How do we define a zombie? A reanimated body, something dead but up and walking around? That would describe a vampire or the Frankenstein Monster, too, wouldn’t it? (The Monster, at least, would have BEEN dead before the scientists reanimated it.) How about mummies? The kind we find in the movies, I mean, instead of the museum. The only differences between a mummy and a zombie are the age of the former and their desiccated state (they’ve been dead for centuries if not thousands of years, and were embalmed to preserve their bodies, albeit in a dried-out state; zombies tend to be more fresh and “ripe”) and the fact that mummies tend to have some rudimentary intelligence, if not still possessing their full intellect. Zombies are mindless and motivated purely by the baser instincts of hunger or aggression.
What about those zombies who are resurrected by mummies, the way the character in the new MUMMY movie reanimates her victims to do her will. They attack who she directs them to attack. If they were left on their own devices, might they continue to attack living beings? Might they crave human brains? Is this the natural state of the reanimated dead, when no greater will is in the driver’s seat?