One Hundred & Twenty-Four: ‘Keep... you.. safe.’
The other day someone sent me the trailer to a film they wanted to see, Warm Bodies. I couldn’t watch it there and then because I was at work so I asked what it was about. It was about Zombies, now anyone who knows me knows that I love zombies more than anything and I was so excited that I stuck the trailer on a soon as I got home and I got hooked. Despite the plot being that a Zombie falls in love with a human and his ‘feelings’ slowly turn him into a human. I won’t lie, I fought against this at first. I can live with Twilight because Draculas infatuation with the human re-incarnation of his mate but Zombies? Zombies do not fall in love with humans. They just don’t and yet I still went on Amazon and brought the book. I read the first 5 chapters in one night, It was really hard to put down and cleverly devised but everyone has a different interpretation of who is in love with who in the book.

Our main characters are R, Julie and Perry. Perry being the spirit that is helping R to become human. But wait, this is how it works. R is our zombie Romeo throughout and he’s pretty laid back for a zombie, his best friend is also a zombie and he spends most his undead life wondering just how he became a Zombie and who he was before. He doesn’t remember much of his past and only remembers that his name began with an R. Anyway, he and a pack of Zombies attack an old food complex in search of food, this is where he meets Perry and Julie. He kills Perry after almost killing M to get to Perry, the idea is that Zombies kill and eat the brains of humans to re-live the humans life for a short few seconds. When R tastes Perry’s brain he gets memories of Julie and he suddenly feels this connection with her and Perry.

This makes R show compassion when he finds Julie cowering in the corner; he smothers her in his blood to hide her scent and takes her to his home. Which just happens to be an aeroplane, the one thing that Julie misses most in the Zombie apocalypse. It doesn’t end there, R Keeps the bits of Perry’s brain and eats them every time he doesn’t quite understand what he is doing and through this Perry comes back to life in R’s head and guides him back to humanity. My friend is also reading the book and she’s all about R and Julie where i’m more R and Perry. Not because I’m mainly a slash writer. But because R is in love with Julie because he is loving her through Perry’s love. (My friend recons that I’m complicating things.) but to me R isn’t in love with Julie, he’s in love with Perry and the idea of having what Perry and Julie had because he can’t. It’s not real love and the feelings R has are just reanimated feelings that Perry is giving him in a bid not to leave Julie on her own. R is in love with Perry’s memories and not a particular person throughout the book.

I seriously loved the book, I think it’s fantastically written and despite the ridiculousness of it all I can’t put it down and I just wanted to blog about it for no other reason than I want to share it. However, a word to the wise don’t read it after watching a traditional Zombie film. You’ll find that R suddenly becomes one of them and the kiss scene is awfully cringe and disgusting. For me, this became that: