Covidgeons
The ZINTER-19 plague primarily affected sentient people, but one exception did exist - namely the humble pigeon. That 'covid' and 'pigeon' could be bludgeoned into the word 'covidgeon' made it easy to scream whenever someone encountered a flock of the plague-ridden sky rats (at least it did for those who saw them first, anyway - the rest got silently dive-bombed to death).
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| Covidgeon by Zuza Gruzlewska |
So-called 'covidgeons' had the same insatiable hunger as their larger cohorts. Although they lacked the heft of covid zombies, they could at least fly. This made them simultaneously far less and far more dangerous than the regular scarlet shamblers.
Covidgeons made a particular nuisance of themselves in the plague of 120 AD5 - harassing all the victims that regular zombies couldn't reach. They caused a particular problem for blimps. Although these sky vessels should have been grounded either way, flight became all but impossible when the feathered menaces began gnawing at the balloons.
Out of everyone, the breeders of homing pigeons suffered the most. They literally couldn't get away.
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Covidgeon Facts
- Covidgeons go: "GROOOO! GROOOO!"
- A group of regular pigeons are collectively known as a 'plague'. There wasn't any reason to change this for the zombie kind.
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Creation Notes
So it turns out zombie pigeons are a real thing! Apparently when they get something called 'Newcastle disease' the birds will lose all sense of balance and awareness and fly around in a daze before randomly dropping dead. I had no idea about this until just now.
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| Artist's impression of a bird with Newcastle Disease by Erik Beyersdorf. Cheers for uploading this to the internet, Erik. |
If you'd like to know more, I can direct you to a story titled:
Moscow investigates 'pigeon apocalypse'
I included covidgeons in the book because I described all the tower blocks as having 'boarded up windows'. After reading this back to myself I thought:
"Wait - why would anybody over the ground floor need to board up their windows to stop zombies getting in?"
The only explanation I could think of was zombie pigeons. This seemed like a fairly silly idea at the time, but I now realise undeath is a natural facet of bird life.
Coo, coo, my friends - coo, coo.
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