Imagine you have been infected with the zombie virus. Do you go home in the evening and quietly eat beans on toast with your family, watch a little TV, go to your room, kill a few things online, then sleep, get up, have breakfast, go to school and only then start the conventional zombie lurch, bite, groan thing? No, of course not.

If someone turns while at home they may kill a few things (but probably not online), and if they eat anything it is unlikely to have any similarity to eating beans on toast (apart from, perhaps, the colour). However, if they turn before going home then, quite simply, they don’t go home – they just lurch mindlessly around the school (which is why school caretakers are always first on the nomming list). Then, come morning, they are already at school when the other poor suckers arrive. This is already a pretty big giveaway, but only for the early birds who actually notice that they got to school uncharacteristically early. This is a bit sad, because the kind of people who get to school early are not usually the kind of people who are very aware about the possible undead nature of their classmates, meaning that they miss a very revealing tell and become little more than first on the breakfast menu. Later arrivals just assume that everyone else (as usual) got there first – so the Z people blend in relatively smoothly until their next attack of the munchies.

However, as various irritating platitude wielding idiots might say, there is still the possibility of a silver lining to this particular cloud.

Some parents actually notice if their offspring fail to return home in the evening! These parents react in very predictable ways. Basically, after hours of worry and procrastination, they start making frantic phone calls to all and every friend that their child ever had, asking if little (insert name of said offspring) has stopped over and forgotten to tell them about it. This is a mega-big giveaway.

“Hello (insert your name)” they say. “I don’t want to worry you [as if!] but did (insert name of their horrible child) stop over at your place last night? Because, you know, he/she didn’t come home last night and we are a bit worried.”

Imagine that you just received a call like that. What would you do? How would you react? Would you sympathise and agree to let them know if anything turned up? Well, maybe, but basically, that call is your cue to worry, because a big, big reason for someone not going home at night (as we have already established) is that their brain has been re-purposed by a massive viral onslaught to mostly only concern itself with finding fresh brains or other nommable human titbits. This is not good.

So, if worried parents telephone to ask if whatsit spent the night at your place, keep a very sharp eye out for whatsit, and apply the above investigative questions with extreme diligence and rigor. If whatsit is, a) not reactive to their surroundings (especially after lunch), b) smells funny (especially of rancid flesh), c) has serious make up problems or chews their cell phone, d) tries to mingle with an incompatible social group, and/or e) is notably immune to random insults and taunting, then you may just be face to face with a real one! Unless, of course, they spent the night with someone else – but, duurr! if they are a friend of yours then really, what are the chances that they have other friends they might spend the night with anyway! I mean, really!

So, once again, run away, hide, or, if pressed, engage in what Napoleon claimed was the best defence. (That’s offence, dimwit, and no, that doesn’t mean being rude – it means breaking things, AKA the bony bit with the squishy stuff inside, situated on top of the shoulders of the newfound member of the lurchy ones.)