Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 71

If, as a zombie apocalypse grows, the sheer number of undead staggering around the streets makes it impossible to wipe them all out, there is one final alternative, when all others have been exhausted: teach the murderous hordes to behave like civilized undead. In essence, that was the central theme of George A. Romero’s third zombie production, Day of the Dead. Made in 1985, the movie provided a refreshing departure from what usually passes for standard zombie fare and lore.

The story follows Dawn of the Dead, and at this point civilization is in complete tatters, cities are little more than eerily silent ghost towns, and the human race is rapidly spiraling down to extinction. In terms of numbers, the zombies are growing as fast as the survivors are shrinking. As for the government and the military, they have taken the cowardly approach of heading deep underground, leaving the rest of humanity to its own devices. “Underground” essentially means secure and fortified U.S. Army bunkers. It’s deep inside the bowels of one of these well-fortified installations that groundbreaking research is taking place.

Located in the Florida Everglades, the facility is home to a brilliant but eccentric scientist, Dr. Matthew Logan, and a band of soldiers led by the certifiably psychotic Captain Henry Rhodes. It’s the job of Rhodes’ team to provide Logan with zombies for his strange experiments. Dubbed “Frankenstein” by the soldiers, Logan believes that it’s actually possible to control the zombies by means of training them to obey commands, for which they will receive rewards in the form of food. Unbeknownst to the troops, the “food” that Logan supplies secretly comes in the form of Rhodes’ comrades, who died in earlier, violent confrontation with the zombies.

There is soon another addition to the underground survivors: Dr. Sarah Bowman, pilots Bill McDermott, and John, whose last name we never learn, and a soldier, Miguel Salazar. Things do not go well for the new arrivals. In fact, they have sought refuge at just about the worst time possible. The fraught situation, the daily fight to stay alive, and the fact that Rhodes’ men are constantly risking their lives to provide Dr. Logan with new specimens, are all now taking their physical and psychological toll. As so often happens when large-scale disaster strikes, people start to split into factions, and hostilities break out. The troops stick firmly together, preferring their own company and no one else’s; Bowman and her friends do likewise, increasingly fearful of Rhodes and the soldiers; and a crazed Logan continues to do his own dark and solitary thing behind closed doors.