CJ's close call

I was listening through some today and came to the part where CJ was cornered in the basement of Dunbar. TOWTM says "leave her" and the infected back off. It is of course surprising that TOWTM can talk, but another thought struck me, can the infected still understand language? If so, what does this say about how much of their former selves is still there.

The other possibility I came up with is that they can't understand language, and TOWTM vocalized it only to show CJ that he could, as a gloat of sort. If this is the case, it shows an arrogance in TOWTM's personality.

There is even more to it. The situation at Dunbar Towers and at other occations prove that TOWTM has to utter commandos in order to organize his army. Moreover, the zombies seem to have perserved some of their intelligence. The simple sentence "Leave her alone" requires the ability to reason. Even the brain-deadest (?) zombie has to recognize CJ as a living being or even a person. The whole thing would have been pointless, otherwise.

But it is just one of the various mysteries. Does TOWTM eat? Why does he not bite humans? And so on, ...