I am in need of your great wisdom. One of my zombie slaves is planning to rebel against me. If others rebel with him they could possibly overthrow me. What should I do? Oh, yeah, one more thing: do you have an ass?

Bow to me weak mortals!
Scarecrow man
Ruler of the planet of naked zombies

Greetings Cloth and Straw Man!

Although oft feared, the Zombie is largely a harmless creature. As the earliest of the sons of Cadmus, risen up from the sown teeth of serpents, Zombies share many of their slithery progenitor's attributes:

Zombies are notoriously torpid — especially in the coolness of night or Autumn. They have the translucent nictitating membranes —like Cadmus himself — and thus appear to stare while actually they sleep, even whilst walking.

As they wander they hiss and moan, and may even steal glances furtively as though in suspicious contemplation, but really they are only sleeping. Sleeping, and like the Serpent, dreaming plotless, plodding greyscale dreams.

Also, like the Serpent, the Zombie has the habit, when his sleep is especially restive, of shuffling backwards. Observers have reported finding Zombies stuck mumbling in the corners of rooms, inside of pantries with doors ajar, even backed down into the concrete throats of stormwater drains, their ragged and rotting flesh pressed numbly against the rusting iron grate covering the city's seeping orifice.

Like a Serpent deeply in slumber, the Zombie has been recorded to walk a rectilinear path at a steady gate, quite fully losing himself to his shuffling progress. Research conducted by our own Wayne, the State University, tracked several deep-sleeping Zombies originating in the Polish burgh of Hamtramck. Global positioning beacons tracked the troika of stumbling undead for an entire winter as they trudged Northwest from the outskirts of the Metropolitan Area, across the state to Luddington, whereupon they sank beneath the restless vernal waves of Lake Michigan in April. The GPS devices were, unfortunately, critically damaged by the frigid waters, and the Zombies were lost until, one full year later, they were detained in their attempt to cross our armoréd frontier Canadianne at Emerson, Manitoba, near the Minnesota-North-Dakota border.

Ah, sleepy Zombies; you are so silly. We can only shake our head-sac at your shenanigans. It is truly the case that, if they were to fear, they would fear you more than you should fear them.

But this is far from to say that you should fear not.

It is, after all, not for the Zombie to be rising up, even upon a planet fully populated by these majestic beasts. The Zombie, he is truly but a fluff amongst his flock.

It is his native leader you must take care to espy afore long. For if there is a trouble in your kingdom, friend, it most assuredly will not come from the Zombie. The Zombie is nature's sheep, as surely as the sheep is nature's Congress, and Congress nature's brain-feasting Horde.

All are easily, and truly only, swayed by the saccharine song of a Demagogue. Beware the curly bearded, be-hornéd shepherd who comes down from the mountain in sandals, bearing his Serpent Staff. For he is become Undeath, and is the vicious sickle-hand of God.

Your world of Zombies sits beneath our own, deeper even then the benthic morass from where I hail, and thus you must keep the vigil, for soon, very soon, The Sickle-Bearer is come, and He shall Shine through to the darkest regions of your slumbering world, and the light that shines from the edge of his Beatified Blade shall push through the nictating, cataractic membranes that shroud the eyes of your tender flock, and in their silent, unbeaten hearts shall a fire be ignited.

He shall harrow you and yours, Scarecrow Man! I have seen it in a thousand mown fields, a thousand reavers' abattoirs, a thousand music videos:The Zombie Messiah shall come down from the high peaks mantled in fire, and he shall bear before him that curved blade of his office, and he shall lop of your missiled toe the first thing, then Divide the Seas, and those Zombies shall not need 16 months to cross a piddling 800 miles; they will course across the earth like blood in the gutter of a hunter's skinning knife!

Once the teachings of the Zombie Messiah take hold, there is naught which might retard his forward progress, and then all of us shall fear the rending, gnashing toothy march of the awakened army of Naked Zombies.

There is only one thing which might nip the rising in its budding: quell the Zombie Messiah and his Serpent Staff. What will quench his thirst for Domination? A sweet draught of the steaming blood of his only begotten son, Charleston Heston. Contact Frere Heston at your earliest convenience and see if a pint, or perhaps two, can be spared for the good of your world and ours.

Yours,
The Giant Squid

Post-scriptorum: As my symmetry is radial, I lack a rear, and am therefore ass-less.