The Living Dead Swarm The Streets At This Year’s Montreal Zombie Walk

In what is thankfully turning into an annual tradition, today saw hundreds of people decked out in gory detail at this year’s Montreal Zombie Walk. The event drew huge crowds of onlookers to the point where the initial route had to be changed in order to avoid blocking off major streets like St-Laurent boulevard.

The Montreal Zombie Walk started at roughly 3:00pm at the Mont-Royal metro where participants and pedestrians alike gathered to see who had the best costumes. Then, at 3:30pm, the parade officially began and the horde of undead masses limped, growled and snarled its way up Mont-Royal Street. Once it became apparent that the Walking Dead were drawing crowds to large for pedestrian safety (the roads were not blocked off to vehicular traffic, after all), the police escorts determined that the safest way to keep them being eaten was to divert the marching corpses to St-Urbain instead of the initial plan of passing via St-Laurent.

From there, the Montreal Zombie Walk proceeded as scheduled, walking to Prince-Arthur, from there to St-Denis, and finally along Ste-Catherine until they reached their destination at Club Soda. As I write this, they are now watching a marathon of classic zombie movies, presumably while chowing down on brains and the flesh of the living. Unfortunately, I could not be among them, because being in-character up until Prince-Arthur meant that imitating a limp started to hurt my back. That, and because this cute little tyke with a wickedly realistic costume kept gnawing on my spine. Just kidding, folks; I actually gnawed on his. MWAHAHA!!!

The highlights of the march when I was still in participation include the several bars along Mont-Royal who left their terraces patron-free so that people with toy guns could try and defend themselves against the zombie horde as it marched by (there were no survivors, of course), and the ingeniousness of some of the costumes. One walker dressed as the recently deceased Steve Jobs, which may seem a little too soon. However, all was ok, because he had an app for that. Zombie Super Mario also stole the stage, as fans of all ages rooted for him when he unfortunately discovered, after defeating Zombie Bowser, that the Princess’ brains were in another castle.

In other zombie news, The Walking Dead Special Edition box set for season one came out earlier this month, while the season two premiere aired on Sunday (the next episode is scheduled for tomorrow night). As for the comic that started it all, The Walking Dead Survivors Guide will be released just after Halloween, while the 15th trade paperback is scheduled to come out right in time for Christmas.