Wouldn’t it be horrible if the z-pocalypse struck, but it went for birds? Think of it: you’d come out of the chippie and get mobbed by zombie gulls. You’d get zpigeons at your picnic, zibises in your bins. Ztarlings on your lawn. Everywhere you went, you’d get pecked by zirds, zwans on the Thames and zormorants down the shore, zparrows in the eavestroughs—and Christ, can you picture a zummingbird? It’d have your eye like a milkshake, just prick in and slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.

Some OAP would go to feed his zarrot, and whup! It’d bat him round his earhole, knock him off his feet, have his face for a nest liner. Caw.

The zanary would snack on the cat.

You’d have flocks of zeese hurling themselves through windows, zostrich hordes roaming the streets. Zoose teeth and zostrich claws, and holy fuck. Zassowaries. Did you know those can jump, cassowaries? Five feet straight up, they can do, strip your apple tree bare, or your head. A living one’s bad enough, a hundred pounds of feathers and spite, but a freshly undead one…you can sod off with that.

But the worst zird, the most fearsome of all, would be the bearded vulture, bone-eating terror of the Pyrenees. It crunches skulls like peanuts—what do you do when that wants your brains? You’d have to, like, walk around with a jet engine, ready to suck up the zultures.

If there was a zirdpocalypse movie, it’d start with a young couple watching the sunset. A murmuration of ztarlings would fly in, thousands and thousands of them, and the lovers would marvel at their grace. They’d hold each other close as the ztarlings swooped closer. The flock would whirl around them, and they’d shriek first with delight, then with terror as the zirds swarmed like dermestid beetles, nibbling them down to the bone.

…yeah. I’d watch that. Also, zombie Sharknado.