yesterday was a day described by most who took part in it as being one of the best days ever. it was Z-DAY.

for me it all began about a month ago around a pint of beer at café esperanza with raphie, her new boyfriend nick that i just met that day and his friend steeve. we were talking about zombie movies when steeve suddenly interupts me to tell me that a friend of his is organising a big zombie party where everybody well dress up and makeup like the undead and then go to mont-royal.

here in montreal we have this big mountain/parc called the mount-royal. think of it as central parc as mountain. and every sunday for the past 20-something years thousands of hippies converge and play tam tams for hours. over the years all sort of other things started happening. most people just lay in the grass and smoke some pot while the cops turn a blind eye. people sell bracelets and piantings while some DnD nerds fights with big duct-tape swords.

thats what we were interested in. what would happen if an army of zombies came out of the woods and attacked the duct-tape fighters?

news got out on some local message board and people were interested, so it was realy gonna happen.

the day before z-day i had to do an all nighter at school, wich actualy somehow turned into a night of partying at some bar. but i did work all night after that. from 3 am to noon i worked at school. then it was time to meet raphie at this girl katie's place on st-laurent. she was the mastermind behind the whole operation.

we got there a bit early and were some of the firsts to get there. the plan was to have a zombie potluck before heading out. a vegetaria zombie potluck. go figure. since i just spent the last day awake and working i didnt realy had any food to share, nor old clothes to rip off and get dirty in. but i did have some pretty good fake blood.

people started to show up, lots of whom i had seen before in some other parties. we ate some salad and watermelon and then started getting dirty. katie had set up all sorts of stuff in her backyard. make-up, flour, dirt, mud, corn-syrup blood, some guy even got there with his latex and special effect stuff to make peeling skin and such.

somebody gave me an old grey tank top i could do whatever i wanted with. i took since it was either this or topless zombie action wich i wasnt too keen on.

while most people where just putting white make-up and black around the eye...the first thing i did was empty maybe a third of my fake blood bottle right in my mouth and slowly spit it out and let it drip. thats only logic people..zombies bite people, hence get lots of blood dripping from the mouth. it was already looking pretty good. then it was the flour all over, some corn-syrup blood on my chest, shoulder, arms and clothes. some mud on my top, in my face and hair. and even some green jello on my gut (gastric acid?). some girl had lots of it dripping from her boob. zombie lactating breast she said. made perfect sense.

all in all, i was never this dity in my life. just to add more realism, me and raphie doused ourselves with some water to roll around in the dirt and get little twigs and leaves and stuff in our fake blood.

THEN i put some white makeup on my face and black around the eye.

and then some more blood. i kept adding blood all day long. i was the bloodiest.

and then everyone was dead and ready, we just got out on the streets and started walking toward the mountain. we established early on that we were gonna be classic slow moving zombies. not the running kind. so what would usualy have been a 5 minute walk took us about 45 minutes.

we scared little children, we stopped cars, we tried to grab passers-by and eat their brains, we screamed and moaned, we bumbed into eachother. the look on peoples faces, that WHAT THE FUCK look. it was oh so priceless. people just didnt understand why this was happening a 3rd of july.

we eventualy got to corner mont-royal and parc, right next to the mountain, where a mecdonald was waiting for us. the first order of the day was a zombie dance party at a mecdonalds. we were about 20 zombies with maybe 5 people taking pictures and filming, and some living tagging along too. we got insides moaning and screaming for McBrains. the whole restaurant was completely flabbergasted. the security and management just didnt know what to do of all this.

and then i called it. ZOMBIE DANCE PARTY! and we all started to dance and scream real loud. dance like a zombie. do the zombie. people everywhere were taking pictures. thsi was probably one of the greatest photo opportunity of their life.

and we got thrown out. or rather we started going out at the same time. apparently someone broke a window so we chose to switch from classic romero-style zombies to a more 28-days later-ish running and screaming type. we ran into the woods. away from some police that might or might not have even showed up. infact no one was sure if a window was broken or not. but we didnt feel like taking a chance would have been a good idea. since the whole restaurant was taking pictures. and we were pretty easy to spot. we were the screaming zombie mob.

then it was time to attack, we spotted the nerds from a distance. they outnumbered us eavily. and they had big weapons and big shields. and what did we have? nothing. were dead. we dont care. we hid in the woods for a moment and then all started screaming out guts out. the duct-tape warriors were all lined up with swords out when we emerged from the woods.

and then started the greatest battle this mountain ever saw.

we realy didnt know what to expect. were the duct-tapers gonna join in the game? were they gonna go easy on us or hit as hard as they could?

most of them hit as hard as they could. since we were already dead...we were never realy dies. we didnt play by any rules. we just attacked. we stile their weapons and hit back.

right after we started what i did was take the rets of the fake blood i was carrying in my pocket and empty it all in my mouth again. now i was realy fucking blood. dripping with blood all over.

ever saw that scene in fight club where that lou guys comes in the basement only to get jumped by tyler who pits blood all over his face?

thats kind of what i did. just screaming like a beast and spitting blood all over. i would get circled by 6 of them and attacked from all sides. even when id fell and lay on the ground for a minute id just get pummeled until id just rise again and still get hit all over. these guys just didnt care. face, balls, stomach. one guy had a giant warhammer, while another one had an axe, some kid with a cape even had duc-tape bow and arrows!

it raged on for a good 20 minutes before calming down. even the smaller girl-zombies where going at it like fucking nutjobs. getting hit in the face by giant warhammer and realy not caring too much.

and then it stopped...we just all fell back in the middle, and started screaming and jumping. it was over. the duct-tapers started shaking our hands and just thanking us for what had been their greatest fight ever. they had a blast and so did we. the only girl duct-taper (wich was a real mean bitch in combat) came to shake my hand and said and i quote: you my good man are fucking insane. probably because of all the blood wich some people actualy beleived to be my own.

after that we came down the moutain where thousands of people are just sitting in the grass listening to the tam tams. we started falling down and before we know we were all stuck in 20 person zombie pile-up. we crawled, we fell again. people just kept taking pictures and generaly not understanding what was happening.

we eventualy joined a dancing circle where a couple of old hippies were playing drums for yet another zombie dance party. tribal dance this time tho. everybody was having fun. people were joining in. the drummers just had these big smiles on their face. it was all very very playful.

and then we left just as quickly as we came in. we walked back to katies place. no zombie wlak this time. still people looked at us funny. but this time it felt funny to us because were out of characters.

once there i took a short shower just to get most of the gunk covering my body out.

my face was dyed red form the fake blood and still had some black on my eyes. i looked like some goth guy with a serious skin rash.

by then i hadnt slept in 24 hours but felt incredible. i was on a high. everybody was. everybody was completely pumped up. they were goign around talking about how this was one of the craziest thing they had ever done. and beleive me it was.

i think this day is going to go down in montreal history. the great montreal walk of the dead. or something like that. i just refer to it as z-day. just that day alnone, after i got home 2 people told me they had seen zombies fighting at the tam tams. i was there. on july 3rd 2005, i was dead.

im gonna tell that story to my grand childs someday.





and as proof, head to the montrealhows message boards where a couple of girls have been posting tons of great pictures. page 2 3 and 4.

[link]

the first one at the top of that page...thats me. it one of the rare picture where we actualy see my face. some of you might recognize raphie (aka lilzukkie around here)

jesus titty fucking christ that was one of the greatest day of my life.