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Zombie Walk 2006

As a tribute to Fulci's Zombie, I trekked out to city hall in shark vs. zombie ensemble to join the other 150 undead for the fourth-annual Toronto Zombie Walk on Sunday. The goal: Get to brrrraaaaaiiinnns at the Bloor Cinema.

Talk about fresh meat. Snow White. Where's Waldo. Priests. Courtney Love. All zombified. Appropriately, the "rotting flesh" and fake blood made me hungies for steak.

In full limping mode, the brigade stumbled along Queen West to the shock and laughter of passerbys and slow-moving traffic. As a streetcar stopped, it was our cue to immediately run up and start banging on the windows, scaring the crap out of some passengers. A collective "BRRRRAAAINNNS!" rang out through the crowd as the driver honked his horn, and set the car in motion.

And then the fuzz came.

The police signalled us to stay on the sidewalk and followed us along the route, where we all trudged along, arms limp and bent out front. Every so often, you'd hear the zombies walk into bus shelters, restaurant windows startling humans and other zombies. More moaning followed.

"I feel that at Halloween, people dress up as cheerleaders and it's not spooky at all," says organizer Thea Munster. "Zombies are social commentary, they're also very scary -- seeing your parents and loved ones dead, but living. You know them, but you don't know them."

Up Chinatown, the army stopped to paw at the hanging soya sauce chickens and barbecued ducks on display at Gold Stone on Spadina. "Meeeeaattttt....rrrrrrr."

But it didn't have to be all flesh and carcass -- it could also be family fun time among loving zombies.

"We're renovators that didn't quite cut it," says Carrie, who along with her daughter and husband were incidentally killed in a Holmes on Homes experiment.

"I thought I was I was going to be scared, but it's fun," laughs seven-year-old Rosie.

The zombie squad heads through Kensington and up Bathurst, a bit worn out as their makeup begins to run from the rain and a good day's scaring.

"You get to put fake blood on yourself," says Misty Rockn'roll, as her fake eye droops out of her socket and she's walking her zombie pug on rollerskates. "It's awesome."

For more Zombie Walk photos, check out the Flickr pool.


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