Dead Serious

Hey, I'm not sure if anyone reading this can give me a second opinion, but I figured it was worth asking.

Is Zombionix actually intended to be entertainment? Is there something I don't GET about the whole thing?

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, let me just catch you up a bit. Then I'll elaborate on why I'm asking this question.

Basically, I'm stuck with the worst cable package you can imagine. It's only a small step above not having cable at all. Just local networks I could get over the air, and a few random channels that appear and drop out whenever they feel like it. I don't have a cable box, just the actual line plugged directly into the television.

Anyway, after a channel search I'll pick up new channels with a variety of picture quality. I get A&E with a ton of static, but the awful shopping channels… so many of them… come in with absolute clarity. The local stations come in fine, but honestly I don't really have a thing for uninspired sitcoms and newscasters stumbling over their words while showing the wrong footage.

I don't even know what channel it was, the one that came in this time around, but I know it was on some incredibly long number, like 82.41567.

The only reason I stopped on it was BECAUSE it was new. My only interest was in figuring out what I'd picked up, and if it was of any real value.

The first thing I noticed was that the commercials seemed pretty specific. A local firing range, a self defense course, a series of World War II DVDs that, as the commercial stated, "DON'T LEAVE OUT A SINGLE DROP OF GERMAN BLOOD".

All violent imagery. At first I figured this was a hunting/sportsman channel, which I wouldn't have gone in for. I can't watch lions taking down a zebra, so you won't catch me gawking at Bubba Jr. and Bubba Jr.-Jr. blowing a Doe's brains out.

So needless to say, I was surprised when it turned out to be airing a cartoon.

A heavy metal theme played, some real cheesy 1980s shit, and a logo flashed into the screen… red against black.

"ZOMBIONIX!"

A voice boomed the title as well. "Now back to ZOMBIONIX!"

It appeared that I had come in well into the episode. The animation reminded me a bit of the 90s "X-Men" cartoon. Trying to make everything look semi-realistic, but only making it chunky and awkward.

Standing in the middle of a wasteland of debris and ruined buildings was this crazy-looking zombie with spiked up orange hair, a skull-like face, and one arm replaced with a rocket launcher. He was wearing torn and bloodied army fatigues.

"Rot Rocket," a voice crackled from a communicator on his belt, "Rot Rocket, what's your location?"

"Third pile of rubble on the left." the zombie chuckled.

The scene cut to another undead creature… little more than a skeleton with a few spans of cyborg-armor… lying prone on a nearby rooftop. He had a sniper rifle that seemed trained on events below.

"Very funny," the skeleton-thing growled, "I see you. You're clear."

The camera zoomed in on the skeleton's face.

"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, "The Biohazard Bruisers! They're all around you!"

It was jarring. Hearing a cartoon character just openly shout "shit" like that. Now my interest was captured. I just stared at the whole dark, depressing-looking thing as it played out on the screen.

The Rot Rocket character started to whirl around, looking for any sign of approaching danger. After a moment, four shadowy figures emerged from hiding places all around.

As each figure stepped forward, Rot Rocket was kind enough to mention their names.

"Flesh Thresher!!" A ninja-like zombie with robotic talons leapt from a pile of garbage.

"Brainpick!!" A demented-looking old man zombie with giant pneumatic drills where his arms should be crept from a doorway, laughing madly.

"Fright Knight!!" A tremendous monstrosity of living corpse and vaguely medieval robot armor lumbered from behind a heap of scrap metal.

"Slopper!!" The final of the four, a half-melted zombie with a tank on his back and hoses for hands shambled weakly from the shadows.

The four closed in on the lone zombie/solider thing, and as they did, sniper fire rained down on them. Looking around wildly, the four started to shout at each other.

"Where's that coming from?"

"It's Seymore Bones!"

"Find him and kill him! Then kill him again!" Slopper chimed in with an inhuman, gurgling screech.

Before they could even hope to locate the hidden character, Rot Rocket started pounding them with a volly of explosive projectiles. Everything all around them was just completely fucked up. I was starting to see why the battlefield was such a wasteland, now.

Some of the characters were injured, spilling huge amounts of neon green, glowing fluid from their wounds. It seemed to cause them pain as they howled and thrashed on the dirty ground… but it did nothing to stop them.

Everyone who fell eventually got up again and returned to fighting.

Over and over again this happened. Injury, neon-green blood, thrashing, screaming, getting back up to rejoin the fray.

It seemed as if some sort of distress call had gone out, because after a good amount of this repeated, seemingly pointless fighting, even more of the undead things joined in.

Coming to Rot Rocket's aid was an incredibly intense-looking zombie with two heads and a general "circus" theme… and a wheezing, tumorous-looking walking corpse with an industrial fan in place of his hand.

"Thank slag you're here," Rot Rocket shouted, "Dead Heads, get my back. Last Gasp, do your thing!"

The fighting continued as "Last Gasp", the fan-handed thing, slowly wandered off in a seemingly random direction. The whole thing didn't make much sense as a strategy… until Last Gasp started to quiver. He shook, turned, lurched, and his red, glassy eyes rolled back into his rotten head.

The tremendous sound of a vicious fart boomed from the television.

Using his hand-mounted fan, Last Gasp spread a cartoony "stink cloud" across the battlefield. As he did, the fighting ceased and everyone retreated to their seperate spaces.

I laughed.

"Damn," Rot Rocket quipped, "Who's been giving you Broccoli?!"

The good guys… WERE they the good guys?… they all let out a series of sick, frightening guffaws. The more they laughed, the less I found it all funny. It was just going a bit too far, and the violent, almost-wretching sound started to get to me like nails on a chalk board.

But I haven't even gotten to the reason I'm asking if you've seen this before and can tell me who the Hell it was made for.

The credits began to roll. All of the names seemed to be either complete nonsense or the creators were of some nationality I hadn't heard of before.

One that sticks out in my mind is the Chief Animator, "apof powjie".

It looks like someone just jamming their keyboard, right? Or am I insulting someone from a country where that's "John Smith"?

The ending theme music was off-putting as well. Once again, it was this ridiculous metal guitar thing…

ZOMBIONIX!
CREEPY UNDEAD CYBORG UGLIES!

ZOMBIONIX!
MEAT AND METAL ARE AS ONE!

FIGHTING FOR THE HUMAN RACE
(IT'S NO LONGER THERE)

FIGHTING IN THE HUMAN'S PLACE
(NO ONE'S LEFT TO CARE)

THERE'S NO SHELTER TO BE FOUND
(ENEMY IS FRIEND)

EARTH IS JUST A BATTLE GROUND
(WAR WILL NEVER END)

OOOOHHHH - ZOMBIONIX!

After the credits, the scene faded to the interior of some grungy old room with peeling paint and litter covering the floor. Rot Rocket stood there, hands on hips. Well, one hand and one rocket launcher.

He looked directly at the "camera", or to where one would be since this was all animated. Then he spoke.

"Alright, all you little leeches! What did you learn from today's episode?"

The footage cut to the previous battle scene. A series of children's voices overlayed the brutal, senseless carnage.

"Fighting solves nothing!" they chanted.

I leaned back in my seat and nodded. Now I got the message! … or so I thought.

"And what else?" Rot Rocket appeared once again, this time closer to the screen, "What ELSE did you learn? Don't tell me you empty-headed little shits have nothing to say!"

The footage cut to the animated landscape of some futuristic city. Fires raged, things exploded, it looked like Hell on Earth.

The children's voices chimed in again.

"Fighting solves nothing, but KILLING solves everything!"

Rot Rocket, closer still, appeared onscreen… his putrid, oozing skull-face now grinning as best he could.

"That's right, and I'm DEAD SERIOUS!" The latter statement was delivered as if this was that character's catch-phrase. Something said a thousand times before.

The footage panned around, away from Rot Rocket, to a crowd of little animated children sitting calmly on rows of elevated seats you'd see at a live television taping.

Children of every race and religion… every skin tone, every hair color, every shape and every size. Their eyes, black and empty voids… their faces slack and expressionless with gaping, drooling mouths.

"WELL?" Off-camera, Rot Rocket seemed to be growing impatient.

At his slightest urging, the children… all of them… turned to their nearest neighbor and started clawing, biting, kicking and thrashing… drawing great spurts of blood and pulling out lengths of intestine. All the while, they made inhuman mewling and bleating noises.

I only had a few seconds to take in this gruesome sight…

Then I lost the channel.

If anyone out there can explain this whole thing to me, please do. I'm searching for answers anywhere I can get them.

The only possible connection to this thing that I've been able to find is a series of strange attacks on the local news every now and again… just these weird, random acts of violence that leave people and animals mutilated if not dead.

The attackers…

They're always children. Sometimes they show surveilence footage or play a 911 recording where the kid just starts going ape shit and doesn't seem to want to stop until someone or something is dead.

Every time they have audio, I hear these kids saying the same thing when they're through. When they're standing over their dead dog, or their Grandmother is bleeding out on the kitchen floor…

"I'm DEAD SERIOUS."

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.