Slice: Walk of the living dead

It was cold and damp on Saturday night.

My hot breath cut the air as I staggered along sidewalks and street corners. Clomp, clomp. My feet dragged on the wet concrete.

There was no sound —it was quiet as death, you might say.

Then I giggled. The fake blood dripping from my nose tickled.

“Shhh,” someone hushed me.

When you're a zombie, there's no giggling. Facial expressions should be blank — just wide-eyed stares and slack jaws.

It was my first zombie walk, held in the Benson neighborhood. It's a simple concept: A group of people, dressed as zombies, converge on a central location and walk around for a while like the undead, groaning, shuffling and lurching.

But for a peppy and talkative person, it was hard to stay in character. Every so often, a wry smile cracked on my snotty, bloody face. The silence was killing me.

I was surrounded by 386 zombies, all quite helpful despite their rotting flesh and oozing wounds. A protruding syringe here, a decapitated head there and dangling eyeballs ... whoops, there rolled one.

The eerie throng included a headless zombie bride, zombie moms, a Jesus zombie and celebrity zombies: Billy Mays and Ernie of Sesame Street. Some smoked cigarettes; others gabbed on cell phones and snapped photos.

Just after 6 p.m., Benson Zombie Walk organizer Steve “Tuco” Jacobs addressed the mob in an alley behind the Pizza Shoppe.

There are rules to being a zombie, he explained. No talking, texting, picture-taking or walking normally. I probably broke all of them.

Stay out of the businesses, Jacobs continued. Don't pound on the windows. Don't get blood on the streets. If you attack a victim (willing participants marked with a large X), make sure you're not too rough. Cross at the crosswalks.

“The most important thing,” Jacobs advised, “is that you stay in character. ... Act like a zombie.”

Zombies, he said, say only one word: Brains.

“So what do we want?” he asked.

“Brains,” the mob yelled.

“When do we want it?” “Brains!”

I had my grunts down pat thanks to a chest cold. But my walk was still a bit off. I looked wounded, bloody and gimpy, not scary.

Zombies walk slowly, and, if possible, drag a foot or two. Your arms hang by your sides, unless you're reaching for fresh brains.

Maintaining a straight face was challenging, especially when the other gangly characters attacked bystanders. I laughed at a blond woman who screamed her head off when she was snatched up.

Dozens of spectators with chairs lined the streets. Restaurant and bar patrons hollered “Zombies, zombies!” from their patio tables. An entourage of non-zombified photographers and other people tagged along.

One guy identified my zombie costume. My younger brother dressed as rocker Rob Zombie's zombie, and I was his groupie. I smiled at the guy.

“No smiling,” another zombie said under his breath.

My zombification had started a few hours before the walk.

Essentials: Cadaver-gray base — even on your lips — brown and gray contouring powder, green and purple bruise accents, blood and “dirt” on knuckles from crawling out of the grave. And the ickier the costume, the better.

I thought my groupie costume was clever. But I was totally out of my league. Some people spent hours putting on ooey-gooey prosthetics and movie makeup. Some wore temporary tattoos, colored contacts and facial hair.

Omahan Stephanie Krysl, the headless bride, spent two days making that costume. She staggered along just a few feet away from me.

“Don't trip on my train,” she told a guy with a painted blue face. “I'm serious, if you knock my (molded) lady off I'm going to cut you.”

“Hey,” he replied. “We can smoke, right?”

“No,” she said. “He just said not to.”

The blue-faced guy stumbled off: “Brains, brains, brains.”

Along the walk, the headless bride shared how she made the headless bride. She bought a $70 dress with puffy sleeves and lots of lace at a thrift store. She cut a hole in the bodice for her head to poke through. She molded her “upper body” with papier mache and duct tape, then painted it a fleshy color.

Then she wrapped long-sleeved white gloves around her neck to give the illusion that the headless creature was holding her own head.

She earned several cheers from passers-by. An elementary-aged zombie schoolgirl stopped to check her out.

“When you go home,” the girl said, “you really should put your head back on.”

The bride let out a hearty chuckle, nearly losing her balance. We were hushed.

“It's hard not to talk,” she whispered. “There are so many people with cool costumes.”

Just then, a man dressed like Spider-man ran across the street. A roar of laughter erupted from the zombies, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

The pack crawled through dark alleys, across a bridge and through parking lots.

Cars passing by slowed down to watch. Some people parked in vacant lots and got out with cameras.

“Freaks,” a guy shouted from his brown sedan as he waited at a red light. Zombies gave him icy stares. In another car, a young girl cried when her father rolled down the back passenger window so she could get a clear view.

“It's OK,” I said back to her. She cried louder because I spoke to her. D'oh. I wasn't supposed to talk.

The walk took 45 minutes, a trek that normally would take half the time.

I was relieved when the zombie mob finally made it back to the Pizza Shoppe. I howled. Finally, I could talk.

A bunch of us headed to the Mussette Bar to toast to our night out.

Instead of shouting “brains,” we yelled “beers!”

Contact the writer:

444-1075, j.loza@owh.com