We arrive at the shelter with the night coming quickly, close on our heels and ready to consume us. I do not know what we were expecting. A log cabin? A English Tudor house? No matter. The shelter is octagonal and in many ways little more than a screened-in gazebo. Considering what we have just been through, where we’ve come from, this should provide sufficient coverage for the night. We set out things down and go about our quick-as-we-can business of securing the sight. We check the screens for tears. We bolt and lock the door. We inspect the floorboards to make sure that none are loose. Feeling safe enough, we unroll our sleeping bags. But it isn’t long before we hear the low groans and know that they have found us. Within minutes, we can hear their shuffling in the leaves and branches of the dark forest night around us. We hear a thud on the roof. We turn and see them start to climb up the screens: the zombie cats with their patchy fur and drooling hissing. Fear overwhelms us.
Third person, fly-on-the-wall type P.O.V. A Handmaid’s Tale-style near apocalypse. An evangelical Christian school; a real house on the hill sort of thing. No one knows how they’ve kept this thing a secret, this sprawling multi-wing complex. It’s the eve before the unveiling; the board of directors is giving a tour to some media folks from the outside world. They’re well-dressed and proud that they’ve come this far, proud that they haven’t succumbed to the terrors without, proud that this facility of theirs will no doubt serve as a beacon unto the rest of what’s left of civilization.
Our camera changes up; we follow a young man sneaking through the halls of the All Girls wing. He isn’t a Humbert Humbert type; he’s about the same age as these girls and he seems to be here looking for one in particular. We get the sense that he’s fought through whatever terrors are outside to get here, to find her. And he does find her, manages to catch her arm and away they slip into one of the quieter rooms. The room is slanted and at the top of the rise is a trophy case. They talk guardedly; she is trying not to give something away and he is trying not to betray some other secret. He notices that she is pregnant. She explains that it has something to do with taxes, that it’s for the good of the school. He makes some lewd jokes but they’re all in good humor.
The camera shifts again: outside, the terror closes in. Thousands upon thousands of green-skinned plague zombies swarming up the cliffs. The school’s defenses take their positions on the ridge of the cliffs and fire down into those hordes. There is a muffled voice crying out not to shoot, that shooting will only make things worse but the firing goes on.
We are in some kind of municipal building in Perth. A school? An airport? A swarm of people are gathered in one room. The room is slightly crowded. The first zombie converts; no one knows how. He starts to bite others. People try to force their way out of the room; the heroes try to subdue the zombie. Something is different here though; the conversions are immediate, not gradual like Brooks described. Our narrator (who is part Abo) slips out the window, jumping from tree limb to lamp post like some man-sized lemur. The zombie plague spreads quickly and it is not long before the streets swarm with them. Our narrator stays high up above them, swinging with super-human agility onto some kind of suspended tube structure that runs over the forest. By nightfall, he has crossed the forest and is miles away from the municipal structure. He finds himself in a small community of row houses and attempts to slip through undetected. The zombies swarm out of the houses. Our narrator jumps up onto cars and try to jump from there onto porticos but the zombies keep coming, trying to overwhelm him.
Where to begin?
I would be willing to say that Max Brooks has given us a “new classic” of zombie literature in World War Z. The novel is well-structured, is well-paced, and seems so … plausible.
And when I say “plausible”, I mean the Brooks has tried to carefully — though not necessarily exhaustively — look at the current geopolitical climate and imagine what a sudden “zombie” outbreak scenario would look like today or in some tenable near-future. Brooks makes what seems to me to be a sincere effort to leave no logistical stone uncovered: how does the plague spread? what are the consequences of a government cover-up? what about the navies and submarines? what about satellites and GPS? how do you “quartermaster” an army that is on foot going up against “the undead”? He tried to cover all the bases in as realistic a way as possible. Considering such an unrealistic scenario. Again: Brooks is not trying to be exhaustive but considering where he puts his focus, he certainly comes across as inventive. He gives us some sadistic twists throughout the narrative; for every up-lifting deus ex machina near-miss (e.g., Col. Eliopolis and “Mets Fan”) there is some grim and ironic counterpoint (e.g., the slaughter at Alang’s ship breaking yard). Wisely, Brooks tries to keep these stories diverse: military and civilian; American and Chinese; young and old; optimistic and jaded. He does not waste a great deal of energy discussing “Zack”; there is no in depth technical discussion of the virus — just a few allusions to methods of transmission (those bites) and then we move on to what matters. That is where Brooks keeps the focus: it’s on how people — be they individuals or entire governments — react to these extreme scenarios. And he does a decent job peeling the peach of the technological modernity while he’s catapulting us through this tale.
Two closing points:
- Brooks is also graciously humble. He cites George Romero in the acknowledgments; can’t get far with your zombie mythos without giving the right credit.
- This novel had but one thing keeping it from a full five star rating: many of the voices are not really distinct. We are presented with the novel as if it were a historical document — the transcripts of interviews with survivors from “World War Z”. But reading it, you can’t help but think that the government official sounds an awful lot like the feral child that sounds a lot like the retired Indian army grunt… But don’t let that stop you: there is plenty else in this novel to warrant reading it.
Review originally posted on GoodReads.com.
In the spirit of thriving ambulothanatophobia:
55%
Via bEeZERs.
currently playing: Junior Boys “More Than Real (live)”
A friend remarked:
does anyone else find it strange (or even cares for that matter) that there is no bonafide phobia name for an irrational fear of zombies. there is one for vampires, werewolves, and i think even mummies. but no zombies?! i demand action!
So I proposed: ambulothanatophobia
The irrational fear of the walking dead.
A “zombie phobia” word at long last? I guess the only issue that I take with this is that the “ambulo” part is Latin while “thanato” and “phobia” are both Greek parts. Of course, the litany of phobias is mostly a patois anyway. So ambulothanatophobia could work just fine.
So, gentle readers: what say you?
