How to Build an Army of the Undead

If you want to build an army of the undead, don't become a scientist. Don't infect people by injecting them with space rocks or something like that. Don't do any research into any mind control devices to build your army of minions hellbent on worldwide domination. Just get a van and go to the bus station. That is all you have to do. Just go to your local greyhound station and wait. Eventually someone will come along resembling a zombie. And anyone that isn't insanely strung out on some amount of hallucinogens will see this quite easily.
The first time I had to use a Greyhound bus station to get somewhere was some years ago when I was traveling to visit my father. It was a little trip, maybe 200 miles and I figured to myself that I can survive a four hour bus ride to Goldsboro, North Carolina. I barely made it out alive and I will never be the same. Day started out by taking a cab to the Greyhound station in Norfolk, Virginia for a 830am bus trip. Get there good and early and buy the ticket. One thing I instantly noticed about the people working at the bus station. They don't want to be there. Hell, they want to be there less that you do. So they really couldn't give a flying shit what you take on the bus with you. If you wanted to do so, you could stick a chainsaw in a paper grocery bag and as long as it wasn't under 50 pounds they couldn't give a flying shit. The other thing that I instantly noticed about all the people at the bus station is that they are all insanely old. They all look like retired skycaps that just can't let go of the job and they aren't cheerful enough to be working at a Walmart. Every last damn one of them resemble someone that retired, then two years after retirement thought that they needed to get out of the house and applied for a job as a greeter and on the third or fourth day went off on the goth kid that works in the housewares department for having an earring and listening to "that goddamn devil music". Then he gets fired for replacing everything in the CD section with the Glen Miller Orchestra and Lawrence Welk and finally goes off in a rage about how much younger people have it better; and finally sets the store on fire after running his motorized cart into the starter logs from the camping department. That is another reason why everyone that is a greeter at Walmart acts and talks like the animatronic band at Chuck E Cheese. But I digress.
This elderly gentleman checks my bags in, which in reality amounts to him putting my bag under the damn bus. I spot a bank of payphones and call my dad to tell him the time I should ideally be coming in. Then I spot something that I honestly thought only existed in storybooks and fantasy lands. Pay televisions. Yeah, apparently the way these things work is you pop a quarter in, turn a crank and it turns the TV set on and you can watch TV for a few minutes before the TV goes all fuzzy and you have to pay again. But with most of my higher education coming from watching movies most of my life, I opt not to exercise one of the few concierge services the bus station had to offer. Reason being, have you ever watched a movie where someone is in a bus station using a pay TV? It is always some guy wearing a tattered flannel shirt, looking like he hasn't shaved in about four or five days, and holding a kerchief on a stick. Seeing as how I generally look like shit before nine in the morning anyway, I decide to go for the lesser of two evils and get a cup of coffee in the bus station restaurant.
Holy shit is the bus station restaurant one of the nastiest places in the world to eat. The coffee looks like a glass of water with dirt in it and anything that is advertised as edible should not be eaten by any human being. The odd thing about the bus station restaurant is that it doubles as a gift shop, where you can buy any last minute items you need for your arduous journey. Of course I can't imagine anyone traveling anywhere by bus halting their journey because they don't have a pair of pantyhose in an egg. Yeah, if you've never been bus stations are pretty much the land that time forgot.
In the hour that I was waiting for this bus to arrive, there were several quite odd people that tried to converse with me. Most of the conversations amounted to bums coming up to me and giving me some sob story about how they need to get somewhere and needed exactly eight dollars to get on the bus. Naturally, I would ask a couple of these where they were going and every single one of them would tell me that they are going on the next bus out. Well shit, I am going on the next bus out and I will tell you I am not getting on a bus with a guy that can't buy a bus ticket without begging to complete strangers. So I tell the guy that all I have is like a dollar and I need that to buy coffee. Screw him, you could smell the booze on his breath anyway. It appeared that he used the money he was gonna use to buy the bus ticket on several very cheap bottles of wine.
Time to get on the bus. Once again they could really have better security measures on these things because they will let anyone on. No metal detectors, no xrays, nothing. Swear to god I was a guy sharpening a knife at some point.
Bring a bottle. Bring a wide mouth Mountain Dew bottle on the bus with you because you really do not want to subject yourself to having to use the facilities on a bus. You can actually see the road under you while you are peeing. It is much more honorable to just toss a jacket or a blanket over your lap and pee in a bottle than have to subject yourself to the horrors of urinating in a bus toilet. Oh by the way, they do have a spot, just like on the airplane bathroom for used razors. Now, I can't play a frigging Gameboy on a bus trip or read a book let alone shave. You could probably tell really easily the people that are shaving on the bus because they all look like they are covered with cuts across every inch of their face like a botched plastic surgery job.
After about four or five hours of this hell I arrive at the other bus station which I swear to Christ had a dirt parking lot and was surrounded by trees. My arrival point was not a whole lot better than my departure point so I didn't feel comfortable in the slightest of staying around this zombie breeding ground. I started walking away from the bus station to look for the nearest payphone to tell my dad that I had arrived and needed him to pick me up. But for some reason I could not find a working payphone in all of this town so I had to walk about two miles to the nearest truck stop.
This little journey to the truck stop was not without incident. I get no less than three blocks from the bus station when someone comes out of a house and runs up to me in a rather frantic state of mine. This cracked out emaciated woman informs me that she needs to borrow three dollars to buy a two piece and a biscuit. Oh and she will pay me right back. How? How you fucking dunderhead? You saw me walking down the street and want to borrow money. What is your great plan to pay me back? Send three dollars to everyone in town and hope you get the right house? The best one is about four blocks later when a group of kids come up to me and ask if I have any blank tapes, batteries, or a screwdriver. Hell people, I'm not a greeter at Walmart!
So if you want to take over the world with an army of the undead, get some batteries, screwdrivers, blank tapes, and lots of envelopes with eight and three dollars in them and go down to the bus station. After about five minutes you'll have raised an army big enough to take over the entire world. Or at least the housewares section of Walmart.