If we're being technical the author should have wrote "reaping" not "killing". It's a very different process. The use of quotes is probably an acknowledgement

If we're being technical the author should have wrote "reaping" not "killing". It's a very different process. The use of quotes is probably an acknowledgement that the term "zombie" is not universal. For example Linux uses "defunct" instead. Basically, zombie processes happen when a child process exits but the parent process--the one that spawned it--doesn't reap it. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process