THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
The Bloodpack
Recently, I saw the movie Peninsula. While this movie may not have been all we hoped for, it did bring a disturbing, yet often overlooked, horror of a Zombie outbreak to life - something I am calling "The Bloodpack". The Bloodpack is glimpsed in the first survival game hosted by the rebellious military group, the ones where unarmed and under-fed survivors from the city are forced into an arena with bloodthirsty Zombies, simply to see if they can stay alive long enough to reach the next round - a brutal and very unfair sport. The game begins with the survivors in the ring, often oblivious to what is about to happen, a buzzer sounds and then the gates open. Zombies spill into the arena, biting and snarling in their frantic, blood-crazed ways; worked into a frenzy by the proximity of food. However, along with the lethal Zombies that burst forth, something equally horrible explodes into view, a huge being that seems like an entirely new type of Zombie, a huge new devilry of unnatural size and shape, an abhorrent pile of muscle, teeth and legs; the Bloodpack.
The Bloodpack may look to be an entirely new beast but it is not; it is simply a load of individual Zombies all meshed together to give the appearance of a single entity. The most likely scenario of how a Bloodpack is formed comes from a few key facts about Zombies; they feel no pain, they are incredibly clumsy and they have little to no intelligence. Take for example, a Zombie who has a badly broken leg, the bone jutting out at an angle, a fracture that would effectively render a living human immobile but is only a hardly noticed inconvenience to a Zombie, forcing them to crawl along the dusty ground - their legs too badly shattered to walk - yet not making them any less of a threat. Let's call this Zombie, Bob. A much more decayed Zombie, Edna, comes along after a while and, in her stupidity, trips over the crawling Bob. Edna's exposed ribcage falls directly a top Bob's shattered legs, the sticking-out leg bone becoming lodged inside the rigid ribcage. Both Zombies are now 'locked' together - neither Zombie having the intelligence required to free themselves - and, hey presto, a Bloodpack is formed. Consider then Edna, unable to get-up yet physically capable of it, pulling in a different direction to Bob, maybe she sensed some food that Bob has not. Bob rips apart with the extra force exerted by the more physically enabled Edna, only his long intestine connecting his legs (still attached to Edna's chest) to his torso. This creates yet another trip hazard for our unfortunate Zombies. So, when Gary comes along, he trips over the intestine and, in his clumsy attempt to right himself, gets tangled up. He is now also 'locked' in-place with the Bob-Edna Bloodpack, forming a new, three-way Bloodpack. This example can be continued and continued to grow an increasingly large Bloodpack; looking to a casual survivor as a demonic new creation to add to their nightmares, snapping and moaning with disturbing inefficiency, but being nothing more than a mound of clumsy Zombies.
In Peninsula it is not really surprising that the Zombies, spilling from the gate at the opening dong of the demented survival game, form into a Bloodpack. Behind the gate, there must be an enclosed space where the 'pet' Zombies are contained before games begin and where they can be kept in isolation after games end. This area is, I would guess, quite small and, periodically, new Zombies will be put into this holding pen - replacing ones that have accidentally, or purposely, been dispatched. Also, as the games take place inside or in very close proximity to the rebel camp, and given the extremely aggressive nature of Peninsula's Zombies, those Zombies are going to be permanently in a frantic state; they can sense nearby food at all times and will hurl themselves at solid walls in a foolish attempt to get it. With multiple 'pumped-up' Zombies inside an enclosed space, bumping off walls, possibly walls covered with flesh-tearing wire fence, and potentially damaging themselves, of course collisions are going to happen. Many of those collisions will be simple knocks or bumps, but over the course of nearly four years (assuming the games were setup near the beginning of the apocalypse - a likely scenario as the original purpose of the military unit turned rebels was to evacuate survivors) some of these collisions are bound to be more severe. Taking the other stand point and assuming the space holding the Zombies is large, they are still funnelled through the relatively narrow doorway to enter the arena; with all the Zombies rushing through that newly opened gap to get at the arena contestants on the other side as fast as possible, collisions are inevitable.
It's important to remember that, even though a Bloodpack may look new and terrifying with its increased size and unnatural number of limbs, it is no more dangerous than the 'regular' Zombies that form it - probably even less so. The Bloodpack does not magically combine the attributes of all its individual parts, nor does not gain any advantage with its more menacing visage (perhaps some added initial shock value, but nothing more). In fact, as Zombies have a shared desire of getting food but no central goal, no objective for them all to achieve and absolutely no ability to work as one (despite it often seeming that way as multiple Zombies track the same prey), a Bloodpack could - and probably would - be significantly weaker than the Zombies that form it. Using the example before of the Bob-Edna-Gary grotesqueness, if all the individual Zombies move at once, at different speeds, they are going to get nowhere fast; faster members are not going to 'wait' for ones who have tripped and, more, consider an obstacle in the way like a lamppost or traffic pole, if Gary goes one way and the other two go the other way, that's the Bloodpack pretty much done for. The only benefit I can think of for a Zombie being part of a Bloodpack is the added defence against being dispatched; it would be very risky for any living person to attempt to kill all the Zombies in a Bloodpack, simply because of all the extra biting teeth and grabbing hands. That said, with the incredibly awkward movement of a Bloodpack, I'm not sure why a survivor would ever attempt such a foolhardy mission.
The Abomination
There is a more fiendish version of the Bloodpack which, while still just a collection of individual Zombies mashed together, it is more akin to a single entity; the Zombies within so 'mushed up', so pulverised, that it is impossible to tell them apart. Of course, these things are going to be very rare, simply because you would require a group of Zombies in the same vicinity, all being sufficiently damaged (without killing the Zombies) and those damaged sections to all 'collect' together. The easiest way to explain this new unholy 'creature' is to consider Zombies that were partially exposed to high temperatures over a long time, maybe they were trapped near a furnace or beside a gradually cooling pot of melted metal, contained inside a structure where the heat could only escape slowly. Basically, parts of multiple Zombies have become all mucky and gooey, their flesh melted and sticky, but only in places. Consider then, these Zombies being forced through a narrow gap, rubbing against each other so much they effectively meld into one being.
The only picture of an Abomination that I have found
© '68 - Comic series - Issue #02
As with the Bloodpack, an Abombination is still only single Zombies 'made-up' to look like one extremely ungainly ghoul and therefore, I would assume, the abilities of the two horrors are comparable. The only reference material I have on the subject - issues 2 and 3 of comic series '68 - does suggest that, through some obscure means, the Abomination is more physically powerful than the individual Zombies that formed it. This may be simply due to the increased weight of multiple Zombies all squashed together but, with these beasts being so rare, there is simply not enough information to draw a valid conclusion about what they are capable of.
If another Zombie had tried to squeeze through the gap at the same time as this unfortunate fellow, an Abomination may have formed
DESCRIPTION:
A new horror of the Zombie apocalypse has come to light, showcased in the film Peninsula. It is one I call "The Bloodpack" and through this article I will explain how such a fearsome evil is not all that it appears, give an example of how such a vile horror may come about and speculate on the ghastly abilities this monstrosity brings to an already dire situation. I also briefly discuss an even rarer form of this new, twisted devilry; The Abomination.
CATEGORY:
Scientific
WRITTEN BY:
DATE UPLOADED:
07/03/2021