Is **** dead in The Walking Dead - SPOILER WARNING

How we felt after watch s6 03

If you haven't watched episode 3 of season 6, Thank You, don't read this.

Glenn is one of the original cast members of the show, but what we all want to know is did he die at the jaws and grasping hands of the walkers?

Nicholas sees no other way out.

Did Nicholas, who should have had a bullet in his brain long ago after he tried to kill Glenn twice, eventually get him killed?

Here's the case for both sides.

YES, Glenn died. 
1. Glenn called Rick "dumb ass" on the walkie talkie. That could be a nod to their first ever encounter when Glenn was on a supply run and saved Rick, calling him a dumb ass on the walkie talky. 

2. The story of the man from Alexandria getting back to his wife Betsy, had parallels with Glenn trying to get back to Maggie. 

3. We could have seen Glenn getting eaten but it was hard to see from the camera angle. 

No, Glenn survived. 

1. The episode was called "Thank you." Nicholas who was clearly suffering from PTSD, said those words to Glenn before he blew his own brains out. Could it be that Glenn is the one saying that to Nicholas whose landed on top of him and perhaps saved him from the walkers? 

Blood and guts can save you in The Walking Dead.

2. If that is the case, Glenn will be covered in Nicholas's blood, guts and viscera making the zombies think he's one of them. That could allow him to hide under the dumpster that's there. He and Rick talked about a signal - could he have a flare gun that will distract the walkers and help him get away? (I think/hope he does).

FLASHBACK - Remember how Rick got Glenn & his then gang to cover themselves in guts to get past the walkers in an episode? Carol did the same to great effect on her one woman rescue mission at Terminus. 

What happened to kickass Maggie? 

3. Without Glenn, there'd be little point in having Maggie. She used to be a kickass, but now she's babysitting the head of Alexandria, although she might be pregnant. 

Maggie's gone soft. When Glenn told her how Nicholas tried to kill her, she should have killed Nicholas. 

When Father Gabriel bad mouthed Rick and Co, she should have put a bullet in his head.

4. The show is short of big characters. We have Rick, Daryl, Michonne and the all mighty Carol. The rest seem disposable.

They left a huge gap by killing off Tyreese. "WHY DID YOU DO IT?" we wail.

Abraham hasn't been given a lot to do and seems to have given up. Ditto Sasha, Eugene, Rosita, Tara and even Maggie. Apart from Aaron, the Alexandrians are pretty hopeless. Heath shows promise by saving Michonne as she almost fell going over that fence. 

Well, what do you think? Have we said bye-bye to one of The Walking Dead's most popular characters?

WHAT I THINK I think Glenn will live to fight another day. I reckon having Nicholas on top of him and the blood from the shot on his face will have saved him.

He'll find a way to escape the walker hordes.

Free Zombie story - Pick Your Brain

What would happen once the zombie apocalypse was over and people (and zombies) were forced to justify their actions?



That's the scenario I took and then ran with it for my short story Pick Your Brain.

PICK YOUR BRAIN BY JENNIFER THOMSON

“Miss McBride, in all my years of representing clients whom other less well attuned legal brains would turn down as unwinnable, I have never come across one single case I could not win.” He pursed his lips. “Until now that is. Do you honestly think citing a…”
He cleared his throat.

“And, I’m quoting your expert witness Professor Romero here. "A virus that renders people incapable of rational thought and gives them an uncontrollable compulsion to consume human flesh, especially human brains," is going to assist your boyfriend in his defence after he was caught by two police officers, standing over the lifeless body of his friend, clutching a baseball bat soaked in the blood and chunks of brain matter from the deceased who was later found to have died from multiple brain injuries consistent with several blows to the head from a baseball bat?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the truth.”

Charles Benson, who had so many letters after his name it was like a game of Scrabble, eyed me like I was the last lunatic left in an asylum. “Did one of my learned colleagues put you up to this?” His eyes swept the room. “Are there hidden cameras? Is this some TV prank show?”

His reaction was hardly a new one. I’d encountered similar reactions from other barristers who were convinced I was delusional. “No,” I said, defiant, “this isn’t a prank. This is real.”

He raised his chin. The gesture reminded me of a haughty child.

“Well, in that case Miss McBride, I can’t help you. It’s a psychiatrist you need, not a man of law.”

Condescension seeped from his every word.

It was hard to hide my disappointment. I’d been sure he was the one man who could help us and argue that Scott had acted in self-defence. His friend, Archie was trying to eat him.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Benson.” And I was genuinely sorry. If he couldn’t help Scott in this way he’d have to help him in another.

“I honestly thought someone of your calibre who’d successfully argued that a man wasn’t guilty of murdering his wife because he mistook her for a lion, would have a more open mind.” I paused to eye him with disdain. “Perhaps you could speak to Scott and explain why you won’t help him. He’s a teacher and a well-respected pillar of this community just like you. It’ll only take a minute. He’s outside.”

Charles Benson’s face went pumice grey. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t have the time. My next client will be here.”

I stood up and walked over to the door. “Well, in that case our business is over, Mr Benson. But there’s one last thing you can help me with.”

With a nod of the head, I opened the door. “I think you should meet Scott anyway, so you’ll understand. You see, in the attack he was bitten. More like a scrape caused by teeth sliding against his skin really. He didn’t turn as quickly as they do in the movies or in The Walking Dead.”

I gave a wry smile. “Well, things are seldom as they are in the movies.”

Scott shambled into the room, feral eyes glowing as he saw his prey. His nails were ragged and torn and bloody from eating the two prison guards on the way over and the secretary outside.

Charles Benson’s eyes were wide with terror. “You better leave now, or I’m calling the police.”
His words were strangled.

As Scott pinned him to the desk and sunk decaying teeth into his fat flesh, I couldn’t resist one last parting shot.

“Do you believe me now, Mr Benson?”

He was unable to answer. Scott had ripped out his throat – the blood that spurted out of the arrogant lawyer’s veins reminded me of raspberry sauce on an ice cream cone. Blood is never as red as you think, not when you get used to it.

Scott devoured the lips, then the nose, followed by the brain. The intestines he gorged on like cheesy string. Benson’s fingers he wolfed down like hot dogs.

Once he was done, he licked the blood and flesh from his teeth.

I wagged a finger at him. “Christ, Scott, we’re gonna run out of lawyers soon.”

Scott drooled. “HUNGRY. BRAINS.”

My face softened. “Okay, but we need to tidy up this office and go. We have more legal brains we need to pick.”

THE END

Jennifer Lee Thomson is the author of Scottish zombie novel Dead Bastards that's been described as "a cross between Trainspotting and Shaun of the Dead."

Note - This story first appeared in the kick ass Pulp Metal Magazine

Dead Bastards by Jennifer Lee Thomson (An extract)

Dead Bastards (An Extract)

We couldn’t handle Archie staring back at us with accusing eyes, and he stank, so I covered him up with a duvet. A pink one with polka dots, which is the only spare one we have.

Scott spotted what he called the girly duvet and screwed up his face. “He’s my mate. We need to show him some respect.”

I’m irritated his pal has bled all over the new rug, yet I’m the one getting all the aggro for using a pink duvet.

Instead of coming up with an alternative to cover up his friend, Scott stood there with a stern expression on his face and shook his head. “It’s just no right.” Then his eyes grew wide and staring as he gawped at the duvet. “I think it moved.”

I snorted and shook my head. “How can it have moved? He’s deid. His stomach’s on our carpet.”

Just because Scott didn’t consider the duvet manly enough for his pal, didn’t give him the right to try to freak me out. But I looked down anyway.

At first, I didn’t see any movement, but I carried on watching. Then Archie’s feet started moving, making a tapping motion as if dancing in time to music. Before I’d seen it for myself, I thought that what happened to all those others on TV was not the same as what happened to Archie, because making that connection would open a whole Pandora’s Box of trouble.

Denial is after all a way of shielding myself from the truth. But eventually realisation dawns, especially when Archie started doing a tap dance on my living room floor. “Fuck, he’s no deid.”

While he’s doing this I realised there’s one last thing we can do for him: cave in his head.

Scott gives me his teacher-doesn’t-approve stare. “Wish you wouldn’t swear, Emma. It makes you ugly.”

As if my swearing was our biggest problem right now.

I wanted to give him an earful for chastising me like I was one of his pupils, but I’m too busy watching as dead Archie takes a hacking breath and tries to get up.

I don’t say anything. I couldn’t breathe. I simply held out my finger and pointed as if auditioning for the National Lottery’s It Could Be You ad. But this was one lottery I sure as hell didn’t want to win.

Archie flung the duvet asunder. His ash-grey face was set in a grimace that reminded me of a Mayan death mask. He looked like hell, which was no surprise considering his innards were spread out all over our carpet. But it’s his eyes that were the real giveaway that Archie wasn’t Archie anymore. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, but now those eyes were gone, replaced by dead orbs, as black as coal. They lacked that spark of humanity and self-awareness, whatever it is that makes us human.

Something clicked in that brain of his. He stared at us like a starving dog eyeing someone's dinner. His mouth dropped open and rancid black sludge spilt out. Then he howled.

I thought I was going to puke.

He grabbed for my arm, his blackened teeth as sharp as knives snapping at me. I managed to sidestep his reach.

A scream shrieked out of my throat before I could stop it.

HOW TO KILL A ZOMBIE

The thing about being confronted by zombies is that we all think we’ll know what to do. We’ve all seen the movies, watched the TV shows.

To kill a zombie you need to splatter the brains all over the shop with a gun. But the reality is different for those of us living in Scotland where we don’t have guns in our wardrobes or locked in a box, because we don’t keep guns, period. That makes killing the zombies damn difficult.

My boyfriend is useless as a handyman, so there’s no toolkit in our third floor tenement flat. We have no hammers, chisels, or drills to destroy the brain of the zombie who used to be my boyfriend’s best pal.

Okay, this so-called pal drives me mental, like the time he got Scott, who’s not a big drinker, steamboats one night and dragged him along to a lap dancing bar where he ended up slipping crisp twenties into Monique or Cindi’s g-string. (I know this because he kindly recorded footage on Scott’s mobile phone.) I’m still pissed about that, but I don’t hate him to the extent that I want to cave his head in. 

So when the thing that used to be Archie, struggles to its feet and lumbers towards us, arms outstretched, as if pretending to be rent-a-ghost, I snatch the first thing I can get my mitts on, an iron I’d forgotten to turn off, and I scud him across the head with it.

There’s an almighty hiss as it scorches his flesh, accompanied by the smell of burnt barbecue. The iron trundles onto the floor where it lies, scorching the carpet. I can’t believe what I’ve just done, and my hand goes limp.

Archie’s makes a throaty noise and lurches towards me. That's when Scott gets busy, bludgeoning his best mate over the head with an ugly, heavy lamp his parents had bought us as a housewarming present.

Globs of sticky brain matter splatter the wall as though someone dumped mince in a blender without the lid on and switched it to turbo, but Scott still keeps whacking dead Archie, because dead Archie keeps coming at me.

My back's to the wall. Will he not die, again?

Dead Bastards is available now.

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com 

Amazon.ca 

Amazon.de  

Have yourself a Walking Dead party

Zombie hide and seek

You've waited so long for Rick, Daryl, Michonne & Co to make their return. So, why shouldn't you celebrate now The Walking Dead's back? 

Here's some ways to have the best Walking Dead party ever.

1. Dress up as a zombie.

Hair should be wild looking and all tangled. Well, when was the last time you saw a zombie in the hair salon? Em. never? Yep. That's because the undead have only thing in mind - brains, must eat brains and feast on human flesh.

Clothes should be torn like you've been ravaged by a pack of wild dogs.Check out the outfits here. Don't forget the teeth. Gleaming whiter gnashers don't cut it in the zombie world. What does is teeth rotting and covered in blood like the gums are always bleeding.

Eyes should be unfocussed and should lack the understanding and self-awareness that makes us human. This can be achieved by weaing contact lenses.

Tip - If you're dressing up as a zombie the less sleep you have the better. Zombies have a haggard look.

Other things you will need -
a prop limb or even better, human heart

For tips on how to create that zombie look, check out this amazing video.

2. Get some zombie decorations.

Unfortunately, none of us can have this.

So, how about making up some balloons?

Or, getting yourself a zombie hand?

3. Make yourself some zombie cupcakes

Where would any WD party be without some suitable eats? Check out this YouTube video to see how to decorate your zombie cupcakes.

There are plenty of other foods you could try that wouldn't look out of place on a zombie's dinner table (if there was such a thing). Stuff like -



Hot dogs cos they look like fingers. Check these ones out. Aren't they awesome cos they look like severed fingers? Those ones were made in honor of the Harold & Kumar movie. See here for details.

Sausage and mashed potato - the sausages look like legs or fingers.

Cocktail sausages - instead of just sticks, make little crosses.

Spaghetti bolognese - if you use a lot of red food dye, they'll looks like human intestines.

Want some more inspiration? Check out these awesome cakes.

4. Play The Walking Dead drinking game

Any time you hear the word "walker" it's drink time.

Any time you hear the word "walker" you have to take a drink (soft drinks can be used if you're too young for booze. After the next commercial break somebody else gets to choose the word. Possible words governor, Westbury, damn, ammo, infected and bitten.

Drink up, you're Maggie.

Game 2 - In this game, everybody gets to be a character. Write down a list of characters, on individual pieces of paper, roll them up and place in a bowl. Each person gets to pick one. Whenever that name comes up the person who's that character has to take a drink.

Is The Walking Dead's Enid a member of the Wolves?

A traitor inside Alexandria? 

***SPOIILER ALERT - DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN SEASON 6 EPISODE 2*** 

Since we first saw Enid, she's been furtively sneaking out of Alexandria to do god knows what?

Could she have been meeting up with her real people The Wolves, plotting when the time was right to invade Alexandria?

Or, could it be even worse than that, that she infiltrated where Noah's family were living and led to them being massacred?

Hey, she might even be The Wolves leader.

One thing's for sure when the marauding thugs came to Alexandria she never batted an eyelid. Could it be because she knew they were coming and had alerted them to Rick and Co leaving?

She wrote
JUST
SURVIVE
SOMEHOW
to Carl.

Could she be taking her own advice too far, or does Enid have another secret?

What do you think? Please feel free to comment below😀

Nice day for a zombie wedding

The good news for all of us who are missing TWD is that the whole world has gone zombie crazy. And that extends to people's wedding days. 

Just because your wedding has gone zombie doesn't mean you can't wear a traditional white dress and suit. Expect though to get blood on your clothes.

Why not have a wedding invitation a bit like this one?

 Or pay homage to one of the best Z movies ever?

And, you're gonna need entertainment. Why not have a zombie hunt?

Zombie dress for guest can be optional.

Monolith by horror giant Shaun Hutson is a scary read

Was this book scary? Well, put it this way, I was reading it at 4am and I became convinced there was a dark entity like the one in the book in my house.

I was preparing to defend myself when I discovered it was my partner up for a glass of water.

And that folks is Shaun Hutson. He writes horror that gets under your skin and raises the hair on the back of your neck and you don't realise until 4 in the morning when you think one of the monsters in his books is out to get you.

Monolith is available on Amazon and published by Caffeine Nights. 

3 Things I'd love to see next in The Walking Dead

Maggie kills Nicholas after finding out that he shot Glenn and tried to get him killed by walkers. 

Why is Nicholas still alive?

Let's face it, since selfish, cowardly Nicholas got Noah killed, then tried to kill Glenn (twice) he's been crushing for a bruising and deserves a bullet in the brain just as much as any walker. 

This is what happens when you trust Nicholas.

Failing that, Carol will do it. 

It'd be better if it was Maggie though to show she hasn't lost her killer instinct. 

Here actor Steven Yeun explains why Glen didn't kill Nicholas in The Walking Dead. 

Father Gabriel gets killed by someone - walkers or people. 

I know the portrayal of a man guilt stricken by what he's had to do to survive (letting his whole congregations die as he cowered inside a church, hoarding the food) is probably an accurate one of what would happen in a ZA, but screw realistic. 

In a real zombie -geddon, everybody would have died because you'd be like "Zombies, yet right. You're having a laugh," as one of them started gnawing on your arm.

Sasha should have ended Father Gabriel.

The guy is also so far down the sea of crazy he came back to Alexandria and left the gates open! 

And, he told the leader of Alexandria that Rick & Co were dangerous.

If Gabriel wanted God to judge him, that's fair enough but he shouldn't have deliberately left those gates open.

Time to end him, Rick or Carol, or Michonne (he almost got her and Carl killed back at the church too). Anybody really. Seth Gilliam, The Wire star who plays him has been underused. 

Morgan says to Rick, "So, you're crazy, now man. What a role reversal, huh!"

Last time Morgan & Rick met, Morgan was the crazy one.

Now look at Rick. Bloody after shooting someone and manic looking.

What would you like to see next in The Walking Dead? I'd love to know.

Write your own version of The Walking Dead

Get your teeth into writing a zombie novel

I never expected to be able to write a zombie novel. I thought horror was best left to three of my favourite authors – Shaun Hutson, James Herbert and Graeme Masterton.

Then this image came into my head of a couple lying in bed when there’s a knock at the door. One of them pads down the hall, opens the door and finds his friend Archie standing there. Archie looks like he’s been mugged. Then they notice that his insides are dripping out…

And so Dead Bastards was born. It's now available worldwide:)

Along the way I’ve learnt a few things -

1. Don’t concentrate on too many people’s stories.
This is a big mistake. Too many characters and too many stories distance the reader from the story you are trying to tell. You want to being everybody into the world you've created. 

2. Respect the genre. 
When it’s a genre that people are well acquainted with like zombies, you need to stick to the rules. By all means push the limits. I recently read a book by a well known author who gave one of his zombies the gift of thought. Bad enough, but he also gave them the cloak of invisibility. I threw that book across the room in a hissy fit. 

3. Make your characters distinctive.
People should know who’s speaking even without speech tags. This is tricky to do. 

4. Every step of the way, your characters must have a goal.
Simply surviving isn't enough. Just look at The Walking Dead. They always have a goal, whether it's to get revenge, find the rest of the group or help take Eugene to Washington because he says he has a cure.

For instance, in Dead Bastards they had to go to a shopping mall for supplies. There was no way out of it. Having goals creates conflict and brings your characters to life. Put your characters into a situation and see how they get out of it. 

5. Don’t do what writers of The Walking Dead’s did and get too bogged down with one aspect of your plot.
In the case of the hit show, they focussed too much on the Lori, Shane and Rick love triangle. In the end, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who got bored with it. If I wanted that kind of storyline, I'd watch a soap opera. 

In a zombie novel, the zombies must be king. 

Now for the zombies

Now yo've got the book sorted, it's time to think about what kind of zombies you'll have? 
Will it be the shufflers or the runners?

Will they be smarter zombies or the standard slow kind? 

Choose wisely, then run (or shuffle) with it.

Remember, it's your story and nobody can tell it like you can:) 

Why not check out my zombie novel? 

Check out the cover. It's pretty cool and is actually a scene from the book.

Dead Bastards is available in paperback and Kindle (although a book's probably better as a Kindle isn't much use against a zombie - trust me, I've tried). 

The new threat in The Walking Dead - two headed walkers

The new threat in The Walking Dead next season - two headed walkers.

Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon say, "Bring it on!"

Are the Morales family heading back to The Walking Dead?

When we last saw the Morales family, the camp they were staying in with Rick, Shane, Dale and the gang had just been attacked by walkers. Morales (we never heard his first name) decided to take his wife Miranda, daughter Eliza and son Louis leave for Birmingham, Alabama where he thought it'd be safer, whilst the rest of the group headed for their ill-fated trip to the CDC in Washington.

Could they have survived against all the odds and soon be reunited with Rick's group?

Morales could come in handy. 

There has to be a good chance. The show has lost three main characters in Bob, Beth and the biggie, Tyreese.

The addition of a new family would bring hope and Morales is a man who can handle himself. He did manage to stay in a group that included Merle after all.

And he helped defend the camp from the invading walkers that kill several of the survivors including Andrea's sister Amy and Carol's thug of a husband, Ed.

Morales is being tipped to be in The Walking Dead's companion show, Cobalt, but that doesn't rule out a top show return.

Why Beth shouldn't have died in The Walking Dead

It didn't have to end like this

The Walking Dead mid-season finale for me left a nasty taste in my mouth. Life may be cheap in the zombie apocalypse, but it shouldn't be for the main cast members of the hit show. And Beth's death was cheap. Too cheap. 

And, it didn't make sense. 

Noah didn't need Beth to save him

Beth and Carol were  leaving the hospital. Dawn wanting Noah to stay behind, shouldn't have been a game changer. Noah was a survivor, he would have escaped again under his own steam. 

And, Beth risked the life of Rick, Daryl & Co with her failed attempt to kill Dawn. The bullets could have ended up flying. Everybody could have died. 

The new sreetwise Beth would never have made that mistake.

So, how should it have gone down? 

Nobody dies 

Here's my take - 
Instead of "I get it now" and Beth stabbing Dawn,  I'd have this - 

Beth didn't need to stab Dawn

"I see how it is here. You let certain people do what they want, so you can kid your self that you're in charge. That you're helping people. You let some of the men, members of the Atlanta Police Department, do what they want, including raping women. You mess with people's heads and beat up kids like Noah. Your our own doctor even killed another doctor because he was scared he'd be replaced by him."

Then she looks at Rick, Daryl, Carol & Co. "These guys, we're a family. We don't hurt one another or use intimidation or brutality and call it surviving. We stick together because we want to."

She turns her gaze on the hospital. "You won't survive this world. You think you will, but you won't because you don't trust one another. Fear's the only thing keeping you together."

That would have stayed true to Beth's character. She was someone who believe people were basically good. That even when they strayed they'd find their way back.

Instead, what we got was the senseless (and wasteful) death of Beth Greene in what was a badly written storyline. 

What do you think?

Did Beth's death make sense to you?

How would you have liked things to go down at Grady Memorial?

I'd love to know what you think.

The Beginning...Flash Fiction

He's harmless. Isn't he?

Sunday
Dad found a mouse in our house today. We've called him Mickey.

Monday
Our mouse is a cannibal. We saw him eat another mouse. He gobbled him right down until all we could see was the tail. Yuck.

Tuesday
Mickey bit Dad today. On the finger. He smiled and said it was nothing, but he was up all night screaming about his brain. Mum says she'll phone a doctor in the morning.

Wednesday
Came home from school to see Dad trying to bite Mum. She was screaming, but we managed to lock Dad in the bathroom. Is that just one of those adult games play, that we're not meant to see?

Thursday
Dad is dead. Mum had to hit him over the head with a poker. She said if she hadn't he'd have killed us. I don't understand. Dad would never hurt us. Would he?
It was terrible. Dad's head was all bashed in, but even I was scared of him.

Friday
Mum tried to kill me today. I ran to a friend's house. They said I can stay here. I'm so scared. What if Mum and Dad come back, but they're not Mum and Dad any more? That happened to a boy at my school.