Zombies: More Recent Dead (2 page)

For those inclined to at least shamble rather than remain rotting on the couch, there are zombie walks. A combination of flash-mob/cosplay, these events have been around since 2003 and are now documented in more than twenty countries. The largest gathering, so far, according to Guinness World Records, is 8,027 at Midway Stadium in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 13 October 2012. (A pub crawl following the zombie event involved more than thirty thousand more-or-less zombified participants.)

The living imitating the undead have also raised money for various charities.

Live roleplaying games, most notably
Humans vs. Zombies,
have proliferated on college campuses and elsewhere.
HvZ
humans defend themselves against a growing zombie horde with Nerf or other soft-dart guns and rolled-up socks. It is played on six continents and locations including Australia, Denmark, Namibia, and Spain.

Zombie-only versions of “haunted attractions” are beginning to appear as well. Locations are turned into zombie lairs full of the hungry undead and visitors try to survive the flesh-eaters.

The undead are even helping the United States government. In 2012, about a thousand military, law enforcement, and medical personnel participated in a first-responder seminar subsidized by the United States Department of Homeland Security that included a rampaging horde of zombies as part of their emergency response training. It was only a small, tongue-in-cheek part of the training, but using a zombie virus outbreak scenario to train participants for a global pandemic—in which they would need to deal with violent, crazed, and fearful people—proved to be a valuable teaching tool.

That same year, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a whimsical emergency preparedness campaign blog—
Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse
—which turned into a very effective platform (so many people accessed the once-bland website, it crashed) to reach and engage a wide variety of audiences on hazard preparedness in general. CDC Director Dr. Ali Khan has noted, “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”

There’s more evidence, of course, of our cultural love for these fictional creatures, but to get back to the written word—which is, after all, what
we
are concerned with here . . .

There’s No Such Thing as Dead Words in Z-Lit

Other than Quirk Books’ 2009 Jane Austen/zombie mash-up
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,
“coauthored” by Seth Grahame-Smith, no novel since
World War Z
has had anywhere near its impact. (And although
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
launched a mostly unfortunate subgenre, it now appears to be short-lived and unlikely to crawl forth from its tomb.)

This is not to say there have not been some excellent and/or popular novels since 2006 (I already mentioned some in
Zombies: The Recent Dead.
) Here is a 2009-2014—admittedly incomplete—selection (alphabetically by author’s last name; U.S. publisher listed unless published significantly earlier elsewhere):

• Amelia Beamer:
  The Loving Dead
  (Night Shade, 2010)
  
• Alden Bell:
  The Reapers Are the Angels
  (Holt, 2010) and
  Exit Kingdom
  (Holt, 2012)
  
• Mira Grant: Newsfeed trilogy (
  Feed,
  2010;
  Deadline,
  2011;
  Blackout,
  2012—all from Orbit)
  
• Daryl Gregory:
  Raising Stony Mayhall
  (Del Rey, 2011)
  
• John Ajvide Lindqvist:
  Handling the Undead
  (as
  Hanteringen av odöda
  in Sweden in 2005; English translation: Quercus, UK, 2009; Thomas Dunne, U.S., 2010)
  
• Jonathan Maberry: Joe Ledger series (
  Patient Zero,
  2009;
  The Dragon Factory,
  2010;
  The King of Plagues,
  2011;
  Assassins Code,
  2012;
  Extinction Machine,
  2013;
  Code Zero,
  2014; with two more forthcoming in 2015 and 2016, all from St. Martin’s Griffin)
  
• Jonathan Maberry (also from St. Martin’s Griffin):
  Dead of Nigh
  t, (2011) and
  Fall of Night
  (2014)
  
• Colson Whitehead:
  Zone One
  (Doubleday, 2011)
  

And, just a few of many, for Young Adult readers:

• Sean Beaudoin: The Infects (2012, Candlewick)
  
• Charlie Higson: Enemy Series: [
  The Enemy
  (Puffin, 2009),
  The Dead
  (Hyperion, 2010),
  The Fear
  (Disney-Hyperion, 2011);
  The Sacrifice
  (2012),
  The Fallen
  (2013),
  The Hunted
  (Puffin, UK, 2014, no U.S. edition as yet)]
  
• Jonathan Maberry: Benny Imura series (
  Rot & Ruin,
  2010;
  Dust & Decay, 2011
  ;
  Flesh & Bone,
  2012;
  Fire & Ash,
  2013: from Simon & Schuster for Young Readers)
  
• Carrie Ryan: The Forest of Hands and Teeth series (
  The Forest of Hands and Teeth,
  2009; T
  he Dead-Tossed Waves,
  2010;
  The Dark and Hollow Places,
  2011: all Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers)
  
• Darren Shan: Zom-B series:
  Zom-B,
  2012;
  Zom-B Underground,
  2013;
  Zom-B City,
  2013;
  Zom-B Angels,
  2013;
  Zom-B Baby,
  2013;
  Zom-B Gladiator,
  2014;
  Zom-B Mission,
  2014: all Simon & Schuster.
  Zom-B Clans,
  2014: Simon & Schuster UK)
  

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, zombie fiction became even more of a force to contend with in the short form than previously. Now, in the last few years, creative short stories seem to be appearing more frequently in periodicals both online and off, and the walking dead continue to fill anthologies. There don’t seem to be as many compilations these days from the very small presses and fewer of the “intended-to-gross-out” variety, but among those from trade publishers (alphabetically by editor):

• Steve Berman:
  Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages
  (Prime, 2013; mix of reprinted and original stories)
  
• Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier:
  Zombies vs. Unicorns
  (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010; half zombie, intended for YA)
  
• John Joseph Adams:
  The Living Dead 2
  (Night Shade, 2010, mostly reprints)
  
• Christopher Golden:
  The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology
  (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010)
  
• Christopher Golden:
  21st Century Dead: A Zombie Anthology
  (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012)
  
• Paula Guran:
  Extreme Zombies
  (Prime Books, 2012; reprints and
  only
  for fans of the extreme)
  
• Stephen Jones:
  Zombie Apocalypse!
  (Running Press, 2010)
  
• Stephen Jones:
  Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback
  (Running Press, 2012)
  
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia:
  Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction
  [Exile Editions (Canada, but distributed in US), 2013]
  
• Otto Penzler:
  Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!
  (Vintage, 2011; aka as
  Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead
  ; historical overview; reprints)
  

Check the acknowledgments at the back of this volume, and you’ll discover a broad range of sources of zombie stories from the past few years. You might also note that all but seven of the thirty-six entries collected here were published in 2010 or after. Of those seven: two are poems (which I did not consider for the 2010 volume), one has been published only in Australia, two were not then available for reprint, and the other two I was simply unaware of.

So What Makes Your Crypt So Special?

One thing I noticed as I discovered (or rediscovered) these very recent zombie stories: in our fictional worlds, we seem to accept that zombies exist or will exist far more readily than we did a decade ago. They are almost considered inevitable. Their fictional popularity is even sometimes referenced. This, perhaps, allows the writer to venture further from the generic trope and deal more with dead that live in different ways rather than adhere to the more common ideations—including the more fantastic. It may also allow the authors to be either more compassionate with the undead or even less understanding of the once-human monsters. We’ve known all along the living dead are really us, but authors seem to be using the metaphor of the zombie in ever more creative ways.

Usually, of course, the stories are more about living humans than the living dead—if and how they remain human after the world is utterly, irrevocably, (but not always horribly) changed. Our reaction to zombies is far more telling than the existence of the dead that walk and prey on the living—if they pose a threat to the living at all.

I won’t name titles, so as not to spoil any plots, but among these thirty-six stories you will find both the humorous and the achingly serious. Naturally, using tales of the living dead to comment on culture as a whole, religion, and politics are still fair game, and—

Zombies, along with other apocalyptic events, are used purely as a metaphor for personal pain . . .

The affliction is not immediate onset, you gradually get “sicker” until you are an “end-stager” . . . or the infection comes on in a hour—there is time to record your turning from a thinking person to a brain-eater . . .

Instead of a mass event, returning from the dead can be individual happenstance: a spouse comes back from the grave, a guy at the office shows up after he’s dead, through strange science one explores the liminal spaces that separate life from death . . .

The living dead are part of history, and the world has put itself back together one way or another. Zombies, like disease, are just another truism or merely something else that messes your life up . . .

The dead are raised for convenience, through inadvertent or intentional science or even necromancy. Society has contrived ways to deal with them . . .

Zombies are revived in various alternate histories: a pre-Roman Britain . . . First Nation legends . . . ancient Babylon . . . among nineteenth-century pox-ridden cadavers . . . during World War Two . . .

The dead return to life and nothing has changed for them or anyone else . . .

A few
zombis,
with roots in a mixture of Afro-Caribbean lore and the religion of voudou, appear . . . as well as other dead things commanded by more fantastic magic . . .

There is an outbreak of zombism in a posthuman far-future (complete with all the trappings of hard science fiction) on a spaceship traveling to distant stars . . .

Of course there are a variety of gritty futures where civilization has turned into an environment worse than any primitive jungle and one must fight the dead to live . . . and much more.

Are these all truly zombie stories? To me, they are: all deal with the dead coming back to some semblance of physical life. At the very least, they are worthy of your perusal and debate. The zombie subgenre, as I mentioned four years ago, is a hardy virus and continues to mutate and thus thrive.

So, once again, dear readers—
BONE appetit!

Paula Guran

18 June 2014

International Panic Day

Matthew Johnson

In the end I managed a bit of sleep, wedged between the trunk and branches of the oak, before dawn came. My knees and elbows ached as I lowered myself to the ground and I could feel a blister forming on my shoulder where the strap of my .30-06 Winchester had rubbed against my oilskin all night. I went over the previous day’s events in my mind, walking myself carefully through every mundane moment from when I woke up to when I climbed into the tree to sleep; then I looked down at my watch, waited for the minute to turn over and started to rattle off words that started with
L: life, leopard, lizard, loneliness . . .
Twenty words and thirty seconds later I took a breath and started down the train tracks.

It was about an hour’s walk to the camp, my last stop on this circuit. The clearing was packed with tents, their walls so faded by years of sun I could hardly make out the FEMA logo on the side; here and there ripped flaps of nylon fluttered in the breeze. The camps, cramped to begin with, were made even tighter by the lean-tos that had been built to expand the tents or shore them up, so that in places I had to turn sideways to squeeze my way toward the center of the camp.

As I got deeper into the camp, pale figures began to emerge from the tents, most of them dressed in filthy pajamas and bathrobes and nearly all bearing scars or fresh wounds on whatever flesh was exposed. I kept my .30-06 at my side and quickened my pace as they began to shuffle after me on slippered feet.

A single tent stood in the middle of the camp, as worn as the rest but bearing a faded Red Cross logo. When I reached it, I turned around and shrugged out of my backpack one arm at a time. All the narrow paths that led here were now blocked by the shambling forms that had come out of the tents: they paused as they reached the clearing, watching me carefully as I cradled my rifle.

After a few moments, one of them stepped forward. He was bald, save for a fringe of white hair, and he had a bloody gash down the side of his face. Unlike most of the others he was still in reasonably good shape, his skin the color of a walnut. I leveled my rifle at him; he took another shambling step and then stopped.

“Hey, Horace,” I said. I gestured at the cut on his face. “That looks bad.”

He shrugged. “There’s worse off than me.”

“I know,” I said, lowering my rifle, “but we’ll start with you. Then you tell me who’s worst off.”

He looked back at the others. “There’s a lot that are bad off, Kate,” he said. “How long do you have today?”

I leaned the rifle in a spot where I could reach it in a hurry if I needed to. “You’re my only stop.”

He nodded, though he knew as well as I did that even in a full day I only had time to see the very worst off. Their affliction aside, my patients’ age and the conditions they lived in meant that each of them had a host of issues for me to deal with. I counted on Horace to keep an eye on who was seriously injured, who had developed anything infectious, and who was showing signs of going end-stage. Everything else—minor illnesses and injuries, the frequent combination of scurvy and obesity caused by their diet of packaged food—I couldn’t even hope to treat.