They’re coming to get you, Carytown: Shopping district suffers zombie breakout for seventh consecutive October
Frigid rain and sleet did little to deter hundreds of walking dead from overrunning Carytown this past Saturday as part of the seventh-annual Richmond Zombie Walk.
A reanimated pilot and flight attendant were among the several hundred undead which stormed Carytown for the annual Richmond Zombie Walk.
Nick Bonadies
Spectrum Editor
Frigid rain and sleet did little to deter hundreds of walking dead from overrunning Carytown this past Saturday as part of the seventh-annual Richmond Zombie Walk.
The reanimated human corpses, whose virus-infested nervous systems perceived no cold, wetness or any other human sensation save for agonizing hunger, shambled from the west end of Cary Street to the Byrd Theatre and back, considerately obeying walk/don’t walk signs and other human traffic laws. Some stopped to partake of free servings of (calf) brain served at New York Deli.
“Aaar-aaagh,” one horrifying ghoul half-groaned, half-screamed when asked for comment.
“Braaains,” he added.
Perhaps owing to the fact that Saturday marked Carytown’s seventh consecutive year as the epicenter of a late-October zombie outbreak, many of the living humans present had arrived well-prepared for the onslaught, bringing cameras, families of all ages and in some cases, well-stocked Nerf weaponry.
Paige Gardner, human VCU graduate student in forensic science, said that several of her friends had already been claimed by the ravenous masses. She brought her additional two friends, she said, “to throw them in front of the horde for protection, if need be.”
“I’m pretty prepared. I’m always expecting a zombie outbreak,” she said. “Pretty much all year.”
Reported notable zombie casualties included a zombie nun, several bloodied medical students in VCU School of Medicine scrubs, at least two undead drag queens, and one ghoul – heard to repeatedly groan “Milk was a bad choice” – who bore resemblance to news anchor Ron Burgundy.
One group of brain-eating terrors defied common-knowedge assumptions of post-mortem motor skills by making the entire trek on roller skates. A further swarm of diminutive rotting girl scouts nibbled individually-wrapped human organs and shrieked incomprehensibly while pulling a wagon of girl scout cookies for sale.
The reanimated corpse of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was sighted in at least two locations in a tattered black turtleneck, moaning at Android-wielding human onlookers to “buy an iPhooone.”
Several zombified Occupy Richmond protesters were spotted, but they were not the only activists roaming the streets. One brave group of humans with megaphones faced the horde head-on with signs bearing slogans like “Zombies Hate Freedom,” “My Body, My Brains,” and “Eating Brains Is Really Gross (And It Makes You Fat).”
A spokesman for the organization said they are comprised of a collection of “concerned citizens” but bear no official title.
“Get back in your graves,” the group shouted through megaphones at the unceasing stream of putrefying ex-humans. “Just say no to brains.”
“Uuurgh,” one unidentified undead belched in response.
“This is all for a good cause,” said Sarah Vunck, a VCU graduate psychology student and blood-spattered shambling ghoul. The Richmond Zombie Walk, since 2007, has collected donations to benefit the American Cancer Society; last year, the event collected almost one thousand dollars from the undead and from innocent human bystanders.
“What more excuse do you need to dress up like a zombie?” Vunck said. “Oops, I have to start mumbling ‘braaains’ again soon,” she added.
Anthony Menez and Josh Bishop, both VCU graduates and former Art Foundations professors, have organized the annual zombie walk since 2006.
Though zombie participation was and is always free of charge, Menez and Bishop claim on the Richmond Zombie Walk website that the organization has been able to collect “hundreds of dollars every year thanks to the generosity of its zombies.”
“See? Zombies can give something back to the community instead of taking delicious brain matter,” they said. “It’s a trade-off really.”
The first Richmond Zombie Walk, in 2005, only involved about a hundred zombies – a far cry from this Saturday’s several hundred, despite the freezing rain.
The original 2005 event was a zero-warning flash mob affair that took a busy Saturday Carytown shoppers’ crowd completely by surprise and shambled as far as the VCU campus. The rest, as they say, is history: these days, a late-October Carytown zombie breakout is more or less expected.
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Photos by Mel Kobran
