Zombies by Joseph McCullough Page B

against atomic and viral zombies. Others, generally older hunters, like something with more punch, like the Colt M1911. These are good for blasting apart necromantic zombies and are less likely to glance off thick zombie skulls. Either can be an effective tool in the hands of a trained professional.

HAND WEAPONS
    Most zombie hunters carry a knife, but this is only a tool and not really a weapon. In point of fact, there are no hand weapons that can be said to be very effective against most types of zombie. When desperate, hunters look for a heavy-hitting, balanced weapon that is unlikely to get stuck in a zombie. Baseball bats and machetes make good choices, but neither is likely to survive for more than a couple of kills before breaking or bending. While it is true that broadswords and katanas are probably the best anti-zombie hand weapons, neither is in common manufacture and nor are they easy to carry.
HEAVY WEAPONS
    The military learned early on in the zombie wars not to rely on explosive weapons against the undead. Immune to shock, concussion, shrapnel, and even losing limbs, only a direct hit from explosive devices is likely to take out most zombies. Instead,the best heavy weapon to use against zombies remains the good old-fashioned machine gun. While it is virtually impossible to make an aimed head shot with a Browning .50, it hardly matters when the heavy slugs literally tear the target zombie to pieces. Other members of the team can pick off the ones that are still crawling after the hail of bullets. The most devastating anti-zombie weapon is probably the minigun (a vehicle-mounted machine gun with rotating barrels), which is often carried by the helicopter support for containment teams.
    Having abandoned most sorts of grenade except signal smoke, most government hunter teams carry some form of directional anti-personnel scatterfire mine such as a claymore. These weapons work much like giant shotguns or canister shot in Napoleonic cannons, firing hundreds of ball-bearings in one direction. Any time a hunter team decides to hold a fixed position, one of their first tasks is to set up claymores. Triggering a couple of claymores against a close-packed horde can have devastating effects.
ARMOR
    The rising zombie threat forced military authorities to completely rethink personal body armor. Bulletproof vests and flak jackets were both unnecessarily bulky and provided little protection to areas mostly like to receive zombie wounds. Today, zombie hunters wear loose-fitting body suits made of a variety of extremely strong fabrics. They are virtually impossible to tear with bare hands, and most zombies will have to chew for a while to get to the human underneath. While providing excellent protection, they hardly render someone immune to zombie attacks. It is not necessary to get through the clothes to mangle the human inside, and zombies are nothing if not determined when it comes to killing, eating, or infecting.
    REAPER 1 AND REAPER 2
    During the 1988 Cerro Gordo, Iowa outbreak, local landscaper Neil Bower used a John Deere combine harvester to single-handedly eliminate a 300-strong zombie horde. The incident did not go unnoticed by the US government. Three years later, the military began field testing Reaper 1 , a purpose-built zombie harvester. Initial trials found that the blades had a tendency to gum up after the first few dozen zombies, and the designers had greatly underestimated the “splatter effect,” which sent potentially deadly zombie-infected matter in all directions.
    By 1996, the military had created Reaper 2 as the ultimate zombie-fighting weapon, incorporating the lessons learned from Reaper 1 . Smaller than a full-sized combine harvester, Reaper 2 still towers twelve feet above the ground. It has a cockpit team of two, a driver and the commander who also rides shotgun, picking off any zombies that manage to survive the blades and cling onto the side. The vehicle can also carry six passengers and