It was a total cliché, a complete low budget horror movie moment. The snapping of a twig, heard from within a cabin where I was staying for the weekend with my friends. The place was steeped by the usual tacky legends of vengeful ghouls and ghosts, surrounded by the requisite dark woods, and yep- you guessed it- we were there on Halloween. What can I say- every now and then in your life you have to be stupid, or else everything is just not quite as much fun. Anyway, so I heard this sound in the woods. I know scary right? A twig snapping in the woods. Of course it could be a badger, or a fox, or an owl. It could also be an axe wielding psychopath. What to do? What to do? Naturally we felt it our duty to investigate. I mean come on: cabin, scary woods, how could you not?
So we decided to see whether there was something creeping around just beyond the reach of the cabin’s porch light. I often think that it is a good thing I am not a cat- if I were I would die from curiosity within a week.
As I was saying, we cautiously opened the door.
BUT we had seen all of the movies, you know the ones: where there is the idiotic and highly unlikely pretty girl who walks away from her friends to investigate a sound. She walks, alone, far into the woods (without a torch or anything sensible like that of course) and lo and behold! Is horrifically murdered. Or something along those lines at least.
Instead of repeating this lapse in judgement as old as time and the film industry itself, we each took a torch and stayed together with an arm’s distance between each other. Everyone had their phone, with the emergency services number ready to be called at a moment’s notice.
Thus, when we found out that the source of the noise was not an owl, fox, badger, or psychopath but rather a ravenous zombie come to eat our brains, possess us, leer weirdly etc…(depending on which un-dead union it was affiliated with) it only took a moment to beat it down with a large stick lying around purely for plot convenience, and call the police.
All who read this take heed: if ever you find yourself in just such a situation, don’t run around screaming and panicking. You never know- acting logically could in fact end a zombie apocalypse before it really got the chance to get started.