A New Dawn-Reflections on the Zombie War Edward Ennion-Dickison

The tall spire of the Christchurch Cathedral fails to cast a shadow in the midday sun I am meeting Eric Dixey, about his research for Christchurch Museum’s oral archive of the Zombie War He arrives slightly late, and apologetic Standing at six foot five; he is dressed for the heat, in a white short sleeved shirt and blue striped shorts. His accent is a blend of West Otago, where he grew up and the Caribbeantinged London accent of his family.

What I find most fascinating is hearing how people rationalised the Zombie War. Not the pop culture ones, “The undead are divine retribution” or “humankind is a parasite, Mother Nature has decided to wipe out” I try to dig into what ideas people clung to that kept them going

I remember talking to one of the other parents at my daughter’s school She had tried to germinate an avocado pit just as the outbreak began in Palmerston North As everything fell apart, she was determined to keep that plant alive and took it with her when she set out for the Wairarapa safe zone. She kept it alive for the entire war. Through disease, food shortages, and zombie attacks. She said that the day she planted it in a community plot, not too far from here, it was like that chapter of her life had finally concluded. She could commit wholeheartedly to living in the present.

She asked me what had kept me going when the undead flooded the streets, when I lost contact with my partner and my family It’s strange, before the war I had such a horrified fascination of zombies I used to get sleep paralysis in the form of a recurring zombie nightmare I would lie in bed, frozen with the fear that the faintest sound might give me away. Yet when this nightmare became reality I didn’t freeze, I pushed on.

During my teens, I was hit with the radical pro-black lightning bolt of Malcolm X. It's like a mixed kid awakening, a rite of passage At uni, I was fascinated with black nationalist movements includingthe 5% Nation of Gods and Earths I remember reading a book by the RZA from Wu-Tang and he was talking about the Night of the Living Dead and zombies as a metaphor for mental enslavement “ I’m definitely no five-percenter but something about that metaphor just clicked into my relationship to zombies. When the dead upended our lives, it was a quote that pushed me on, “After the black man survives--he fights off destruction through the whole movie--a white man kills him.”

When life became a horror movie, I could not let myself become a cliche. I look at my daughter and I think I understand why my grandparents left Jamaica and fought for a life in England They survived, I survived It's time to live After the black man survives, he fights off destruction through the whole movie he sits in the summer haze and braids his daughter’s hair