Zombies, Zombies Everywhere

Bostonist was a few minutes late arriving in Davis Square on Saturday evening. We briefly worried that we wouldn't be able to find Boston's undead elite lurching their way toward Harvard Square. Fortunately, zombies aren't the neatest of creatures and we were able to follow a twisted sort of crumb trail composed of corn syrup drops, fabric scraps, and distant cries of "BRAINS!"

Zombie organizers told Bostonist prior to Saturday's march that last year's event "opened a lot of eyes to the plight and delight of the local zombie community" - and increased sales at The Cellar as an added bonus. The 2007 march was to be the first step in creating a global zombie community.

If Saturday was any indication, the living would be wise to be on watch.

A long line of zombie folk - college graduates, children, prom queens and celebrities (Elvis and Kurt Cobain among them) - tried its best to take over Somerville and Cambridge during the 2007 Boston Zombie March. We never caught up with the front of the parade - if you've ever tried to weave your way through zombies, you know how slowly they tend to move. But we estimated the assemblage at at least 200 zombies and a large throng of folks with cameras trying to document the experience of watching a MJ-less "Thriller" come to life. There was a lot of laughter and a few occasions in which unsuspecting drivers stopped at intersections became closely acquainted with the undead.

A few observations:

-- A man filming the march in front of the Shaw's at Porter terrorized the young girl with him by offering her to the lurchers. "Brains! Fresh! Right here!" The girl was either mortified of terrified that someone might jokingly take him up on it. The zombies, however, seemed more interested in getting rides in shopping carts. The girl got off lucky.

-- At Porter, last year's anti-zombie demonstration was reprised by a new set of pro-human demonstrators who offered up a "no zombies in my backyard" (NZIMBY) argument Armed with signs and rally cries, the anti-zombie group reminded the marchers that brains are for thinking, not for eating and chanted the catchy "No pulse? No rights!" (Have the anti-zombie robots heard this argument?) We heard one zombie offer a rebuttal: "There aren't many undead, but if you let us out, we'll ALL be undead!" The anti-zombie group remained unconvinced.

-- Sign that anything can turn zombie: A half-man, half-rabbit seen staggering about.

-- Best zombie that we saw: tie between Cobain, who decided to show up with a guitar instead of a gun, and Ben Franklin, who talked about life in the early American days to whomever wanted to listen. We thought we heard him admit that electricity was a really terrible invention, but we were too busy snapping shots with our digital camera so we could upload them to our computer and put them on the Internet. Yay for lightning bolts!

-- Judging from the huge mess of bloody smears on the Davis Square Starbucks window, the undead aren't fond of the 'Bucks. Good to know for next year. "If you do this every spring, the cops could stock up on chainsaws and be ready to fend you off," Bostonist told the undead organizers, who are planning on a Boston Zombie March '08. "What is it about May that brings out the living dead?"

"I don't know if I like the tone of your chainsaw comment--we are cheaters of death by definition and WE HAVE COME TO EAT YOUR BRAINS!" replied a prominent member of the zombie community. "Why May? I don't know... maybe it's the dead flowers becoming undead, or the smell of brains in the air. I personally died of Spring Fever, so this time of year is especially significant. Getting the community together to lurch just feels right, in my guts."

C. Fernsebner contributed to this post. For more shots from the day, visit Bostonist's zombie set and sets from flickr users photos.juliechen and Arialas.