That’s still a major question Santa Clarita Diet has yet to answer. We know the zombie virus was caused by a case of bad clams, and that all infected zombies are now coughing up these red balls . Does that mean that Mr. Ball Legs is just some sort of bad clam? Is he some sort of mutilated clam? Or is he a weird side effect of the virus that forms after you’ve eaten bad clams? As weird as this will be to say, the answer probably lies with the clams. At one point Eric manages to get his hands on an infected clam, and it sprouts a sort of tentacle-like arm and tries to eat another clam. Clam cannibalism? Sure.