ZOMBIES: Recap - The Walking Dead "Secrets" Ep. 6, Season 2

Another great Sunday of the human condition in the zombie apocalypse has come and gone, and the plot thickens.  Here's ZombieBloodFights.com take on Episode 6, "Secrets"

The title of the show says it all, as all of the proverbial secrets are exposed to the light.  Glenn tells Dale about the dead in the barn and Lori being preggo.  Glenn tells Maggie in no uncertain terms Lori is pregnant.  Maggie almost dies (ironically enough) getting Lori a set of morning after pills.  And the noble and forgiving Rick finds out Lori is pregnant by his best friend, Shane.

Shane also tries to teach the determined laundry girl, Andrea, how to fire the gun.  And in the thick of a zombie mob looking for the still-missing Sophia with Shane, she finally hits her stride with the firearm and gets in the zombie-blasting zone.  Then, on the way home, bangs it out with the bad boy.

And this might be the true heart of this episode.  

Pregnancies are nothing new to the zombieverse.  Romero explored the circumstance in "Dawn of the Dead '78".  It was subsequently pushed even further in the 'Dawn...' remake.

It's an almost iconic and quotable line from the original 'Dawn...'  If you're a hardcore fan, you're already reciting Peter's line:

"We can handle it.  It doesn't change a thing.  Do you want to get rid of it?  Do you want to abort it?  It's not too late, and I know how."

Well, Lori walked that road, this time racked with guilt at knowing it's Shane's baby.  Exposed by Dale, she had to make a choice and sent Glenn for the abortion pills, and Maggie almost suffered a very 'full term abortion', so to speak, at the hands of a zombie at the pharmacy.  She wasn't very happy about that.

Lori swallowed a bunch of pills, but then got cold feet and supposedly threw them back up.  But she left the remaining pills exposed back at the camp, and Rick found them. 

Rick confronted her, and they had a conversation about life and death in terms of abortion.  Even though Rick knew it was Shane's, his noble character could not accept the idea of abortion.  Lori couldn't accept the possibility of bringing a child into the zombie apocalypse.

Let's think about this for a moment.

The world is a wonderful place, but its dangerous as well.  Naturally, the world of the Zpoc is dangerous also, especially in the big cities.

But think of the real world.  The actual real world we live in and the dangerous insanity that we walk around in.  People are putting babies in microwaves, trash cans, even hacking them to pieces.  I wish I was making this up.  Google it.  

"Baby killed in microwave"

  "Mom cuts babys arms off"  

"Baby dead in trash can"  

"Mom decapitates baby eats brain"

You will be disgusted and sad.  Then, you'll be even sadder that it has happened multiple times across the US.

Truth is stranger than fiction.  And the cruelty that happens to infant children, the most helpless of all, is the height of human darkness.  Look at the Casey Anthony trial.  Seriously, what's crueler?  Having a baby born to a terrible psychotic parent, tripping on post-partem drugs, and not having the opportunity to live and give back to the world?  Or having a baby born to responsible and loving parents in a terrible world where that child has a chance to give something to the world?  Is there really a difference between horrors of the zpoc and the real world?

So if we have established the fact that there is safety in the countryside, then why not?  Sure, there's this western point of view that the baby would not be provided with the luxuries western culture could provide.  

But babies have been born for centuries.  You don't need a hospital or other modern amenities of the west to have a baby.  A large segment of the rest of the world doesn't have access to the great medical technology available.  And you know what?  Babies are still born, and babies still live, even with limited resources.

Think about it.  If we learned anything from '28 Days Later', or, hell, from biology class, dead organic material rots away every time.  EVERY time.

If the dead are just that and not replenishing the body as a living one does, then the dead plague comes and goes in a month or two.  Tops.  They fall over and rot away.  Until then, you treat them like a wild animal that's trying to kill you or your family.  It's what humans have done since the dawn of time.  What's changed?

A baby takes shape in mommy for 9 months.  That's plenty of time for the world to get its s**t together.

Let's face it, at that point, the world's going to need new blood, so to speak.  What better child to have and what better parents to raise that child than Lori and Rick (and Shane, perhaps).

Not an easy choice, but easy choices are few and far between in the zombie apocalypse, especially when it comes to life and death.

And Andrea can follow Lori's lead if and when Shane's seed comes to rest in her womb.

Until next week...

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Bowie Ibarra is the author of the zombie horror series "Down the Road" from Simon and Schuester and Permuted Press.  His most recent story, "Big Cat", is about the power of friendship when a monster runs roughshod over the south Texas countryside, murdering people in its wake.

Network with Bowie and order his titles at  http://www.zombiebloodfights.com