Dead men walking
Zombies invade I-Drive
Amanda Moore
Issue date: 10/22/07 Section: News
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"Can I get a 'Brains' from everybody?" Sanders said.
"Braaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnns!" they screeched.
Although far from the 895 participants needed to break the Guinness World Record set last year by Pittsburgh's Monroeville Mall zombie walk - where George A. Romero filmed the original Dawn of the Dead in 1978 - the horror fans who did show paid no mind.
One by one on the restaurant's porch, people transformed into the undead with help from several artists and supplies donated by Party City and Bloody Mary Makeup.
One girl plopped into a chair in the corner and asked Chris Frease, 24, "Do you have any more latex? I have a wound sort of coming off."
Frease, a makeup artist from AEO Studios, an Orlando-based prosthetics shop, set aside his injury sheets - ghastly cast latex - and touched up a wound the size of an open hand just beneath the girl's rib cage. His workspace was littered with cotton swabs and wadded tissue covered in black and red paint.
"People kept staring at me [on the way here]," Frease said, false nails protruding from his cheek. "One actually asked if I was doing something for Universal Studios."
T.G.I. Friday's Front Row Manager Jarrett Eldred stepped out from the restaurant and stood on a porch stool alongside his employees to see the Rich Weirdoes troupe perform Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in the parking lot.
"It's [the zombie walk] a great idea, especially the cross promotion," he said. "It's a little different, but our Friday's [Front Row] is different, too."
There are only three Front Rows worldwide, Eldred said.
Will Sanders, walk organizer and promotions director for ZombieFriends.com, said that although he and his family are from Savannah, Ga., he chose Orlando to hold the walk because of Screamfest, a horror convention held in Orlando.
Sanders said he has attended the convention every year since its start in 2002.
The walk marked the start of the three-day convention, being held just across the street at the Wyndham Orlando Resort.
For Sanders and others, the zombie walk was a family affair.
Harmoni Sanders sat beside the guest book, which was used by Guinness to count attendees for the record. With her was her 9-year-old son Jakob, dressed as a clown, complete with bloody axe; her 7-year-old daughter Katie, donning a black-and-gray wig; and her 2-week-old daughter Sophiya, whose onesie read, "I'm a zombie, too."