By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of Rudy Eugene aka The Causeway Cannibal aka The Miami Zombie. If you haven’t, I’m about to blow your mind. In short, an otherwise non-remarkable, 31 year old Black man suddenly decided to strip the clothes off of a bum who was sleeping under a causeway and proceed to eat his face off in broad daylight while the elderly man was still alive. Yeah… When police arrived 18 minutes later, he allegedly snarled like an animal and “continued his meal”, even after being shot. As you can imagine, a few more shots eventually downed the assailant. Perhaps most surprising is that his victim, 65 year old Ronald Poppo, survived; however, he remains in critical condition. Police hope he’ll be able to talk soon (though he currently has no mouth), but I’m not really sure why since the entire incident was caught on surveillance camera.
Police immediately assumed that Eugene was suffering from cocaine psychosis then later changed their theory to LSD. Toxicology reports won’t be complete for a month, yet since that gruesome Saturday afternoon, police have begun to blame mephedrone, a designer drug known as “bath salts”, which supposedly has the combined effects of PCP, cocaine, LSD and ecstasy. Why anyone would feel the need to be that high, I’m really unsure, but apparently the drug has been blamed for other gruesome cases as well, including last year’s West Virginia woman who clawed herself to death thinking something was under her skin. And here I thought meth was a problem… But I guess Meph > Meth.
Still, there’s another theory surfacing as well. While police blame the virtually inexplicable behavior on a mysterious (and not quite illegal) substance, many see this incident – among others, including a homeless Florida man in January who hacked a stranger with an axe before eating the brain and eyeballs in a nearby cemetery – as the first signs of an upcoming Zombie Apocalypse. Strange explosions in the airports, unexplained rashes in multiple schools, stolen vats of flesh-eating bacteria, and a mysterious incident where a crazed passenger had to be subdued on a flight from Jamaica aren’t helping Florida’s case. Silly as it sounds, I did some research and found there may be some credence to the idea. I mean after all, if humanity were to be punished and transformed to a zombie world, I could see why it might start in Miami. Already known as one of the most debaucherous places on Earth, the combined arrogance of Lebron James and D-Wade (even after losing to the punk-ass Mavericks) might have just pissed God off, causing him to obliterate the heathen city. But then again I’m not really religious like that.
What about Portland though… How would we fare in a zombie outbreak? Aside from watching The Crazies twice, I have little expertise in the area of living zombies, so I spoke to a local zombie expert – don’t judge me by who I know – and his initial response to my question of his opinion on the zombie attack was, “It’s crazy, man!” Derek M. Koch (aka Brother D) is co-host of a podcast called Mail Order Zombie, has authored and contributed to various books and websites, and has a short story “Granny and the Hole” being released exclusively through Amazon Kindle in the next week. His thoughts on the matter are as follows:
“The Pacific Northwest is fairly zombie-aware. Seattle’s held several zombie-centric film festivals and horror conventions in recent years, and Portland isn’t too far behind. We have zombie friendly indie-press book publishers, zombie-preparedness experts, regular zombie walks, a zombie television horror host, zombie film festivals of our own, and a zombie movie podcast hosted by . . . me. I’d prefer to think that the bath-salt-smoking-face-eating-zombie incidents will stay on the East Coast, but if something were to make its way out to Portland, I think we’re ready for whatever zombies might decide to crash PDX.”
Unfortunately, it may already be too late. Not to be outdone by the Floridian, on May 20th, a 21-year old student at Maryland’s Morgan State University bashed a fellow student’s head in with a bat and was later found hiding in the woods. His parents in Kenya bailed him out, and a few days later he killed his roommate and ate his heart and brain. Then there’s the Canadian porn guy that decided to start taping himself “acting” with a corpse and then mailed body parts to the government. Last year in LA, a homeless woman grabbed a baby from a stroller and tried to take his arm off, later telling authorities that she wanted to eat the arm.
Has this mess been going on and we are just now noticing because of increased media attention (remember the creepy mass bird deaths)? Are “bath salts” the new meth? Or are there zombies living among us? Fortunately, I found no zombie-related incidents in Portland. The closest thing I found was an incident in April at the Rose Garden where a crazed fan rushed the arena in the 4th quarter and single-handedly started knocking ushers out with a book while shouting about chalupas. He was eventually subdued by about 9 people. I’d be lying if I said “I couldn’t make this up”, but trust me, I didn’t.
That said, I don’t know why people feel the need to eat others, nor do I really want to understand. I mean, that would make me crazy too, right? However, I think that as long as we stay up here in the Pacific Northwest, were probably safe. For now, I’d say our Zombie Threat Level is Yellow. Stay vigilant, my friends.
Your neighborhood zombie watcher,
Mac Smiff