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woods across the street. We don’t yet know why the zombie fled leaving a victim still alive. We don’t know if the sight of the witnesses’s car, or the smell of its engine frightened off the zombie. Can we even use the word frighten in connection with zombies? 1 We don’t know if something attracted it; or perhaps called it. All we know, based on the eyewitness’s testimony, is that the zombie attacker has fled.
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    Art of the Dead—Rob McCallum
     

     
    Patient Zero
     
“I’m old school so prefer my zombies to be slow. The fast ones are pretty scary too but I just don’t see dead bodies being able to run for too long before bits of them start to give out and fall off!”
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    The novels The Rising and City of the Dead by Brian Keene, 2 Dead City by Joe McKinney, Dying 2 Live by Kim Paffenroth, and The Cell by Stephen King explore the possibility that some other force, being, or hive consciousness was able to control large groups of zombies. In Land of the Dead the chief ghoul, Big Daddy, seems capable of directing the actions of his fellow “stenches.” However in Romero’s original zombie films, Night, Dawn, and Day, the zombies were antonymous, their actions being directed by whatever constituted their postresurrection set of instincts. As such (and although they do seem to gather wherever one or more humans are hiding), they do not appear in any way organized, any more than flies are organized even though masses of them gather around a corpse. Even if we grant a certain degree of unpredictability due to the police initially having insufficient evidence, we are still looking at a situation in which the suspect will not be actively hiding (and will, by nature of its reduced intelligence, be incapable of this), and a suspect who will take no effort to prevent the leaving of evidence. There will be a lot of evidence to collect—fingerprints, footprints, blood spatter, trace DNA, witnesses, possible video surveillance from the location of the attack, and more. Once the police and crime scene unit arrives and the evidence collection begins, the hunt for our undead suspect will begin in earnest.
    Help is on the way.
    J UST THE F ACTS
     
    First Responders
     
    A crime scene is a tricky thing. It seldom has clear boundaries like you see on TV. In some cases the crime scene expands to include the planning and staging areas, the routes taken to and from the “primary scene,” and even a recovered vehicle associated with the crime. Clues and evidence may be found at any or all of these.
    The primary scene, however, is where the real action takes place. (For us it’s the research center on Argento Road in Romero Township.)
    The first police unit to arrive at a crime scene has a lot of responsibilities to handle, and even a two-officer car will be kept very busy. As the first responder unit rolls up, the officers have to assume that the situation is still active and dangerous. Assuming otherwise could be highly dangerous to everyone involved. Just because a witness says that the assailant has left, that doesn’t make it so. And there is the consideration of the wounded victim. All of this is in their minds as they pull up to the scene.
    But their first task is to observe the situation, noting the physical layout, the presence of objects (buildings, trees, vehicles, etc.) that could provide cover for a suspect or limit their assessment of the scene. They have to note whether any vehicles or persons are entering or leaving the scene. This includes identifying the presence of all persons (living or dead) and making very quick judgments about each person: Are they stationary or fleeing? Are they injured or dead? Are they actively engaged in a struggle? Are they lucid, raging, crying, etc.?
    The first responders have to locate the scene, which isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Witnesses, especially phone-in callers, are seldom clear and concise, and these callers may be unfamiliar with the location of the