Tales of the Walking Dead Reveals New Name for Walkers

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday’s “Amy/Dr. Everett” episode of Tales of the Walking Dead. Walkers. Biters. Lurkers. Roamers. The use of language and nomenclature in The Walking Dead Universe varies when describing the flesh-eating undead who walk, bite, lurk, and roam to feed on the living. On Sunday’s “Amy/Dr. Everett” episode of the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, naturalist Dr. Chauncey Everett (Anthony Edwards) has constructed his own taxonomy of the dead he researches and studies in The Dead Sector: a no man’s land demarcated by a 40-foot deep, 200-meter wide man-made trench spanning hundreds of miles. (Read our recap here.)

The Dead Zone is where Dr. Everett studies the “Homo mortuus,” a term he coined for the dead now elevated to the top of the food chain above Homo sapiens. “Homo” is the Latin word for “human” and “mortuus” derives from “dead.”

A decade into the apocalypse, Dr. Everett has spent years tracking and attempting to understand the complex migration patterns of the Homo mortuus, or walkers, which he notes are highly manipulated by the presence of sound, signaling potential prey. Everett’s research focuses on certain specimens — “Specimen Sunflower,” “Specimen Gamma,” and “Specimen 21” — he tags with collar transmitters to track as they move as part of a large herd.  

Read More ▸ Tales of TWD Recap: “Amy/Dr. Everett” ▸ Tales of TWD: “Dee” Post-Mortem With Samantha Morton ▸ The Walking Dead‘s “Variant” Walkers, Explained

Not unlike Alpha (Samantha Morton) and the Whisperers, who wear walker-flesh masks to walk with the dead, Everett camouflages himself with a jacket made of Homo mortuus skin to study the herd up close. 

“My job is to observe, collect data, analyze it, and never interfere,” Everett tells Amy (Poppy Liu), a settler who crosses over from the other side of the trench claimed by “chompers,” her group’s less-scientific name for the dead. The Homo mortuus are part of nature, explains Everett, whose life work is to study and record their behavior psychology and migration patterns in this territory reclaimed by nature.

Everett reveals he was part of a research team studying the environment since the shift — the fall of civilization due to the global outbreak of an unknown virus — until the group splintered. At a reclusive ranger’s station, Everett and his former colleague, Dr. Moseley, continued their research together until Moseley succumbed to cancer. Moseley is Specimen 21, who made Everett promise not to put him down — but to study his reanimated corpse as part of the Homo mortuus herd roaming The Dead Sector. 

New episodes of Tales of the Walking Dead air Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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