'Night of the Living Dead', a 1968 film written and directed by George Romero, is the progenitor of the ubiquitous zombie movies, TV shows, and literature so popular in modern culture.
Writer and director George Romero
Poster for the 1968 movie 'Night of the Living Dead'
After making a series of zombie flicks Romero embarked on a zombie novel, but died before it was completed. The mantle was picked up by best-selling author Daniel Kraus, a zealous, long-time Romero fan..... and the result is this novel.
Author Daniel Kraus
This 650+ page book is far from a quickie blood and guts horror tome that could be adapted into a two-hour movie. Rather the story, a sobering depiction of 15 years of a zombie apocalypse, would require a mini-series to do it justice.
*****
The story: On the night of October 23, early in the 21st century, recently deceased humans stopped staying dead. Instead they rose up, and craving 'food', became cannibalistic creatures variously called ghouls, biters, white eyes, things, demons, etc. Soon enough, zombies became the favored term for the undead beings.
There are myriad characters in the story, but the narrative's five main protagonists are:
- Etta Hoffmann - a dowdy Washington DC statistician who works for a division of the Census Bureau called the 'American Model of Lineage and Dimensions' (AMLD) - a unit that tracks U.S. births and deaths. Hoffman, who's probably on the autism spectrum, can't bear to be touched and "has always been AMLD's oddball.....full of leaden, blank-stare interactions."
- Charlene (Charlie) Rutkowski - a physician apprentice to San Diego's assistant medical examiner. Charlie, a shapely woman with "big, country-western blond hair and the swagger to go with it....is as out of place in a morgue as a cadaver would be at the Grand Ole Opry." Yet Charlie enjoys her job and is good at it.
- Greer Morgan - an African-American high school student who lives in a shabby trailer park in Bulk, Missouri. Greer often skives off school, and her teachers think of her as "recalcitrant, argumentative, lazy, and sluttish." Greer is clever though, and good with a bow and arrow. She likes "the creaking resistance of the wood. The smarting slap of the string against her armguard."
- Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Karl Nishimura - a gay, married, Japanese-American master helmsman aboard the aircraft carrier USS Olympia. Straitlaced Karl has earned the nickname 'Saint Karl', and his "studied hesitation has been dubbed the Nishimura Delay." Karl gives every question sober consideration, "whether asked about enemy attacks in the Persian Gulf or which brand of toothpaste to buy from the ship store."
- Chuck Corso - a barely capable but handsome news anchor - known as 'the Face' - on Atlanta's WWN all news network. The WWN news director says of the anchorman, "You may not think Chuck Corso is the crispiest chip in the bag. But goddamn it if he's not loyal. Goddamn it if he's not a team player. Which is something the rest of us should value a little more."
*****
In the lengthy first section of the book, we follow these five characters - and some of their co-workers, family members, friends, neighbors, etc. - as the zombie apocalypse begins. Like everyone else in the world, Hoffmann, Rutkowski, Morgan, Nishimura, and Corso are bewildered at first, with no idea of what's happening. It takes a while until the protagonists comprehend that the dead are reviving, with BIG appetites.
Once the main characters understand the enormity of the catastrophe they step up to the plate, using their particular skills to deal with the unfolding calamity.
As might be expected, psychotic and self-serving humans join the zombies in raising hell, and there are bloody fights, swinging axes, racing bullets, flying arrows, vicious bites, sexual assault, adroit maneuvers, and all manner of murder and mayhem. There also some spots of romance, which are touching and tender.
Eventually all the story lines converge, and we learn what happened between the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and a time fifteen years later, when a small colony of humans is assembled in Toronto, Canada. The intervening period had PLENTY of action, which is wisely presented in abbreviated form (or the book would be 3.000 pages long).
The entire book, including the climax, is a cautionary tale about human behavior. People's greed, violence, and indifference to the environment have dire consequences in the story, which is something people in the real world would do well to understand. (In my view, the poor stewardship humans exhibited on planet Earth resulted in the Coronavirus pandemic, and there are probably more catastrophes coming down the pike.)
In a unique aspect of the story, we see passages from the zombie point of view. We come to know the 'thoughts' of several zombies, especially an extremely decomposed zombie called the Chief.
It turns out zombies sometimes exhibit purposeful behavior and they have a hive mentality, something like the Borg in Star Trek (though the Borg are much smarter).
I got his book from Netgalley, and since it's on my Kindle, I didn't realize at first how long it is. I thought I was nearing the end of the story when I realized I was only at the 35% mark. It says something that I kept right on going, until I finished the entire manuscript AND the long postscript by co-author Daniel Kraus, which is a must read in my opinion.
I'd highly recommend the book to fans of zombie literature and films.
Thanks to Netgalley, the authors (George Romero and Daniel Kraus), and the publisher (Tor Books) for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
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