“Rocket Man” by Stephen Graham Jones will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Molly Tanzer interviews him on the story.

“It had used to be Michael T from over on Oak Circle, but you’re not supposed to call zombies by their people names.” So, what are you supposed to call zombies once they change?

Trick is, zombies, whether Rage or Romero or Haitian, just turned or winding down, on their last rib, they all break down into two basic categories: known and unknown. As in, if this flesheater coming at you down the hall was once your mom, say, then you’re maybe going to hesitate a moment. And that’s all that not-Mom-anymore zombie needs. It’s over for you. So, calling Michael T by his people name, that could be the difference between life and death. If he’s just a shuffler or a walker or a ‘zombie,’ though, then you can waste him without having to apply any thought to the act. Which, that’s the real pleasure of the zombie apocalypse: just like them, we don’t have to think, can just react. There’s no shades of right and wrong. It’s just kill kill kill. In our lives, there’s so much thinking, so much deciding. When dealing with zombies, there’s none of that. A lot of people look on the zombie apocalypse as a kind of vacation from themselves, I suspect. And we all empathize.

MORE: Read the rest of the interview here!