Ranged of course. The farther from a zombie you can stay the better.  If it does come down to melee however, I would always prefer a double edged weapon.  It's just naturally more effecient.

Quote from Samurismallz on May 15^th, 2011, 9:08pm:

Axes aren't actually all that heavy, and are not much slower than swords. Now, if you had something shaped like what Ratman put up, then yes, you have a bunch of excess weight, but axes were deliberately made to be fast enough to actually fight with, which meant a relatively small single head.

Quote from Samurismallz on May 16^th, 2011, 3:10pm:

Any melee weapon needs to be light and balanced enough to move fast enough to deal with a mobile target armed with another melee weapon. The axe is no exception, and as such historical axes had a single, smaller head, unless they were a specific type of axe that wasn't intended for combat. In general, axes intended for combat are much lighter than those intended for anything else, if chopping wood you need an axe with enough force to actually chop wood, which is somewhat tougher than skin, muscle, organs, etc. and it can't dodge so you don't really need that much speed.

Quote from Samurismallz on May 17^th, 2011, 4:41pm:

I'd say that depends on the wielder. I personally would prefer a bladed spear, but then whenever I'm doing armed sparring -with blunted arms, which are a bit different- I gravitate towards lightweight polearms which can both cut and thrust well. The bladed spear (sword staff is arguable a more accurate term) is one of these, the partisan another. Other people I know are much better off with an ax and a shield, and some of them can use fairly heavy arms. Said people are pushing two meters in height, but even then they favor a slightly different balance than I do. It comes down to personal preference.

What melee weapons do you own, right now, not plan to get, have in your house right now?  How well can you use it?  How much training have you had?  I don't mean copy what you see in a movie or off Youtube, I mean formal or informal training from an instructor who knows what he or she is doing and can instruct someone in one of the proper forms?
 
It takes a great deal of energy to fight in a melee, one of the most important things a proper form does is let you use the minimum amount of energy to dispatch your opponet quickly.  If you don't have training, you tend to flail around and exhaust yourself in a couple of minutes, then you get killed while you are gasping and wheezing or in the case of zombies, eaten alive.  Bill

Flamethrower, end of story.

As far as ultimate melee weapons, I have a tractor and a bush hog.  Bill

Personally, anything that uses readily available ammo, or none at all, is the best, like a sling, guns use bullets, cant find those just lying around, and they have a shelf-life. so then theres the bow and the atlatl, they need arrows, which can be incredibly effective, but youd have to retrive them, or keep making more. then theres the sword(katana or longsword in this case), it dosent need reloading, but it means that you have to get closer, but lets say we use a short-sword or a knife, the rule I use is, "stabbing distance is biting distance." but to each his own.