"They're Coming to Get You, America..."

You wake up, just like every morning, only something's different today. The news shows fires in the city, random attacks by angry mobs. Dismissively, you turn off the television, jump in the car and head for work. Only the roads are littered with abandoned vehicles, and strange, slouching figures shamble across the road. The slap of a hand at your window and you turn to find a face greeting you - a fleshless jaw and blood dripping from what used to be your neighbor's mouth. You, my friend, are smack dab in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.

More and more, zombies are lurching into our culture. They have pervaded mass media in a way that is unprecedented. This weekend alone, you can catch Dead Set on IFC, Shaun of the Dead on Comedy Central, The Walking Dead on AMC, and that's in between playing Dead Rising 2 or Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare on your game consoles. Or, maybe you're a reader, and would rather read World War Z or the comics upon which The Walking Dead is based. You see what I'm getting at. No matter your preferred medium, you can find zombies there. But what accounts for this sudden uptick in the living dead?

Assuming that horror films do, in fact, reflect something about or national subconscious, why should we be obsessed with this walking cadaver? Sure, they've always been among us, in one form or another. At first, they were entranced slaves, like 1943's I Walked with a Zombie, but Papa Bear changed the game with the original man-munching ghouls in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. As Romero himself has said, that was a film about revolution, depicting a societal uprising that America could not ignore. And you don't have to look far in that film to see ideas of youth consuming the older generation, or notions of racism inherent in society. Romero continued his commentary with Dawn... and Day of the Dead, but those were niche films, relegated to late night screenings and discovery on home video.

Today, the commentary remains, but it's not so difficult to find these ghouls. In fact, it's harder to avoid them. But these monsters still have something to say to us. The Walking Dead, for example, is less about the zombies than the human beings placed under incredible stress. It's a very human story of what we are capable of under the worst of conditions. Or, the victims of the rage virus from 28 Days Later... who may not be zombies by the strictest definition, but they certainly fit within the construct. With a new virus seemingly poised to become the next pandemic - SARS, swine flu, chicken flu, monkey pox (remember that one?) - our fears of disease find an easy metaphor here. Something that can kill us, spreading from person to person, and no way to reason with it.

Of course, the events of September 11th, 2001 have created a national anxiety like no other in America. Papa Bear got in on the act with the underrated Land of the Dead, commenting on the willful denial that followed the attacks by creating the oasis of Fiddler's Green. Romero implied, with that film, we can ignore the tide of violence all we like, but, eventually, it must come home. Surprisingly, one of the more pointed social critiques has come from the add-on to the game Red Dead Redemption entitled Undead Nightmare. Local characters are quick to suggest that the spread of the disease raising the dead is due to the open border with Mexico and the flood of Mexicans into the border towns. If that isn't timely, I don't know what is.

Ultimately, the reason zombies have clawed their way out of their graves and into the mainstream is because of the malleable nature of their threat. They are the faceless masses, the natural disaster, they may be fear itself, creeping ever forward. Their origins can be disease, nature, or the act of an angry god. They can bring down our society, rip apart our families, force us to kill those we love. They can end it all, reduce the world we knew to a memory. And that is our national fear, isn't it? That we can be attacked without warning or apparent meaning? That our own internal divisions can reduce a once-great nation to chaos? That something we can't fight will come for us and destroy us? The zombie is that thing, and, in the hands of the right creator, so much more. As anxieties fade, so may the popularity of the zombie. But I'll wager that such a time is distant yet. Until that day comes, the zombie will remain, stalking us, scaring us... being us.