Becoming Badass

Chapter 13 - +1 dmg to Undead

2011-05-03T09:37:00.001-07:00

The camping supply store had just about everything I could need since outdoor activities often involve chopping, cutting, and axing. As a result its resume has a strong ‘transferable skills’ section. My little hatchet split skull just as well as it would split wood. I know from experience you can also split your shin open if you’re an idiot. My skinning knife was staying put since it seemed to separate ligaments when called to task however due to its size it was more intimate than I would like as a first choice. I decided to get some of its bigger brothers. Without boring you (just yet) with my, selection of up-close-and-personals, I strapped them about my person and decided to re-asses my current situation.

My plan in thus far has been – and will continue to be – surviving. Making it to the outdoor shop and getting some good kit added quite a bit to my armor class, and gearing up with some reasonable weapons hopefully lowered my THAC0. Keep in mind until now I’ve be fighting off reflex…and swinging a big stick.

I felt fully prepared to move forward and look for some medium/long range weapons and knew of only one place where Canadians can go to get just about anything: abysmal customer service, deals on crappy sockets sets, ice skates, shotguns, and tires. I figure with a reasonable arsenal of weapons, I can keep checking the quest boxes off my list and finally sort this mess out. First things first, I gotta geet meh sum guuuns.

Chapter 12 – Recap and Re-Assess

2011-03-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

To recap so far I am the brainchild for a worldwide event where every human jumps at the same time effectively having the Earth’s human population being zero for a few seconds.

When I landed a zombie tried to eat my brain so I kicked him…hard.

I battled my way out of a nice park using punches, kicks, a stick, and some sarcasm to get to a mountain equipment store so I could get some fresh new digs.

Inside I faced off against a bright red, black eyed super fast & strong demon zombie thing who got wtfpwnt and now I have to finish up my 3 point list before actually stopping and thinking about what was happening. Back to action, sorta:

After my fall (inertia fail) with an overloaded bag, I decided packing light was the way to go. I chose a medium size 28L bag with some nice strappy bits so I could hook things onto it. I had the advantage of taking only primo ultra-lite gear so when it was all said and done, my kit was light and felt prepared to go backpacking through the woods or battle zombies. The most fun of this whole experience is living the dream of the arming scene. I approached my armament with the calm cool…oh who am I kidding I was still shaking with adrenaline from the burner – easier than saying “the sun burned, black eyed…. – and knew I had lucked out. I made a plan to approach equipping myself like a French assassin who has a plant fetish and wants to teach a young black swan how to lay the hurt: long range first, then medium range for when sht gets real, and short range only when needed.

Chapter 11 – The Awakened Automaton

2011-03-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

As much as I like reminiscing (or gushing) over the prowess of an average looking Korean at this point I have bigger, black-eyed demon fish to fry. Turns out even after being offered a mat my angry friend was not feeling the urge to ohm, and wasn’t particularly interested in sun salutations, downward or upward dogs. Judging from the clicking, garbled hiss that seemed to resonate from his chest I had the feeling ‘pancake brain, eat brain’ was more in line with his approach to inner peace.

I used what few seconds I had before he responded to my yogatic attack to pose all cool like in a low stance and scan the immediate area for something to do a little more damage. As I was in the bag section of the store there wasn’t too much I could do. Bah. A quick mental recap of the store reminded me there is an entire section dedicated to wonderful camping tools like knives and hatchets. Knives and hatchets, if only I had them!

Twwwwoooooo SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeep!!!

Oh ya, thus gai.

I stood up, refocusing on the maniacal jerk as he began his charge again. He blitzed toward me with is arms trailing behind his torso so that he looked like a fleet footed anime ninja, clearly aiming for ‘the mighty clap’ to splode my noggin.

…Press X to activate adrenaline….

Yaaay for adrenaline! It let me see things at a more reasonably terrifying pace. His head and body snapping backwards as he stopped to initiate the whiplash attack of his arms. Shoulders bulged, bending arms further back until they started to shoot forward. I also noticed one hand reaching behind to the small of my back while the other unclipped something from my left hip…

…His arms had nearly completed the 180-degree 'arc of the dominant' when I realized what my body had in mind. And a smirk showed up on my poker face.

Just as Dr. McSunburn was about to shatter my reality I dropped back into a low stance and shot my right had up to take the place of my head. The clap was nearly as deafening as I remember the first one being only this time a little squishier.

See, adrenaline is great for slowing things down and speeding things up, but most times the straight up ‘zomg I’m gonna get got’ fear is bad for your immediate short term memory. This is where training comes in. One of the first things I did when I got into the store was go to the knives n’ hatchet show and get me some. I had tucked a hatchet into the back of my pants until I could find a more suitable holster, and grabbed a small skinning knife and clipped it onto my hip. My immediate short-term memory didn’t remember that because, well, it was more concerned with being all emo about dying. The trained part of my body did, hence automated movement. Now we were coming together, automated response, and fully aware conscience. And the effect was devastating.

The squish sound was the result of me putting a hatchet blade in the place where his clapping hands thought my head should be. As the beast slammed his hands on what he thought was my skull, he inadvertently clapped one of his hands in half. In my left hand I held the small skinning knife like a cool 1980’s action hero knife fighter – upside-down if you will, with the blade coming out on the outside of my hand by my pinky finger.

That hand decided to join in the fun. I pumped my arm, slashing through the left tricep of my assailant, and watched the handless arm drop limply – I must have severed something important. I dropped the knife as I rose, reaching up and around his left arm trapping it against my side. Snapping my right arm forward I chopped three times with the hatchet, striking repeatedly to the side of his neck. At the third strike I felt the hatchet stick on something so I shifted my hips and brought my right arm up and behind his ugly face. Pulling the trapped arm, torquing harder with my hips, and with a mighty kiup I executed a head and arm throw sending black eyes sailing toward the shop wall. Without missing a beat I charged right behind my soaring, flailing, hissing, half broken friend and leapt into the air. He hit the wall fully inverted and looked like someone at a fair who wore one of those Velcro wall suits, stuck like an upside down starfished fly. He only remained that was for the briefest of instances because I had followed behind with a leaping bone shattering knee. I blasted him in the sternum, making his chest concave…like a cave.

Fewf. Chop off a hand, immobilize an arm, hatchet a neck, throw, and deflate a chest cavity. Pretty epic little combo imho.

….sss..sss..sseeeeeeee.pppp

"Really dude?" Bah, if I only I had thrown him into some explosives so I could have walked away all cool like without looking back!

Instead I calmly put one boot on his head, reached down and wrenched by hatchet free.

…tt..tttwoooo…..one arm tried in vain to reach at me. And then fell limp as I lodged my hatchet six inches into his head.

"You shoulda stuck with namaste."

Not as cool as walking away from splotions without looking, but a pretty good line.

Now, back to packing my bags

Chapter 10 – The More I Knew

2011-02-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Master Kang was, and is still an enigma. A slight man, he stood maybe five foot eight inches tall or so and couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty. He had the look of someone who was somehow thirty and eighty years old at the same time. In every picture I saw on the wall of the dojang he looked the same. Whether doing split kicks in front of the Eifel Tower, or a leaping jump kick over 8 crouched men a calm presence surrounded him. At the same time I knew a very small amount of what he was capable of. Sorta like one of those big green generating boxes you see in suburbs, you can touch it and it won’t hurt you, but the subtle humming of the energy store within warned it was not to be trifled with.

As I stared at the wall of pictures and achievements I read his marital mastery:
…Presented with the title of 8th Dan Master Tae Kwon Do
…Presented with the title of 7th Dan Master Kendo
…Presented with the title of 8th Dan Master Hapkido

There was one more title he had that I noticed:

…Presented with the title of 6th Dan Master &^DHW^&%^#

Never heard of ”&^DHW^&%^#” before? Neither had I. Why is it called ”&^DHW^&%^#”? Well that’s because it’s so epic I don’t think it registered in conscious thought. Not because I can’t remember…

&^DHW^&%^# is the same martial art he simply described as "You use anything. To, uh keeel your opponent". Oh yeah, that one.

Wow. For those of you who don’t know martial arts, that means he knew the high flying and spinning kicks of a Tae Kwon Do master, had the ability to cleave someone in half with a kitana – the sword of the samurai - and the means of tossing your around then breaking all your limbs through Hapkido, and just for good measure if his hands, feet, or sword didn’t end your existence, he could batter you with anything in the room. Impressive stuff.

Lucky for me I trained to at least a noob first class in Hapkido, Tae Kwon Do, and even sparred in Kendo. Too bad I never trained in that other one, because if I had, my yoga mat of doom would have done the trick. Who knew at the onset of a zombie apocalypse I wouldn’t be able to catch a break. Sometimes it just takes a maniacal, bright red, black eyed fiend trying to pancake your noggin to bring back the good memories. Apparently said fiend will also trigger the unconscious movement of a body trained for defense…

Chapter 9 – Hey! You’re not doing it right!

2011-02-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

I was living the dream. I was in an empty store full of toys I could load up and use on zombies, and had the luxury of being able to take my time packing. Now, if this were a traditional fantasy novel, I would spend the next 2000 or so words explaining in glorious detail what items I put where. Good thing it isn’t. Suffice to say I figured I would at some point find some other humans and we could all team up, so I packed 8 ‘backpacker’ bags with the same gear:
Maps, dried food, water packs, med kits, a knife, a flint, a multi-tool, some rope, and some other goodies.

For myself I quickly realized that I’m not nearly as fit as I need to be. Once I packed up my bag of holding, I did my lower back the disservice of lifting it up and strapping it on. Apparently 150lbs of all the goodies I wanted weighed 150lbs. Also apparently, I’m not capable of moving all that quickly with a 150lb backpack strapped on. In fact ‘movement’ is more of a leaned forward duck waddle. Suddenly my whacking stick was looking mighty efficient.

While lamenting my lack of physical fitness I heard for the first time a sound that is permanently etched as a neural trace in my poor brain.

Two-Seeeeeep

Doesn’t look so bad does it? Two Seep. Oh noes, so scarzed!

Try for your own amusement to whisper the two, then inhale through your teeth and say seeeeeep as if sipping some hot tea.

Two-Seeeeep, click-ick-ick-ick-ick
Two-Seeeeep, click-ick-ick-ick-ick

Ok, now I’m getting freaked out. I duck-waddled around to face the sound and saw just what it was. At first glance it looked like a car mechanic wearing its coveralls down so its upper body was not covered. What was once a regular human torso was now a demented caricature of a fitness model. Bright red as if burned by the sun on March break skin clashed with bulging black veins to create a wickedly demonic looking zombie. It’s eyes were where a humans would be, however they were all black. Not dark and mysterious black. Black, 100%, no whites, no pupils, just darkness. Creepy. The sun burned, black-veined, black-eyed creature was spooky enough, but what really gave me the willies was the grin.

It was looking at me like I was crack and it needed a fix. It LITERALLY grinned ear to ear. Its mouth stretching beyond the capacity of any humans, it looked at me and uttered two simple words:

Twooooo (puckering its lips to accentuate the ooo)
Then back to the grin and
Seeeeeeeep

The Click-ick-ick-ick-ick was its teeth chattering and weirdly blistered tongue flicking against them.

So I might have peed a little.

It then flashed forward with the speed and grace of a raging anime ninja. Bounding at me it apparently was just like a Hollywood movie – it had a love affair with Parkour as well – and pulled some flashy acrobatics off by running along a wall for a few steps and side flipping over the pile of gear I had gathered.

Two hands whipped toward either side of my head as if boxing my ears because I swore at it. I managed to lean back just enough that its hands hammered together in front of my face, the force of their clap resounding loud enough to set my ears ringing.

I kept right on falling over, apparently that backpack had sided with Newton and wanted to party down with gravity. Thanks science.

Because the creature was moving full speed it continued right over me, making it look as if I pulled off some sweet back bridge dodge. What a sec, isn’t momentum in science too? Thanks science!

Howling in rage and lashing out with one leg, the ugly jerk hit my bag with enough force to send me spinning away into my collection of gear. I guess it was luck because if he had hit my body I think I might have been liquefied.

TWOOOOOO-SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

Yeah, I know, you want to smash my noggin and eat my brains. Good thing this isn’t a movie or I would have struggled until just the last second to get the bag off. Turns out the clips worked just as they were intended to and I quickly unclasped them. Looking up I saw speedy McUgly streaking towards me again. Eeep. Diving out of the bag and rolling forward I reached out and grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on and threw it at the beast on my way around. Turning end over end I could almost hear the whistle as my implement of destruction whirled toward my adversary. With a soft thud my weapon struck, halting the beast in its tracks. It looked at me, down at its chest where my desctructo disk had landed, and back at me, tilting its head like a confused dog.

And that’s when I realized I had thrown a yoga mat…FML

Chapter 8 – Anti-Climactotron

2011-01-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

My erratic flight through the park brought me closer to a great mountain equipment store, I just had to hope they’d be cooperative……zing!

As luck would have it I didn’t encounter any more slow hungries in my last mad dash to the store, but there was evidence of the goofy bastards all over the place. I entered through one of the front doors locking it behind me. I figure if I’m locked in a store with zombies I can use all the fun toys in here for practice.

“Oooooooh hello thur zombies! I figure if you come out now and try to eat my face, we can just have at it and get on with things”

….Cue zombie mmfffghrlgl…..

“……………….”

…I said CUE ZOMBIE MMMRRFGFHLER!

“……..”

Hmm. That sure made life easy. The thing about having EVERYONE jumping at the same time is that nothing was open for the great day, I guess no employees here to turn into zombies = no zombies in the store. Felt like a bit of a shallow victory. I thought I was gonna go all bullet time on some slow moving punching bag.

This situation seems to be both good AND true (enter shadowy movement behind me that I am unaware is there but makes you, the reader fear for my mortal coils safety).

Chapter 7 – Adrenaline is Neat. Until it Warps Everything

2010-11-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. The walk out of the park should have taken 5-10 minutes…but with my hyped up adrenaline it seemed to take 4 months. 4 months is a long time to live through with nothing happening. I felt like my calmed down self was owed an apology from the adreno-monster. Good thing I got my breathing under control and reassessed my situation.

A quick mental check of my accepted quests showed I still needed supplies. Although my gore covered whacking stick was a handy addition, I couldn’t help thinking food, shelter, and more weapons would help flesh out my Casey Jones persona.

Let’s get rockin!

Chapter 6 – Zombo Thacker 5000

2010-07-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

My initial reaction wasn’t to sprint off screaming into the night because as a student of zombie movies I knew I needed to conserve some energy. I took a moment to look around and re-center, drawing up plans based on what I should do in case of zombie infestation.

I had a good deal of knowledge from movies, video games, TV shows, and ‘what if zombies attack?’ conversations which helped me quickly deduced that there was at least one type of zombie roaming around. I decided to call them Slow Walkers. You know the type (especially since I explained it to you in Chapter 4…)

Moves with a slow shuffle
Has a classic moan for a voice.
Only goes down after a serious blow to the central nervous system.
And is more or less cannibalistic, with a sommelier like appreciation for living human brains.

I never understood how the Slow Walker was such an overwhelming force other than its relentless shuffle step, and strength of its numbers. At this point I was almost happy there were only the slow ones, begging for me to pop off with a sniper rifle while yelling “BOOM Head-Shot!” If only I had known…

I looked around a picked up a good whacking stick, deciding on a few objectives as I went:

1 – Get some supplies
2 – Get to a book store
3 – Find a fortress and hole up

Pressing my mental TAB button, I recalled the layout of where I was in relation to my goals and quickly surmised I was about 10 minutes from a good mountain equipment store. I then began skulking through the forest feeling a little like a larper….I mean I’ve read books about being a ninja, I trained a bit, and I LOVE killing zombies. Now I actually get to combine these things together? Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt! Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

“mmmrrroooofffghlglghg”

The sweet symphony of Slow Walkers – a trio of the dumb lowbies in fact – came at me all arms-reaching-me-eat-you like.

With a burst of speed I began spinning clockwise left to right. As I came around I torqued my Zombo-Thacker and was rewarded with a splatter of gore as I caved in my first opponent’s noggin. Without missing a beat I continued turning, throwing a low round house to the second zombies’ leg, shattering its kneecap. I had no intention of stopping there. I continued my whirl and unleashed a jump spinning round house to the slowbie with such an impact that the whiplash caused its neck to snap.

Two spins, two down.

I was feeling pretty good until I had my first experience with Slow Walker ‘man strength’. What felt like the hand of a Dutch potatoe farmer clamped down on my left shoulder as I finished my flourish and began a slow, constant squeeze. NOW I know what all the fuss is about. It isn’t so much their strength in numbers as their strength in…well…strength.

Ouch. Lots of ouch.

Again with the calm clarity delivered from the practice mats of Master Kang’s Power Martial Arts I reached up and across toward clampy-mc-crush my arms vice grip.

I latched my hand over top of his, squeezing my fingers while at the same time pressing my thumb into the flesh below the knuckle of his index finger. Stepping back and turning a quarter turn to the right I brought my left arm up, using the outside of my forearm “Likah brade. U sag, ny-eef, anda cut” - ah the eloquence of Master Kang.

The nice thing about using your arm like a saw is that it forces your opponent to double over, and line their stupid zombie face up with my screaming knee of justice.

Keeeeeeeerrr SPLAT. Three down.

Whewf. I retrieved The Zombo Thwacker 5000 from the inside of my first opponents head, gave it a light chop to clean of the gore, and strode along on my merry way.

I’m gonna get me some serious gear soon, my MacGyver sense was tingling!

Chapter 5 - Fight then Flight

2010-07-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Some people might think it strange that I tore asunder an others head and neck with only a little apprehension, but I in my defense it was a zombie. I always knew they would show up at some point although I didn't think Earth Population Zero would be the way they arrived. On top of that I seemed to always have a VERY extreme fight or flight mechanism.

When I was a young one we used to play in my house' super scary basement, setting up haunted houses for fun. When I say super scary I mean it. The basement had a filing room similar to the basement library from the opening scene of Ghostbusters, and a prohibition era dungeon complete with 3 inch thick steel door. The key for that monstrosity was no joke a giant-out-of-the-movies 3 inch by 3 inch 'T" and the door had 6...SIX...S.I.X deadbolts that the big ol skeletor key would lock on you.

Anyway, we played haunted house and in one scenario I ended up with my little brother locked in the dungeon with (in my mind) a demented freak holding what had to be a 12 foot knife wearing a hockey mask.

Option A - Flight...Well I was locked in a room, so no flight to be had
Option B - Fight...Let's doit

Before even moving the entire room looked like someone had put a filter over my eyes. When I rage, I literally see red and starbursts, it's hard to explain and I don't like doing it, but in the moment everything slows and become clear - crush, kill, destroy!

I soared at the maniac and fought like a trapped little squirrel:

Look high, fake jab while squatting slightly and priming the rear leg.
Maniac looks to defend the non-existent jab with his harpoon.......

And doesn't see the brutally honest full bore knee to the crotch.

As the maniac doubled over thinking "Hey, in the movies no one goes for the junk shot" I grabbed hold of his hair with both hands and simultaneously pull down while driving my knee up again.

The result was a spectacular knee to the face that nearly cracked his mask in half. Still in full on fight mode it took another 5 minutes of beating before the maniac finally said
"PAT!! IT'S ME!!! STOP! PLEASE!"

Only then did I realize was laying some savage hurt on my older brother. As the red and stars receded I looked around the room and only saw shock. My brothers and friends couldn't believe what had just happened. In the span of a few seconds I had disarmed, disabled, and humiliated my attacker while protecting my little brother. To them they saw no hesitation, just pure unbridled rage.

To tell you the truth if the door wasn't locked I would have thrown my younger brother onto the knife and booked it...some hero.

Flash back to the crumpled gore at my feet. The fight option has run its course.

I looked around and decided it was time to engage the forward thrusters and GTFO.

Chapter 4 - "Oh k, you jump, turn kick. It's ok"

2010-07-01T13:17:00.001-07:00

Mmmfgfghf
Lean, shuffle step
".......Hey man, zombie walks are a little more impressive if you do it with a bunch of your zombie culture buddies..."

Mmmfgfghf
Lean, shuffle step
"Yeah yeah, You're a zombie you like brains, if you bite me I turn into one blah blah blah."

Mmmfgfghf
Lean, shuffle step
"Seriously, you're a hurtbag go away"

Mmmfgfghf
Lean, shuffle step....snarl reach
"Dude WTF beat it!"
GRASP Mmmfgfghf

Turns out my smart-assery was not going to deter it. As it reached for and grasped my wrist I had that super cool Hollywood movie flash back sensation. My heart pulsed:

Thump-Thump....

Then did that neat heart beat echo thing:

....Thum-thum-thum-thump-p-p.....

And I was back in London Ontario, at Master Kang's Power Martial Arts.

Master Kang, literally the epitome of subtle kickass. One day when he was explaining all the different martial arts he knew, and he struggled to find the correct English and simply said
"You use anything. To, uh keeel your opponent"

He wasn't acting tough, he was casually looking at a chair and pointing, then my head, and I knew if anyone were stupid enough to jump him he would casually snap crackle pop them and then go about his business.

Anyway, today's lesson was alot like most of them. Mater Kang was simply holding a pad 4 inches above my head and calming 'explaining' the strike we were learning,

" oh k, you jump, then turn, and kick. "

"uuuuhhh, wut?" (my eloquence knows no bounds)

"Jump, turn, and kick, it's ok" He repeated with a smile

This is a 5 foot 7 Korean casually telling me to perform a jump spinning round house on a target 4 inches above my head. His encourage is 'it's ok". Riiiiiggghht.

Deep inhale, torque the upper body down and left to charge up like a spring...release and spring right...full spin and unload, turning the left hip in and snapping the left foot down and out (somehow I managed to get ABOVE) to hammer the target....

........and hearing a cacophony of sounds. Add together 1 part snapping spaghetti noodles, 1 part dropping a rotten cabbage on the floor, and 1 part kiai and your end results are your first shattered zombie.

I landed in a fighting stance and blinked. In the half second when the zombie had reached for me I had performed a perfect jump spinning round house coming down and across the nogging of my opponent.

Turns out Master Kang's description of a round house as a "krruuuz meeesle (Cruise Missile)" was accurate.

My zombie friend lay shattered on the ground, undead limbs twitching spastically in the throes of...well I would say death, be he died then came back then died....how bout "I killed him good".

On that day when everyone jumped, and zombies tried a hostile takeover of the world some people decided to fight back. Mine was not a conscious decision, years of training in combined with the fight or flight response mechanism decided for me.

1 Zombie down......how many more to go?

Chapter 3 - Where Punch Sound Effects Come From

2010-03-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

Life is good, everyone is doing something together. Something we will never forget. The human experience, humanity as one.

Tic-tic-tic.

Zombies.

I came back down to Earth on the balls of my feet with a muscle memory that I never knew would be important. I had chosen a spot out in a park to experience my creation, not entirely secluded, but quiet enough. As soon as I touched back down I had that intangible sense.

Something is afoot. Potvin! Block the driveway!

I could feel the tension, like a storm was coming and it was gonna hit me hard. Then I heard the sound from movies, TV shows, video games, music, and every other media to ever exist:

"MMMrrrroofofffgggffgf"

Whenever I've talked with people about their first, they all remember it in perfect detail. Branded instantly into their longest of the long term memory. My experience was no less memorable.

I looked left toward the sound and saw it. I say IT, because that's what IT is, an 'IT'. I am lucky that my care switch is turned firmly to off when dealing with these pesky bastards and I quickly dehumanize them.

Anyway, it stood there as is if someone from a movie set had stumbled away from work for Population Zero and was doing their best to scare me.

Let's go over the check marks for Stereo Typed Zombie shall we?

1 - Greyish business suit, black bile & gore stains? Check
2 - One leg (in this case the left ankle) torqued at an ungodly angle? Check
3 - Head cranked to the left? Check
4 - One arm reaching with that 'me want eat you' reach? You know it

It had other memorable features I would love to forget too, but I think you get it.

It was a zombie.
It was hungry for brains.
And it was trying to eats mine.

Chapter 2 - Part 2, Segment A

2010-03-20T21:59:00.001-07:00

So I had done it. I thought of (IMHO) the coolest idea ever. Better than floating stairs & jellyfish lights. Better than feats of strength. Even better than a retractable d10 pole arm that got me out of some tough situations. And now I was determined to apply it.

I did it all, tweeted, status'ed, blogged....I even spoke to people face to face! And slowly but surely the movement began. I took about 5 years to catch on, and another 5 to plan, but the moment was here.

The time was now.

At X'oclock, on the Xth day, of the Xth month, in the year XXXX we did it.

Humans across the world joined together and participated as one. Everyone of every culture, race, religion, creed, sect, oath, & ideal. Young, old, happy, sad, tall short, left handed, right handed - I think you get it. We loved, comforted, honored and kept our promise. For Richer and poorer, in sickness and in health....no wait a minute, wrong promise.

Anyway, humans for once sucked it up and did something awesome together. The results were, ahem, not as expected.

The entire human race left the planet at X'oclock, on the Xth day, of the Xth month, in the year XXXX. For a few brief seconds the population of humanity on planet Earth was zero.

And when we landed, we brought friends. That is to say if zombies of every shape and design are friends.

I'll admit it freely, it makes NO sense. I mean seriously, why would all of the humans leaving the planet cause zombies? I don't know, and when I landed I didn't exactly have time to ask.yahoo.ca.

Chapter 2 - Population Zero

2010-03-03T19:39:00.001-08:00

Things had been going pretty well on good ol planet Earth. With everyone networked socially, communication around the globe was more instant than ever. I only wish that when I first heard the term "gone viral" I knew what it would lead to.

You see, I had a thought one day in the lazy days of a hot August afternoon, sitting on the roof of my porch with my roommates in London Ontario. We were having the usual university student conversation, namely talking about absolutely nothing important but defending it till the end of time. It was this fateful day that I threw out the idea of 'Earth Population Zero'.

The premise was simple and, dare I say, magnificent.

"OK" I began "So before I get going, here is the breakdown.".
You see if you were going to ever come up with an idea, you would need to cover all - and I mean ALL - you bases, or else you would be flamed and your brilliance would go unrecognized.

"Everything is good, and everyone on Earth agrees. There are no douchey teenagers, no kids just being a buzz kill, EVERYONE on Earth is in agreement with Population Zero. The premise is simple, at a certain time, on a certain day, of a certain month - which has all been organized and agreed to - everyone on Earth will jump at the same time."

One of my roommates was quick to ask "What about people in wheelchairs? In hospitals? Babies?"

"Ah, like I said it's all been organized. People will come together to lift others up as they jump. Parents will hold children. EVERYONE is in agreement. For the 2-3 seconds that everyone is in the air, for the first time since humanities existence, the human population of Earth will be ZERO."

"Whoa" another of my eloquent buddies said "So you mean like, not a single human on the planet?"

"Yes. Exactly." (I paused for dramatic effect) "Now....what do you think would happen?"

Chapter 1 - O Hai there

2010-03-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

Oh, hello there. If you're reading this it probably means you

A) heard a thing or two about how I managed to become badass, or

B) Want to become badass yourself.

Well I've got to be honest, to you 'A' folk I didn't do it on purpose, and the 'B' crowd, I hope you don't think it is an easy road. Slinging, slicing, and high kicking my way through 100,000 zombies wasn't something I had planned on way back before the outbreak, but hey when life gives you zombies...