy and Tristen for their continuing hard work and dedication.

  And the random homeless people who gave their time and bodies for a plate of sandwiches in order for us to carry out experiments on them, in the current absence of any undead.

  Keep vigilant and stay safe.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  ZOMBIES: THE BASICS

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  DR DALE’s FINALWORDS OF WISDOM

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Author

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  Hi, I’m Dr Dale from Dr Dale’s School of Survival, and I’ve written this book to make sure you don’t get your intestines ripped out.

  First of all, let me thank you for buying my Zombie Dictionary, for taking this positive step to guarantee your own survival should the undead rise. You should take a moment now to feel a great sense of inner peace, satisfied that you had the foresight and strength to admit that you needed the Zombie Dictionary in order to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. You needed Dr Dale’s help. Yes, that’s it, let that cosy feeling of needing me just flow right through you.

  OK, that’s enough inner peace and self satisfaction. We should really get down to the business of making sure you don’t die… And rise again.

  Those of you who have purchased this book in the hope of finding out all about the best firearms, heavy artillery, torpedoes, missiles, tanks and submarines will be sorely disappointed. Here at the School of Survival, those are not the kind of methods we use. During a zombie apocalypse, guns will be in short supply – they also require ammunition and constant maintenance to make sure they are at peak performance. All this means that they are unreliable. You need to learn how to survive using anything and everything you can get your hands on as well as a healthy dose of common sense, and that is what we shall be focusing on in these pages.

  Throughout this dictionary there will be facts that will shock, astound and amaze you in equal measure – but be aware that none of the advice can be taken as definitive. As yet, no zombies have risen from the grave on which to test our theories. However, like most resourceful, intelligent people, here at the school we have researched our information thoroughly using movies, books, blogs, forums, Wikipedia and a man down the pub who we think is called Bob…or perhaps Bert – can’t really remember, but he does wear a hat.

  We hope you have an informative and life-changing journey with us through the pages of the Zombie Dictionary and if, in fact, this information turns out not to be useful and you don’t survive a zombie apocalypse, we are happy to give you a full no-qualms refund if the book is returned within 30 days of purchase, with a valid receipt, by the person who bought it.

  ZOMBIES: THE BASICS

  As many of you know, the word zombies begins with a Z which is the last letter of the alphabet and though some of you may find it too radical a step to cope with at this stage of your training I am going to cover ‘the Z word’ first as I feel it’s important we all know what we’re dealing with.

  There is certain knowledge that I will take for granted during the book as I assume you are all aware of the basics of Zombie Mythology. For those who aren’t, here’s a brief introduction:

  1) A Zombie is dead!

  In recent films and in the media (28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead) zombies have been portrayed as humans who have become infected with some form of virus that has made them crave human flesh and become a bit grumpy. These are not zombies. These are people who want to eat other live human beings and are more commonly referred to as cannibals (and this is not the Dictionary of Cannibal Survival – that book will be available soon). The only zombies being dealt with in these pages are those that have been previously human, became infected, died and reanimated again.

  2) A Zombie bite is infectious.

  There are various ways in which a human can become a zombie (see Classification) but we do know one thing for sure. If you are bitten by a zombie you will die and rise again as a zombie yourself. Zombies attack with their mouths and this has given rise to the misconception that they are trying to ‘eat’ you. As the zombies’ digestive system is no longer operational it is highly unlikely that this is the case. The instinct to bite is merely the virus’s way of spreading and increasing the zombie masses.

  3) Zombies can only be ‘killed’ by destroying the brain.

  A zombie’s Achilles heel is not its heel but its brain and the only way to destroy a zombie is to destroy its brain. As all other bodily functions and systems shut down on death, the only thing that keeps the zombie going is its brain. This means that zombies are impervious to pain so will keep coming until you achieve a head shot (the reason you go for a head shot is that the brain is kept in the head – that’s the round thing on your neck with hair on top and a face on the front). This is why your choice of weapon is important – but more of that later.

  4) There is no cure.

  There is no cure for a zombie infection. Once you are bitten, you become a zombie. So stop thinking there is a cure because there isn’t. Even if there is it’s important that you think there isn’t. Because thinking there’s a cure will give you hope, and hope will make you weak, and weakness will make you lose, and losing mean you die, and dying means you rise, and rising means you become a zombie – for which there is no cure. So stop thinking there’s a cure because that will give you hope and hope will make you weak and… You get the message.

  Those are the basics of zombies and that is all you need to know so far. Don’t worry about why the dead have started to rise or indeed how the dead have started to rise. Once they rise it does become somewhat of a moot point. Your only concern once the apocalypse begins is to survive – not to question the whole affair.

  Remember, the zombies won’t be bothered why it happened – they’ll just be focused on biting you. You need to focus too. On living.

  Let us continue…

  AARDVARK

  In African folklore the aardvark is much admired because of its diligent quest for food and its fearless response to the strong, warlike soldier ant. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, we should all take a lesson from the humble aardvark in order to survive, using the analogy that you are an aardvark and the undead hordes are a swarm of warrior ants. Do not take this analogy too far though, as zombies cannot be killed with Nippon.

  African Hausa magicians make charms from the heart, skin, forehead and nails of the aardvark, which are then pounded together with the root of a certain tree. Wrapped in a piece of skin and worn on the chest, the charm is said to give the owner the ability to pass through walls or roofs at night.

  Should you happen to come across an aardvark during the apocalypse and wish to try this technique, we recommend getting a friend you are not terribly fond of to attempt it first as we cannot guarantee the success of the charm having
never used it ourselves. A better use for an aardvark, given its average weight of 80–150 lb and length of up to 7 feet, is to freeze it solid and use it as a bludgeoning weapon.

  ABYSS

  An abyss, as described in the Collins dictionary, is a very deep hole or chasm, and you most certainly wouldn’t want to end up in one of those during the days of the dead. Abyss, however, is also a very atmospheric word that can be used when you wish to come across as a mean and moody person of action when implementing a dangerous plan.

  USING THE WORD ‘ABYSS’

  EXAMPLE 1: Your entire group is poised at the exit to your safe house ready to leave and seek out food and supplies. Just before you open the door you turn and say: ‘Time to enter the abyss’, raise your eyebrow, nod slowly, and leave. The others regard you as brave and wise.

  EXAMPLE 2: You are in the safety of your sanctuary and decide to go to the bathroom to relieve your bowels. As you reach the door you turn to the rest of the room and say: ‘Time to enter the abyss’, raise your eyebrow, nod slowly, and leave. The others regard you as brave and wise.

  EXAMPLE 3: Not to be confused with Abyssinia (the country). If you announce: ‘Time to enter Abyssinia’ the others will regard you as geographically incompetent or wonder how you are getting to Ethiopia (where there isn’t much food anyway).

  ALIENS

  I know exactly what you’re planning to do – you’re planning to skip this bit because you think it’s a bit silly to be discussing aliens in a book that purports to be about zombies. Well, I’m afraid if you want to learn all there is to learn you’re just going to have to suck it up and carry on read danger aliens may very well be an issue.

  It is a distinct possibility that, should aliens exist, they may have the technology and capability of reanimating the dead and giving them a penchant for biting and shambling. We have chemical weapons of our own so it’s within the realms of possibility that aliens may invade our planet by turning our dead against us. They could also come along and take over our bodies like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the original and not the wishy-washy Nicole Kidman remake. Didn’t you just want her to stop whining about her kid and shoot Daniel Craig in the head?). Thus they could create parasitic zombies (see Classification: Parasitic Zombie). It is also mildly plausible that a zombie apocalypse could be caused accidentally on their part (we’re managing to destroy our own planet by a series of industrial ‘accidents’ so it’s no great leap to think an alien species couldn’t do the same).

  These theories are, of course, conjecture. As yet, there is no definitive proof that there is any life out there in the vast glory of space other than this one little planet just spinning around trying to make something of itself. It would, however, be rather self-indulgent of us to assume that we are the only intelligent life form to exist in the universe, either by God’s design or by evolutionary process (whichever your favourite cheese happens to be), which may lead you to wonder why, if they are ‘out there’, have they not bothered to show themselves yet?

  Scholars will say that it is because we are at heart a violent race and are intent on our own destruction, so intelligent life from far-off planets would not dream of coming here for fear of being captured, experimented on or infected by our dirty human genes. I have my own personal theory on why aliens have decided to steer clear and that is that in September 1977 the Carpenters released the song ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’. Anyone passing by in their spaceship and hearing those lyrics blasted over the airwaves would have serious second thoughts about visiting a planet that beseeched the ‘interstellar policeman’ to give us a sign we’ve reached him.They would just wind up their windows and fly on by, warning the kids in the back seat never to get mixed up with the weirdos on that planet.

  FACT 1: The British have a long-standing joke about folks from America being a bit kooky and ‘out there’. So would any Brits care to explain why this song only charted at number 31 in the US charts whilst you took it all the way to number 9? (And you Irish have nothing to laugh about! It reached number 1 in your charts!)

  FACT 2: To stop any nerdy nerdy geek geeks writing in, I am fully aware the original was released by Klaatu in 1976 but they were a progressive rock band who named themselves after the alien from The Day the Earth Stood Still so you expect them to be a little ‘out there’. The Carpenters sang Burt Bacharach lyrics and Sesame Street songs, what on earth are they doing trying to contact aliens? Did I just answer my own question then?

  ALLERGIES

  When a person becomes a zombie, they will still bear the physical characteristics from when they were alive (i.e. they’ll still have blue eyes, a large nose, ginger hair – god forbid).They will also carry over hysical ailments, meaning that if they were in a wheelchair when they were alive, they would still be unable to walk as a zombie. Deductive reasoning should lead us to believe that if a person was allergic to something when they were alive, they will be allergic to it when they become a member of Team Z. If we are to subscribe to this theory then the best weapon to carry around with you is a peanut.

  Approximately 798,188 people are allergic to peanuts in the UK (that’s about the population of Leeds… Or two Manchesters… Four Portsmouths or 40 Bangors). In a worst-case scenario this allergy can cause anaphylactic shock or even death. So laying peanuts around the outside of your safehouse should act as a reasonable deterrent.

  Unfortunately, as everything but zombies’ brains shut down and it tends to be the respiratory system that is affected by anapphalacticaicalaphan…(these long medical words escape me, but you get the drift), this may not actually work.But, if it doesn’t, you could still try throwing the peanuts really hard and hope to pierce an attacking zombie’s skull.Or if you had a lot of peanuts you could drop them on the zombie, thus crushing him. Or if you dropped a peanut from the top of the Empire State building it could reach the velocity of a bullet and smash the zombie’s brain… Or you could just use an axe.

  ALTRUISM

  Ah, good. I was hoping that there would be an A word that would cover this subject of selflessness and helping others. That way I wouldn’t have to wait too long before teaching you the best way to behave during a zombie apocalypse – being altruistic isn’t it.

  When the undead rise you must become the most selfish, self-absorbed, egotistical person EVER. Survival (and this may come as a shock to some of you) is about surviving and you’re only going to do that if you completely and unequivocally look after number one. And if I need to make this any clearer – the number one I am talking about is YOU.

  Do not give your food away to anyone unless you are getting something useful in return – even if they are dying of hunger. By giving your supplies to them you only delay the inevitable death of both of you.

  Do not give your weapons away to anyone unless you get something useful in return. You will learn from this book that anything can be utilised as a weapon so if someone is useless enough to have found nothing to use as a weapon it will be a waste of time giving them your valuable items.

  Do not let anyone into your safe house – even if you know, love and cherish them. Who’s to say they haven’t been bitten or infected? Even a loved one will lie to you in order to aid their own survival.

  Lie, cheat and steal to get what you want. Even consider murder as a viable option. As the apocalypse rages on, resources will become scarcer and it willbecome a dog-eat-dog world. Make sure you are the biggest dog in the kennel otherwise you will be left with nothing.

  This may all seem a little harsh and if you are a mild-mannered person of essentially quite a British upbringing it will be a difficult adjustment. Trust me, though. If you do not adopt this attitude you will fail in your quest for survival. You will learn to live with the guilt.

  ANIMALS

  One of the most frequently asked questions by anyone attending my seminars is ‘Dr Dale, can I have your telephone ber?’, the answer to which greatly depends on how attractive and affluent the questioner is.


  One of the second most frequently asked questions is ‘Can animals become zombies?’ As we have yet to experience the apocalypse, and so are unaware of what form of outbreak we will encounter, it would be remiss of me to give a definitive answer.

  However, research at the School of Survival states that it would be highly unlikely for us to come face to face with a zombie hamster (not only because hamsters are so small and would have to be perched on a bookcase, or a child’s head, in order to come face to face with you).

  The deductive reasoning behind this is as follows: The most likely cause of a zombie outbreak is through experimentation gone wrong. The experimentation would have to be carried out on humans in order to be transmitted to humans in order to create a zombie apocalypse. The fact that the experiment was so complex that it could reanimate a human corpse and could only be destroyed by eliminating the brain would mean that it would be a very specific experiment unlikely to cross-pollinate to other species with different genetic make-up and biology. Ergo, the zombie virus would not transmit to animals.

  Of course, science is never an exact science and you may be thinking that if diseases like swine flu, bird flu and mad cow disease can pass from animals to humans, then it’s safe to assume that no matter how specific the disease, it could still mutate and transfer from humans to animals. To further substantiate that particular theory, we have had some small success in the School of Survival in proving that animals will suffer from human diseases, and thus far have managed to give a goldfish Alzheimer’s, a duck chickenpox, a chicken duckpox and a kangaroo gonorrhoea.