What do we want? BRAAAAINS! When do we want it? BRAAAAINS!

On July 3, we were looking online for something fun to do, and found that there was a Zombie Walk scheduled for that day.

What luck! The night before, we'd been talking about going out wearing postapocalyptic costumes to a bar or nightclub, and here there was already a nice doomy event scheduled.

The only catch? We had two hours to get ready! Joseph is the costume and props maven, and he immediately set to work making clothes look like they had been buried for years. The key ingredient was a spray bottle filled with a mixture of tea, coffee, and other stuff, which gave the clothing that grave-mouldered look. He also got a pot of blood ready.


The base garments of the zombie costumes were some older clothes that we had.

After making the clothing look old and adding some grave-dirt (made of coffee grounds with flour and spices), we put holes in 'em. Most zombies just cut slashes in their outfits, but that looks fake because actual worn-out clothes don't tear in neat slashes; they wear through. So we used a Dremel tool with a grinding head to make realistic-looking rips. After that, Joseph burned the edges of the rips, giving a spooky cremation-gone-awry look to our costumes.

Once the costumes were dry, it was makeup time. Artful application of flat, dead-looking makeup with lowlights of moldy grey sucked the life out of us. The finishing touch was the fake blood, which Joseph has learned to cook in a way that makes it dry to look scabby and clotted like real blood. We used method acting techniques to bloody ourselves up: pretending to eat brains and letting the blood fall and drip, wiping out faces and hands on our clothes, and carrying out other ordinary undead actions so the blood patterns would look natural. I picked my nose with a bloody finger.

On the drive to the event, we listened to zombie-themed music with the car stereo volume up and the windows down. You would be surprised just how many strange looks a couple of bloody zombies driving through the neighborhood get. Er...maybe you wouldn't.

At the walk, we registered for Guinness, socialized with other zombies, and toured the neighborhood on a couple of waves of the zombie walk. After the walk we stopped at a bar for some beer and food (pizza, not brains). Several other zombies came in, including a green-faced zombie who told us about some of his hobbies, including skydiving, and said he wants to adventure with us.