Cody Lyman's Comments

Thanks! I'd love to make this a webcomic or animated series once I build up the skills/time management abilities lol. And yeah poor guy doesn't deserve it, but how many people who get bitten do? Especially initially it's mostly luck of the draw, and while most people fancy themselves being survivors most probably get bitten before they even know what's going on. I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of someone who "lost" the zombie survival game and that's Cody's primary inspiration. 

Hopefully he'd get a cure, but at this point the virus might be the only thing keeping his body alive. Though his particular condition could in theory lead to a vaccine if the right scientists manage to find him  

Thanks! I'm glad you like him. I always like telling stories from the opposite side, and too many zombie stories focus on the survivors imo. But imagine Beastars x walking dead and that's more or less where I plan on going with it 

 You got to love a good pandemic story! As you can probably tell I'm fascinated with telling popular stories from the other side, which is why a lot of my characters are ghosts/zombies/ etc. Telling a zombie story from the zombie's perspective has always been a fun idea I've been wanting to try out. Popular media has conditioned us to expect that in a zombie apocalypse we'd all be die-hard, shotgun wielding, zombie blasting survivors but the fact is most of us probably won't make it past the first few days/weeks if we're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cody is on the unlucky end of this spectrum, his zombie survival game is over before he's even aware it's begun. So I think it would be interesting to tell the same story but from the perspective of someone who wasn't as fortunate as Rick Grimes or other heroes, as well as watch him grapple with his new urges and try to beat them. 

   Since Cody is a sentient zombie, he can also try methods of curing himself that would be very difficult of testing on a normal zombie. Like getting a zombie to ingest chlorine ( a major germ-killing chemical often found in pools) MIGHT work in "The Walking Dead" but good luck testing that theory. It opens up new avenues of how a zombie operates in the physical world.  

   I'm open to questions, as I'm still building this world and the characters and I need to answer some of those questions myself. But it's after midnight rn so I'll probably tackle some of those tomorrow as I need to get some sleep lol.  

    Though as an aside, I just happened to get Cellulitis today from an infected bug bite so I guess I sort of know how Cody feels now. 

Ok! To reflect a bit more on your questions:  

  - What will he be doing after this?   I'm not entirely sure, I have several ideas as to where the plot goes but nothing's set in stone yet. I have the end of his story in mind but not the middle parts lol. He would definitely want to help others, though more often than not he ends up doing more harm than good. I could see him going to help a group of survivors and then accidentally infecting them much to his dismay. The chlorine trick I don't think he discovers till later on (by complete accident) 

- Cody's perfectly happy to tell anyone he comes across that he's been infected, for their own sake. Usually it's not hard to tell he's not like the other zombies as he can speak, move differently from a normal zombie, drive vehicles, etc. But some people might mistake it for him being immune to the virus or not contagious, which he still very much is. Survivors who think that and take him in without proper precautions are probably in for a bad time. I don't think he'd become famous for his traits (as there's nobody around to acknowledge it), though certain parties would definitely be very interested in Cody if they knew about his condition. 

   As for physical needs and drives, I think they would take on a more feral countenance (in his case a feral puma).  So his hunger is directed towards raw meat (not necessarily human but any animal), and he has more instincts to stalk and hunt his food like a wild cat would. His sleep schedule varies but he's probably sleeping more than when he did as a person (cause his body needs to rest and recharge).  Normal zombies however being undead don't sleep. I imagine he would grow more territorial as well. So while before he was social and intimate with other anthros, now he tends to get irrationally pissed when someone violates his personal space. His motor skills are actually improved compared to before, as he can push his body to the maximum of its capabilities. Nevertheless, physical injury tends to hamper his movement.