It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark, that something being approximately 500 zombies who took to the streets, memorializing the one month anniversary of Michael Jackson's passing, Thriller style. At 10 p.m., just as the relatively tame Wicker Park Fest was ending, all who were interested—or received the Facebook invite and were curious—met up at the fountain in the park. The place looked haunted, as it does even on a normal night. There were make-up artists on hand ready to zombify participants, but most showed up in full zombie couture and an overstated eagerness to look dead. Michael Jackson’s tunes were playing, zombies were dancing, photos were being taken, makeup was being applied, edible fake blood was being sold and non-zombie onlookers gazed with amusement and confusion. Some clearly couldn’t wait for Halloween, some took it as an excuse to wear eyeliner, and for some it was just another Saturday night. Finally, at around 10:15 p.m., the zombie army was all made up and ready to descend upon the living. They headed south on Damen Avenue, consuming both lanes and stopping traffic in either direction. A zombie-cyclist in the center of the swarm had hitched a sound system to his bike so he could blast MJ’s hits. Varying degrees of confusion, amusement, and abject terror paralyzed innocent bystanders as scores of zombies danced in circles around them to “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin.”
To be sure, the zombies were not granted safe passage down the busiest streets in the neighborhood. A team of anti-zombie soldiers—one wearing a gasmask and wielding a plastic shotgun, another a ninja with sheathed katana—tried their damnedest to thwart the incursion, but their efforts proved futile. A throng of undead Michael Jackson fans screeched and gnawed as they wrestled one soldier to the pavement, helped him up, and brushed him off, then chanted, “One of us! One of us!”
The real police force was considerably less concerned. About halfway through the death trek, a single police car blared its sirens as it approached the mass of cavorting zombies. After a few honks for satisfactory crowd dispersal, the cop car unceremoniously sped off.
After lightheartedly tormenting a few outdoor diners and getting the majority to dance along, the bloodthirsty gang turned left onto Milwaukee Avenue with “Billie Jean” as its soundtrack. Despite calls to invade city hall, the search for brains was heading to its destined conclusion: a full-on re-enactment of the “Thriller” music video.
The zombie cyclist parked his stereo-bike, and, after a few minutes of technical difficulties followed by rebukes from Wicker Park Fest security guards, he pushed play on the memorial’s eponymous epic. The zombies quickly took their places as backup dancers to Michael Jackson’s ghost. Though the performance lacked the discipline found in Filipino prisons, a few dancers managed to perform with a near-professional level of choreography; like the evening, it was a humble offering of undying appreciation.
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