Video by: Eli Diaz and Maria Salvador
Audio by: Michaia Hernandez and Sonja Dumass
Story by: Calvin Alagot
Photos by: Kristen Aslanian
The Metro Red Line screeched to a halt at the Hollywood and Highland station. Commuters stood ready to hop on when the doors slid open and a swarm of flesh-eating zombies spilled out onto the platform. Screams and groans echoed through the Los Angeles catacombs that tunneled the living dead to the surface. Hundreds of shuffling corpses with the insatiable hunger for human flesh swept the Hollywood scene. Could this be the beginning of the end?
Fortunately for the living, the restless mob of undead walkers were part of the Fourth Annual Hollywood Subway Zombie Walk. Participants dressed up as the classic monsters depicted in George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”
Jeff Schiffman, the organizer of the horde, used online social media to pull the event together, inviting more than 2,500 people on Facebook. Schiffman started his zombie walk in 2009 as a special way to celebrate his 30th birthday.
With the rise of zombies in popular culture, similar events have been popping up all over the world, with some drawing thousands of the walking dead.
Despite zombies being his preferred monster, Schiffman said that he is not ready in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse. “I don’t have a bug out kit. I don’t have any firearms. I don’t even have a baseball bat,” he said. “I’m just not prepared at all. I’m not even prepared for an earthquake.”
