They're slow, ill-mannered, quick to break things and have poor people skills – after all, their natural instinct upon meeting someone is to try to eat their brains.

Stupid zombies.

It could be said that there has been no better time to be an undead American, with scores of movies and books all dedicated to zombies and the zombie lifestyle.

(It goes something like this: Go to work, unsuspectingly get bitten by a zombie, start decomposing, lose motor skills, notice strange hunger, join zombie mob, bite a human. Repeat.)

Look no farther than Portland's Eastern Promenade for proof on Sunday as the walking dead take to the baseball fields to play the time-honored sport of kickball.

Picnics will be ruined, dog walks disrupted, and bike rides seriously altered.

And it could be just the beginning – we could be looking at zombie scavenger hunts (for brains), zombie capture the flag (for brains) and zombie marches (for equal rights ... and brains).

This is the third straight year of Zombie Kickball. Typically the pastime of elementary schoolers (and occasionally low-watt thrill-seeking 20- and 30-somethings), kickball has an unknown appeal to the soulless mind of a zombie.

The appeal of zombies, on the other hand, has never been higher. George Romero, arguably the godfather of zombie movies, has re-made several of his classic films and made new ones such as "Diary of the Dead," which was released last year.

It's spawned a number of imitators, from other films to books such as "The Zombie Survival Guide."

Local filmmaker Andy Davis of Emptyhouse Film said it all started for him with a copy of "Night of the Living Dead" his grandparents bought him when he was 9.

When he made "2," a zombie movie shot here in Maine, he found he wasn't alone in his zombie fascination, as hordes of volunteers showed up – some already in zombie makeup – for crowd scenes in the film.

People feel like they can identify with zombies, unlike other movie monsters, he said.

"Like they say in one of the Romero movies, 'They're us.' I think we can see ourselves there," he said.

"I know speaking with a lot of the zombies in our film, many of them felt like zombies, having the same schedule every day, doing the same thing over and over again."

Boo Deadswallows, lead singer of the metal band Covered in Bees, said zombie flicks hit a nerve because they can cover a lot of ground from humor to shock and gore.

Of course, there's also the idea of zombie movies as metaphors for society's homogenization and survival instincts, he said.

But he also has another theory for why zombies and the zombie lifestyle have caught on: "People just want permission" to dress up, he said. "People would dress up in costumes every single day if they got permission."

The band took part in zombie kickball last year, and this year it will play at a "zombie containment" after-party at SPACE Gallery.

More than 70 zombies showed up to play kickball last year – old, young, doctors, soldiers, hipsters, musicians – all taking the bases very slowly.

Combining the deathly slow with a game that calls for a moderate amount of speed may seem odd, if not hilarious, at first.

But it's a purposeful juxtaposition, said Catherine Krupsky, an organizer for this year's match.

"How mundane is a kickball game, but how bizarre is it to see hordes of zombies walking around the Eastern Prom," she said.

The game is not all about shock value (although shock can go a long way), as the event has a way of drawing out people who may not spend a lot of time together.

"It can be spooky if you're not part of it, and creepy if you are a part of it, but secondly – hysterical," she said.

Since the only requirement is that you come as the living dead, people find ways to get creative by developing zombie personas and...