Rain drizzled silently around him as he crouched outside the compound, weighing his options. He reached inside his DadGear Diaper Vest and pulled his smart phone out of the built-in cell pocket and studied the floor plans again.  His mission was to get in, get the package,  and get out without being noticed. This would be another dangerous adventure, and one vital to the freedom loving citizens he was out here to protect. Unfortunately it was also his night with the twins who were sitting quietly in the double stroller next to him.

“Damn last minute canasta,” he muttered, sliding his phone back into the pocket.

The secret agent identified dozens of potential entry points, but only one was wide enough to accommodate a double stroller, and it was currently guarded.  He opened the DadGear Messenger Bag that hung easily on the stroller using the built-in stroller hangers and carefully pulled one of the chloroform infused wipes from the convenient wipes access window.  Defying local laws, he left the twins unattended for just a moment, snuck up behind the guard and held the wipe over his nose until he fell unconscious.  He stuffed the guard in a nearby bush, retrieved the twins and snuck into the compound, making his way to Mendoza’s office and the package that awaited him.

He was jiggling his keys in front of one of the fussy twins when another guard turned the corner. He tried to dart behind a secret agent shaped Norfolk pine but it was too late – the guard had spotted the stylish green retro stripe on his messenger bag.  The uniformed man locked eyes with him, and then started to reach for a large alarm switch on a nearby wall.  Thinking quickly, the secret agent yanked a BPA free glass baby bottle out of one of his bottle pockets and with a quick underhanded motion whipped it at the guard.  The bottle slammed into his temple, and he crumpled to the floor.

“Cow moo you,” he said, as he walked over, retrieved the bottle, and handed it to one of the twins, who happily took it and began draining it’s contents.  He then pulled out an abnormally large nylon rope that fit surprisingly well in the spacious messenger bag interior pocket and began tying up the unconscious guard.  Grabbing a set of lockpicks from one of the smaller zippered pockets on his vest, he deftly unlocked the office door and then tossed the set to one of the twins who happily shoved them into his mouth.  He muscled the stroller through the door, and spotted the package sitting on a nearby desk.  As he silently pulled the door shut behind him, he heard the rather ominous click of a gun being cocked.

“I’ve been expecting you,” said a voice from the dark.  Mendoza emerged from the shadows, waving a pistol at him.  Both men steeled for the inevitable back and forth of quips that would generally highlight this situation – until suddenly Mendoza wrinkled his nose.

“Chloroform?  Cyanide gas?” he said, raising his gun. The secret agent looked equally as confused. Then they both looked over at the twins, both of whose pallor had darkened by several shades of red.  With a knowing glance, Mendoza holstered his gun.  “I have three evil triplets at home – I’ll help.  Really though, you shouldn’t bring kids to these things.”

The secret agent nodded and unzipped his vest and pulled two diapers from the large concealed diaper pockets on either side of the vest.  He handed one to a visibly impressed Mendoza and then reached behind his back, unzipping another hidden pocket and pulling out a changing pad.  He unfolded it and both men started changing the twins.  Mendoza looked around for wipes – the secret agent quickly unzipped the wipes access on his vest and handed him a few.

The two men finished their chores, and strapped the twins back into the stroller.  Then they reset to their original positions, the secret agent once again staring down the barrel of Mendoza’s Glock facing another seemingly inescapable situation.  Then he noticed they had left the soiled diapers on the floor and his face bent into the standard secret agent smirk.

“Could you throw those in the messenger bag, and then we can get back to this,” he said, gesturing to them.  Mendoza sighed, holstered his gun, grabbed the diapers and walked over to the stroller. Opening the flap, he dropped them inside.

“Feel free to grab a wipe while you’re in there,” the secret agent said.  Mendoza nodded – the especially pungent diapers had left a foul smell on his hands. He pulled a wipe and quickly washed his hands with it.  The secret agent made a face and then gestured to his nose, making the universal sign of “the booger.”  Mendoza, embarrassed, quickly turned and began blowing his nose with the wipe, and then suddenly collapsed, a faint look of recognition and horror in his face as he realized his mistake.

The secret agent stepped over his fallen foe, grabbed the package and dropped it into the messenger bag, removing the soiled diapers and dropping them next to Mendoza.  As he pushed the stroller out the door he thought for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.  Not the best one-liner, but it would do.  He turned and said with classic secret agent nonchalance…

“Keep the change.”

With the combination of the recent swine flu epidemic, the economic downturn, and Joan Rivers’ inconceivable new title as “The Next Apprentice,” it seems that now may be the best time to discuss an issue that I don’t believe gets enough attention from parents today: if the world is suddenly beset by zombies, what umbrella stroller would serve you the best in trying to keep your family safe from the hordes of the undead? I’ve spent many a restless night pondering this very question, and after much research and some state-mandated intensive therapy now consider myself reasonably proficient in the topic to provide some answers for you as well.

The first point (well, maybe the second) folks usually bring up when I mention this topic is to ask why I don’t recommend the standard “el-cheapo” umbrella stroller you can buy pretty much anywhere. And honestly, if it meet your needs, then by all means don’t buy anything better. There isn’t anything wrong with those strollers – they are cheap, super compact, easy to lug around, lightweight, a snap to close, and come in camouflage should you need to quickly hide in the bushes as undead police officers troll the countryside looking for “survivors” in which to eat their brains. We certainly have one of these umbrella strollers (we received it free in my Oscar Presenter gift basket), and have used it many times.

One problem that we’ve encountered with the basic models though is that they are often cheaply constructed and in some cases can fall apart under heavy use. But by far the worst issue for us is that the seat is just plain uncomfortable, as the bottom of the seat digs into our daughter’s legs, and she can only last 10-15 minutes in there, which is just not helpful when we are out shopping or searching for any uninfected survivors. Plus there is generally no place to stash the shotgun you’ll inevitably need to battle back your ex-neighbor who is now trying to get back at you for trampling his roses by munching on your brains.

We decided after a lot of thoughtful consideration that we needed to be ready with a better umbrella stroller should the zombies arrive, and we began a laborious search for a more sophisticated one for our daughter, one that could meet all the requirements we needed. After much heated deliberation and a few phone calls to the government run Zombie Hot Line, we came up with the following list of requirements we were looking for.

1) A Comfortable Ride

Most likely in the event of zombie invasion, you are going to find yourselves moving around on foot, as the gas stations will probably either be on fire or breeding grounds for mechanic zombies to show off their ‘undead rides’. You’ll need a stroller that your child can be in for long periods of time, and that is largely dependent on comfort. Look for decent padding in the seat, and especially under the knees where the feet will hang. You may also want to find one with a reclining seat, so that your child can sleep in the stroller if necessary, should you need to camp for the night in an abandoned log cabin deep in the woods deceptively far from the reach of the undead armies.

2) A basket underneath and/or storage pockets

Lugging supplies (baby food, diapers, ammunition, dental floss) between barricades of survivors will certainly weigh on you during the zombie invasion, so having a place on the stroller to store things can be a lifesaver. We love the basket under our regular stroller, and we wanted to maintain that convenience while in flight with our umbrella stroller.

3) Long handles

My wife and I are reasonably tall, and we found with our free umbrella stroller that it just wasn’t built for tall folks. If I need to run from my boss turned zombie trying to kill me with the Mr. Potato Head I have on my desk at work, I can’t afford to have a stiff back from bending over our umbrella stroller. The best way to determine if it will work for you is if you can get your hands on an actual model at a Babies R’ Us or Cabela’s Zombie Supply and test it out.

4) Folds Compactly

Should we actually make it to a safe zone, we’d want to be able to fold up our umbrella stroller as compactly as possible, as similarly as possible to the aforementioned cheap models in order to maximize space in our FEMA trailer. In our research we found that some of the high end umbrella strollers didn’t fold up in the slim style but instead like a normal stroller (think collapse rather than umbrella fold), which just defeats the purpose of using it instead of the regular stroller.

5) A Sun Shade

Despite the dark and gloomy look of most zombie invasions portrayed in movies, there really isn’t a reason to believe that an actual attack would change weather patterns at all. Therefore a sun shade would come in handy to ensure that our daughter stays cool and happy even as her infected zombie infant friends are slowly but unwaveringly crawling after us, diapers full of digested brains and Zwieback toast.

Is the threat of a unforeseen zombie horde borne of the swine flu possible or even imminent? That is hard to say. Would an umbrella stroller that meets the above requirements allow you to escape the chaos and reach a zombie-free safe haven where the remaining humans keep nightly vigils at the walls to turn back the waves of undead? Very likely in my opinion. Regardless of this specific topic, I implore you, whether you are in the market for an umbrella stroller, a brain penetrating shotgun, or steel skullcap capable of resisting zombie chomping, BE PREPARED. Tomorrow we could all be dead. Or in this case undead.