A tall, grim-faced zombie lurches to the podium. He looks familiar and you feel like you should know his name, but age, decay and many headshots have rotted one side of his face nearly to the bone and you can’t quite place him. The look that he gives the sparse crowd from the stage is more of a glare.
Zombies of the Ridleybank Resistance Front, I come here today to praise a legend. A true great of the horde. An Icon. But first, I have something else to say.
What does it mean to you, to be a member of this horde? Is it just about the killing and the brains? Wake up for a brief while, break into a safehouse, feast and sleep again, with no thought or feeling in between? Is that who you are?
If you can answer yes to that question then I tell you now, you are no Ridley.
This is not just any horde. We are not merely a zambahgang, roaming the streets of Malton in search of easy meat. We are not the MOB, or the Dead, or Infected Swarm, LUE or Shacknews or any of them. We are the Ridleybank Resistance Front. Say it:
WE ARE THE RIDLEYBANK RESISTANCE FRONT.
The aforementioned are all great hordes. We though are better. We are the Alpha and the Omega of the Maltonian hordes. Before us is shadow and after us is nothing at all. We are the legacy of Petroskjo, who formed the Front and made Ridleybank a home to all of zombiekind and appointed us its guardians. We are the greatest and most enduring horde that this city has ever known. We do not have equals. We do not have rivals. We do not have peers. Without us, this city is nothing. Why do I tell you this today?
Because you have forgotten.
I look around here, at the relics and monuments of our past and I see dust and shadows. Years of apathy. Generations of neglected history and worse: History that was never written and then, because of that, simply forgotten.
Let me tell you now, brothers ans sisters, that our horde is not defined by the carnage that we wreak, by the stripped bones of our victims, nor even by our beloved, blood-soaked homeland. Our horde is defined by its history and its legacy. It does not matter how many harmanz we kill, or how many buildings we ruin, every time a zombie forgets who we are and what we represent, our horde is diminished. If we are our history then every moment of our greatness and achievement that goes unremarked upon and unrecorded kills us a little.
Is that what you want?
If not then speak up! Record your achievements and those of the horde. Tell the world who we are, what we have done and what we will yet do.
MAKE HISTORY.
This is what it means to be a Ridley.
All of you are Ridleys.
Do not allow the moments to pass you by and vanish forever.
With that in mind, gather closer and let me tell you of a zambah who made history.
Let me tell you of Murray Jay Suskind.
Murray Jay Suskind was the fourth Papa of the Ridleybank Resistance Front and his reign was characterised by an historic defeat. That does not sound particularly glorious, does it Ridleys? Well, it was. In fact, it is not the title of Papa, but the manner of that defeat that marks Murray Jay out as a legend of our horde.
Murray Jay came to us as a young zombie in the strike team AU10 and did so at a time when our horde was in crisis. The split with the MOB was still fresh in the mind and bitterness still reigned. The War Council was decimated and divided. The Gore Corps was still a bone of contention even within the RRF itself. Murray Jay himself, as a fiery young zambah, waded into the arguments against the bitter and departed old guard. He had opinions, convictions and the courage to stand by them. Needless to say, he was very soon noticed by the horde’s hierarchy and began his rise.
Not long after this rise began, the Council found itself again diminished. The horde was on tour and at war, killing countless people and destroying suburbs wholesale. But within, something was wrong: Papa Patrucio had vanished. For a while, all was fine. A relatively well-oiled machine like the RRF can keep going for a while without senior leadership, thanks to the quality of the leaders of the individual wings of the horde. However, it only takes one obstruction to risk derailing us.
That obstruction we found in a suburb named Santlerville.
The horde wandered in there, chasing the brains that had come so easily and at first it went well. The NTs fell, the hospitals, everything. Everything that is, except Dowdney Mall. Because in Santlerville something happened that our horde had not faced in many months:
The harmanz started to fight back.
What the breathers had was a leader and a plan. We had no such luxuries. As we rained hell upon the barricades, they evicted us with organisation and, eventually, ease. As reinforcements came to aid their defence we very soon found that we were, for the first time in so very long, overmatched. The Battle of Santlerville was unwinnable.
Still, the war was waged and within the War Council voices spoke up with plans and ideas with which to strive for an increasingly unlikely reversal. Murray Jay’s soon became the loudest voice of all. More and more the Council looked to him, this brash young zambah, for guidance and inspiration. He was never found wanting. Then, when it became clear that Patrucio would not return and the horde would need a new Papa, there was no other name that could compete: Murray Jay Suskind was appointed Papa of the Ridleybank Resistance Front, with no opposition from any in the horde.
His first act as Papa was to surrender Santlerville and retreat.
To a horde used to glory, this may not seem a moment of greatness, but it was. After almost two months of fruitless, soul-destroying and futile battle, our horde was exhausted and demoralised. Numbers were falling as zambahs wandered away, disillusioned. It was a death of one thousand cuts and every failed attempt as a break-in was yet another slash.
Sometimes a truly great leader is the one who realises that it is not victory that makes one great, but protecting that which matters most: The horde. Murray Jay knew this. He knew that the horde could not win at Santlerville and it was being slowly throttled into oblviion. Instead of allowing his pride to govern him, he made the right choice for the horde and moved it on. In doing so, he spoke in fulsome praise of our rivals, declaring them worthy victors, which they were. He announced a harman/zambah dance party at which all could take a moment to put aside hostility and share in a moment of peace. In short, not only did he do the right thing for the horde, he did it with the kind of humility and class that should be an inspiration to everyone in the horde, most especially its leaders.
And then, once Santlerville was a distant blot behind us, Murray Jay Suskind’s real work began.
With the War Council a shadow of its former glory, Murray set about resurrecting it. With the characteristic eye for talent that marked him out as a truly great leader, he restored the Council’s numbers and reinvigorated it and the horde as a whole. New voices came to the fore, allowing the horde to thrive. Murray Jay brought the kind of stability that the horde had not seen since the days of Petroskjo. More and more zambahz joined, attracted to this new classier, joyful approach. The horde was positive, vibrant and buzzing with fun and glorious, murderous intent.
Most important of all to Murray Jay’s legacy though is his influence not just through leading, but in the success of new leaders. Under him and with his guidance, the likes of Distinguished, Don Tickles, Goolina and I moved to the fore, so when the time came and Murray Jay was too tired to carry on, he did not simply vanish from the horde and from Malton, leaving the RRF in disarray. He had a line of succession in place and a War Council ready to support it. This was the greatest legacy of all: A lasting stability that could survive him and even continue to thrive without him. Not even Petroskjo managed that.
Other have played their part in making the RRF the stable horde that it is today, but it all began with Murray Jay.
And it all came from a defeat. One step back to make possible so many steps forward.
Murray Jay Suskind: A true legend and a true Papa of our Ridleybank Resistance Front.
Remember him.
