I’m writing a zombie apocalypse story, and I’m looking for a little help on original terminology.

My zombies have two stages; the first is where the living are infected with the virus. This stage involves living zombification, were the infection takes over the brain and creates animalistic individuals. They’re fast, they can climb etc. They can be hurt and killed. Like animals, they have rudimentary understanding of things like fire.

When the individual is harmed enough to die, they enter phase two of the infection. Reanimation. They turn into the more traditional shuffling type zombies that can only be terminated via destruction of the diseased brain.

So, here’s where I’m running in to trouble. What should I call my creations?

Right now I have the rather lame terminology of: Infected, and Reanimated. I’m hoping for something a little more original.

Also, I need to come up with a name for the virus, and perhaps slang for both versions.

For slang I have Dead Heads for the reanimated, and I’m leaning towards Mad Dogs for the infected, though I don’t know if I like that one or not.

All suggestions welcome, please let me know what you think!