What manner of fictitious nightmare are these abominations? To make the question a little less blood covered and brain hungry, let's assume the fictional nature of narratives creates a safer, more comfortable, more familiar environment. Like barring the doors to escape the horde, this fiction lets one take reprieve. Where one would otherwise be forced to face the lock-jawed living-dead with weapons at the ready, they can now interpret their surroundings with a little less conflict.
I find it ingenious. The full breadth of a situation is a
great thing to bear. Death, disease, violence, poverty, justice, sex, hunger,
emotion, or any other part of the human condition is profound enough to break
through one's flimsy feel of the world and come shambling after them for a bite. They might put down a corpse or two with guns of denial or katanas of contradiction,
thinning the blistering brood but, eventually, reality comes to confront them in
some damnable broken staircase or collapsed corridor leaving no opportunity to
evade it's ravenous teeth of realization.
Their blood rushes away as unadulterated terror wrings their spine. They brandish their ignorance with murderous desperation. These former
flesh-fellows will not take their misunderstanding without a fight. The bullets
and blades wound only the air as the indifferent undead trudge to their harrowing
conclusion. Noshed, they are undone.
Now, they know.