Have you ever wondered to yourself "What would I do if zombies were real?" or maybe even "I would like to kill hundreds of people with the excuse that they are zombies?"
Well wonder no longer! Ex-special forces soldier and entrepeneur Randy Shepard has combined zombies, paintballing, camping and a high ropes course to provide an action-packed weekend for anyone willing to shell out £200 for the privelidge of ambling through the ten acre estate home to 'Zombie Land', Britain's first zombie themed theme park.
"I had the idea whilst watching Dawn Of The Dead. Got me thinking, what would I do in case zombies attacked? Would I be prepared? What would it feel like? After looking round on the web for a while I found out there were a few other folk with the same idea as me. Hell, some had been thinking about it a lot!" says Randy as we drive in the jeep through Zombie Land. I nod. It has crossed my mind as to what I would do if zombies were real, though I admit on a more conceptual level. Randy Shepard had took the teenage fantasy of killing your friends and neighbours and turned it into a money spinner. We enter a forest and stop. I ask him what exactly people are paying for when they arrive at Zombie Land.
"Well, the two hundred gets you into Zombie Land. You bring your own kit, whatever that may be, and try to 'survive' the weekend. We've hired hundreds of actors to wander around in full costume to be zombies. They follow you round, moan a bit, if they catch you, you turn into a zombie. We have a couple of cabins spread out, even a little shopping mall I'm having built up by that hill over there."
"Isn't it dangerous for the actors?"
"Not at all. They have on some body armour, the guns we give visitors are just paintball guns with a little extra oomph if you know what I mean. More splatter effects."
"But what if any of them get punched, stabbed, have their heads cut off, that sort of thing?" I say, looking at the trees around us.
"We don't allow any blades, that's rule numero uno, okay? We have a full medical crew on site in case anyone gets hit with a bit of wood, but to be honest we encourage visitors to run rather than fight." shrugs Randy. He gets out to urinate against a plastic skeleton and we set off again.
"But surely the whole point of the weekend is that you can attack the zombies?"
"Well let me worry about the zombies, why don't you worry about the visitors?" laughs Randy. We are driving towards one of the cabins Randy has built. A few visitors are there at the moment, surrounded by a horde of zombies. I admit, it looks quite realistic! The zombies makeup has been done by Industrial Light and Magic, the studio responsible for bringing Yoda to life and making Jurassic Park a good memory for many children that currently exist. I walk through the moaning zombies and up towards the door.
"Hey! Get in here man!" says a visitor. His face is covered in muck and his clothes filthy. He reaches a hand out through the door and pulls me in before I have chance to respond.
"What are you doing out there? Damn walkers are going to get ya." he says in an American accent.
"I'm doing a story on Zombie Land, I wondered if I could ask you a few questions?"
"Not right now man, we need all the help we can get!" he shouts. A woman runs in.
"They've breached the windows! We gotta get out of here!"
"Quick, help me pull this bookcase!" says the man, running over to a large bookcase and struggling with it. I shake my head and leave through the door again, closing it behind me. One of the zombies mimes biting me and I nod at him, feeling slightly self-conscious.
"Thanks. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about working as a zombie?"
"Urghhh." he moans in a Liverpudlian accent. I make my way back to Randy.
"I hope I didn't spoil the scene for them. They seem pretty in character."
"They love it! Get's the blood pumping. You know, every visitor we've had here so far has come back the week after? I'm thinking of building a hotel just outside the site so people can come from all over the world."
"Aren't you worried that this is just a passing fad? There were serial killers in the eighties, mutants in the nineties, zombies and spooky kids last decade. What if this time around it's giant mummy's or shape-shifters?" I ask.
"Zombies are here to stay man. As it's not just zombies you know? People can feel it. The world's coming to an end."
"People have been thinking the world's going to end for centuries though." I say. The jeep is now driving through the forest. Randy lights a cigar and looks at me through his aviator sunglasses.
"That they have. And people like you will be thinking that we're all talking a load of BS when the world actually does end."
"But look at the amount of times in history it appeared as if the world was ending, yet didn't. The amount of films and books in the last forty or so years about apocalypses is just a continuation of the belief system instilled throughout religions since the first people, that being it's a fascination of the end, of death, and how we come to terms with it. And if possible, survive it. Any post-apocalyptic fiction is the post-modern equivalent of an after life. They are but a series of limbos at varying degrees of a world without technology combined with justifiable violence. I imagine that when anyone talks about the world ending that they believe that they will survive somehow."
"But I am not talking about the end of the world in the sense of a post-apocalyptic fantasy, but the steady downfall of humans through environmental change over the next century. This park's existence, or rather, that of the zombie fantasy is a way of coming to terms with death, I agree. I am not suggesting that people will survive the oncoming apocalypse, quite the opposite. Most visitors don't survive this weekend. It allows them to perceive there own death in a much healthier manner than vague dreams of danger in which they themselves invariably survive." says Randy. The jeep has pulled to a stop in the middle of a field.
"My family is buried here. Somewhere, I'm not sure exactly. But in this field. As are the bones of a hundred other animals that I am distantly related to, all the way back to the dinosaurs. You think the dinosaurs worried about the end of the world? And when it came about, did they hope? Or did they breathe in the ashes?"
"Your family is buried here?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Well...in case the end of the world does happen to be zombies, I want to be the first to kill them." says Randy, pulling back his coat to reveal a pistol tucked into his trousers.
"You know what's better than regular zombies? Voodoo zombies. You should do a theme park based around that." I said, nodding at him as I get back into the jeep and drive away. All the talk about zombies and apocalypses has give me the urge to watch 'The Bridges Of Madison County', or perhaps 'Before Sunrise'. I hadn't yet decided, but I knew that I had both on blu-ray.
