[Anthology Release] Rigor Amortis edited by Jaym Gates & Erika Holt

NOTE: I am so syched for the chance to read [let alone review this] that I am plugging it even after I missed the amazing launch party. Let's see if erotica and zombies can mix. It's a perfect Halloween read.

Horror and erotica. Zombies and romance. Rigor Amortis.

Maybe a tender love story is your thing, a husband doting on his wife's rotting corpse. Or perhaps a forbidden encounter in a secret café, serving up the latest in delectable zombie cuisine, or some dirty, dirty dancing in the old-time honky-tonk. Voodoo sex-slaves and vending machine body-parts? You'll find those here, too.

Whatever your flavor, these short tales of undead Romance, Revenge, Risk, and Raunch will leave you shambling, moaning, and clawing for more.

And come he slow, or come he fast, It is but Death who comes at last. -Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion", 1808

EDITORS:

Jaym Gates started out a writer, added reporting, administrating and promotional work, and then made a joke on twitter and became an editor. Now she edits Little Death of Crossed Genres and is the Publicity Manager for Raw Dog Screaming Press, among other things. Unable to choose a genre, she labels her writing New Weird, throws it in the spec-lit bowl, and tosses it with dusty butcher knives.

Erika Holt had the good sense to abandon her lucrative career as a civil litigation lawyer to become an under (or un-) paid editor and writer of speculative fiction. She spends most of her time living in strange lands, accompanied by witches, monsters, heroes, and other creatures, but maintains a few earthly obsessions, including NHL hockey, music, reality television talent competitions, and painting her toenails strange colors.

CONTRIBUTORS:

Pete "Patch" Alberti, Damon B, Renée Bennett, Xander Briggs, Jennifer Brozek, J. R. Campbell, Johann Carlisle, Nathan Crowder, Carrie Cuinn, R. Schuyler Devin, Annette Dupree, Michael Ellsworth, Jay Faulkner, Kaolin Imago Fire, M. G. Gillett, Sarah Goslee, Kay T. Holt, Calvin D. Jim, Alex Masterson, Edward Morris, Don Pizarro, Michael Phillips, John Nakamura Remy, V. R. Roadifer, Andrew Penn Romine, Armand Rosamilia, Jacob Ruby, Steven James Scearce, Lance Schonberg, Lucia Starkey, R. E. VanNewkirk, Wendy N. Wagner.

[Video] THE WALKING DEAD Fan-Made Opening Titles

The Walking Dead is the ultimate zombie-survival comic book series [according to me]. Black and white ghastly art that is welcoming, gruesome zombies and survivors, who dance the line between sanity and madness as they avoid getting eaten. It's tense, dramatic and way above average storytelling. I am quite behind on it, but my love knows no boundaries as my fanboy gush fest of a review testifies [REVIEW].

It is no wonder that I am excited about the upcoming TV series, whose pilot episode will air on the one and only special day in my heart, Halloween [although it's not celebrated in my country as an official holiday]. Random promos, posters and snippets from the series have leaked on the web, which I have enjoyed in private, BUT this fan-made 'opening titles' sequence created by award winning director Daniel Kanemoto is too good to keep to myself. Enjoy:

THE WALKING DEAD "Opening Titles" from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.

[Review] Zombiewood Weekly by Rob Sachetto & Jeremy Walsh

During my computer's technical hospitalization, I had another review posted on schedule at the ever awesome Innsmouth Free Press [WHOLE REVIEW]. I reviewed something entirely else as a medium and I loved it. I present to you the first zombie celebrity magazine:

Zombiewood Weekly: The Celebrity Dead Exposed, as a product, is flawless. Ulysses Press has an eye for detail and this pretty little thing deceives. It feels like a regular celebrity magazine. It has the flashy titles, trademark wordplay and glossy paper, and it’s the size you’d expect a gossip rag to be. To me, the magazine’s been put together to showcase Rob Sachetto’s art. His portraits build what I call ‘The Anatomy of Death’. His resume claims to have done around a thousand of these gory portraits and his skill shows. Celebrities are more than green around the gills, when decay finally sets in. Forget about those cute dimples and blemishes; envision flesh wounds and strips of peeled-off epidermis. Celebrities that craved the next extreme look now can choose between exposed jaws, missing cheeks and hives of blisters and bruises. Puss flows freely, while brains droop miserably from untreated head traumas. It’s all drawn as believable as possible, giving even me some queasy moments.

[Movies] Some Zombies + An Apocalypse

'Dead Snow' is the Norwegian suggestion for some good old zombie horror with its gore, blood, campy atmosphere and genuinely scary scene. It all starts when a group of young med students [I honestly can't say that they are hot young med students, but at least they act], who fancy some alone time in a cabin, indulging in winter activities like playing in the snow and drinking beer by the hearth. But the carefree vacation time expires, when they find a box with jewels from World War II. Because Nazi soldiers were supposedly addicted to bling bling, frozen corpses decide to raid the small cabin and accessorize. What can I say? Fashion Victims. The whole idea is that the Nazis are bound as zombies, because of their avarice. You won't see something new, but the balance between gross out suspense moments and laugh out loud situations is highly satisfying, making this movie a must-see for all zombie addicts.

'I Sell the Dead' is perhaps the best horror comedy I have watched [after 'Shaun of the Dead'], which intentionally made me laugh. This is a delightful Irish production about grave robbers back, when this sort of business was lucrative and popular. As a period piece it follows the main hallmarks of the genre. The story begins as a conversation between Arthur [Dominic Monaghan] and Father Duffy [Ron Perlman] hours before Arthur's execution. Then the familiar story within a story model manifests and we are treated to a memoir-like re-telling of Arthur's life as a grave robber and how he started working from ordinary corpses to more animated odd-jobs. This is a comedy, which never let's you rest for a minute. If you are not laughing, you are glued to the screen, anticipating what will happen next. I enjoyed this one in particular.

'Carriers' rides on the whole flu panic. In this movie the world meets its end via a pandemic virus without cure. What I liked about this movie is how it started. It the first few moments, there is no horror, no death. However, this changes once the traveling party of four [Chris Pine, Piper Perabo, Emily VanCamp, Lou Taylor Pucci] meets with up a father and his dying daughter. This apocalypse is a lot less action packed. The dead do not come back. The regular humans are not a Happy Meal special, but there is a certain weight, while watching. Human empathy, solidarity and relationships are opposed to survival instincts. It's in this context that 'Carriers' whisked me away and came through as enjoyable. Yes, there is almost nothing new added to the genre. The characters behave in a manner you would expect to in this sort of movie. There is a certain deja vu moment, but in total a good movie choice.

[Announcement] Marvel Zombies 5

As you might know, I am a HUGE Marvel Zombies fan. It's raw. It's campy, bloody and action packed and it never seems to end, which is why I love it. I love seeing what Marvel can come up with and for the fifth installment the series they are going Western with writer Fred Van Lente.

What's not to like?

I have this interview conducted by the Comics Alliance with the author Fred Van Lente and I am simply ecstatic.

---

CA: You've got "Marvel Zombies 5" on the way – what's coming for "Marvel Zombies" fans in the new series?

FVL: What isn't coming, Laura? "Marvel Zombies 5" is kind of a smorgasbord for zombie connoisseurs. We have this scenario in which the alcoholic robot Machine Man has returned, and is now tasking with hunting down and collecting samples from zombies across the Multiverse. So it's like a United Colors of Benetton of zombiery. He manages to collect various allies along the way, including one that I think everyone will admit is the perfect person to be a member of A.R.M.O.R., the Alternate Reality Monitoring and Operational Response agency, which is charged with containing the zombies. And we go into all these different genres, so they're going to Camelot, a post-apocalyptic War of the Worlds" Martian tripod world, a cyberpunk world from the 1980s Barry Windsor-Smith "Machine Man," but in the first issue they go a world where the frontier was never settled, and it's perpetually the Old West, so you get all the Marvel western characters. One of the first things I ever saw Jeff Parker write was in a book in 2006 that we both did as part of this "Marvel Westerns" event, and his story was way better than mine. So I'm going to do a sequel to it, because I'm oedipal like that. His story was about this really obscure character called the Hurricane, the fastest gun in the West, so I'm doing what happened to Hurricane after he got old story. With zombies. And robots.

Zombie Week: Zombie Chat with Thea

So, I am cutting Zombie Week a post short, because I decided that after all "Drag Me To Hell" is not exactly zombie material and I need some kind of vacation time for me from posting, because as it turns out I am scheduled for a total of 13 posts for this week. Quite unhealthy and since I am not used to that kind of activity with these headaches of mine, I am cutting down a bit.

As a finale I am resorting to my favorite kind of posts, the interviews. Dear readers, you have the pleasure to be in the company of Thea James aka Zombie Thea from the bombastic duo "The Book Smugglers". She is a sucker for the undead, so I am going to exploit this passion of hers with some practical and cool questions. Here we go.

Harry Markov: How did the zombie became such a passion and surpass other dark and twisted creatures to reach the number 1 position on your creature lists of favorites?

Thea: There's something inherently terrifying about zombies because, to borrow a line from Barbara at the end of The Night of the Living Dead (remake) "We are them and they are us." Zombies, at least of the Romero persuasion, force us to confront our basest instincts and fears as humans - we are animals, we need food to survive, and even when we survive we will always die. Zombies transcend that finality of death and pervert our basic need to eat and to reproduce with their insatiable desire for flesh and their ability to reproduce almost instantly through infection. Now that is pretty cool. Throw in some sociopolitical commentary (i.e. the brainless, undead hoard attacking the stronghold, the bastion of capitalism - aka the shopping mall), and that's even cooler. See, the best zombie stories aren't about the zombies really - they're about humans; survivors forced to confront their own humanity in the face of unspeakable terror and chaos - more so than any other monster/creature feature genre. And that, my friend, is why they are numero uno for me.

HM: I know that you like the zombies, but do they manage to scare you?

Thea: Sure! But it’s the good scared. Like, when you’re about to go on a roller coaster, or a haunted house scare. Some of my best dreams are zombie attack dreams - not because I’m a violent person or anything! But because I get that thrill. Is that weird? Hmm.

HM: What are the zombies you prefer: slow zombies or fast zombies?

Thea: I like both, but I prefer the slow, shambling variety. One, it makes more sense. If you’re the dead reanimated, you’re probably not gonna be moving like a lightning ninja. Two, humanity needs SOME kind of chance to stand against the undead menace! Make them fast, and we’re pretty much screwed. I remember reading The Rising by Brian Keene (which was a terribly written book, by the way) and the zombies were not only fast and strong but also super!intelligent, could possess animals, etc. What kind of chance do we stand against that?! Come on now.

HM: What do you think of Jamaican voodoo zombies and the ones raised by a necromancer in video games?

Thea: I happen to love the voodoo zombie! I mean, it is where the word “zombie” originated after all, from the Haitian cultural belief in reanimating the dead (the term was coined after the west African diety “Nzambi”). One of the first real zombie films I saw was The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was based on a Harvard ethnobotanist’s doctoral dissertation about Haitian voodoo and zombies. There’s a really cool National Geographic special out there somewhere on Clairvius Narcisse too, about his time as a honest to goodness voodoo zombie. So...you could say, yes I am a fan.

HM: In case of a Zombie Apocalypse what would be the novel you bring on your survival trip?

Thea: For practical reasons, Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide. But that's not really a novel, right? So in that case, I'd also take...The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. It's a fantastic YA zombie novel that really haunts.

HM: In case of a Zombie Apocalypse how do you see yourself as a survivor? When do you estimate you will become zombie munchies?

Thea: For all that I have a zombie survival plan, and I think I’m pretty knowledgeable with the lore...I have a sinking feeling that I would be zombie chow pretty quickly. I’d like to think that I’d at least be able to survive the initial siege, but strictly speaking, I’m a short, small girl and I live in one of the largest cities in the world (Los Angeles). I have no farming skills and canned food can only last so long...so my outlook for survival is pretty slim, all things considered.

HM: In case of a Zombie Apocalypse what weapon do you see yourself killing zombies?

Thea: I’d like to go Casey Jones on the undead - baseball bat, hockey stick, cricket bat...and of course, a couple of machetes. Nice reach with all the weapons and I’m pretty athletic, so I’ll be infinitely better off with melee weapons than I would a gun.

HM: What’s your zombie contingency plan?

Thea: Hehe. I actually do have one from the blog:

Thea’s Zombie Escape Plan

(Assuming the Apocalypse occurs and I am in my apartment)

I’m lucky enough to live on the top floor of my apartment building, and my unit can only be accessed via a single flight of stairs ending at my doorstep. So, it’s Z-Day. First thing I do once I notice some shambling brain-munchers outside is immediately take my handy power drill (it’s always charged) and unscrew the iron siding of my staircase in an attempt to disconnect the stairs from my front door. Once that’s accomplished (or even if it is a fruitless task), I lock the front door (which, by the way is incredibly sturdy, I know from experience having been locked out recently) and barricade it and my front hallway with my dresser and other assorted furniture. Next, I fill both bathtubs and my sink with water (in case of a longer siege and considering how fragile our infrastructure is, I’ll need all the water I can get), also trying to bottle and save as much liquid as I can get. I get my handy baseball bat and any other melee weapons (table legs, lamp stands, golf clubs) and keep them handy…and I settle in for as long as I can–at least until the initial chaos ends. I keep the battery powered boombox handy, and I wait for further instructions. After the initial chaos runs its course, I evaluate my options (and how busy the street is with corpsicles). I am one block away from a local high school (you might recognize it from Buffy and other movies), and two blocks away from a national guard and army training facility. Using my handy ladder, my exit route is through the bedroom window, down three stories to the ground (in a pinch, I could probably chance a jump) then running, baseball bat in hand, for the car in the gated garage…or if worse comes to worst, running the streets to get to the army facility. If it’s abandoned, or a zombie haven, or if the facility is full of d-bags as in almost all zombie films and literature, I double back to the school (which is gated, mind you) and hole up or gather supplies depending on how dire the situation is….and then, it’s back to the waiting game. Eventually I might make a stab for the Getty (elevated position, great art, possibility of growing stuff off the land, etc) should things stay hairy.

HM: With the new Resident Evil on its way and the new breed of intelligent zombies with enough brains to operate machinery, do you think this zombie will shuffle its way into movies and literature?

Thea: Oh sure. It’s already there in many cases! For example, in the ‘80s comedy/horror film Return of the Living Dead (from George A. Romero’s co-creator of Night of the Living Dead) the zombies were fast, they could talk, they could plant traps (“Send...more...paramedics!”). There’s the aforementioned zombie series by Brian Keene (really, I’d stay away though) where zombies are from another dimension and are just as smart - if not smarter - than their human prey. Heck, even in Romero’s Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, zombies start to remember things from their lives, like how to shave or shoot a gun or lead a zombie revolution.

It seems like a natural progression in the evolution of the zombie!

For a good example of zombies in books that are sentient, intelligent beings, I’d recommend Generation Dead and Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters - it’s a very original, smart take on the genre. There’s also Stephen King’s Cell which isn’t really “zombies” per se, but close enough.

HM: What kind of human fear does the zombie embody? Werewolves are like the fear of the wild side in humans and all.

Thea: Oh, I touched on this before! I think zombies symbolize our human fear of death, and pervert our imperatives to eat and reproduce by transcending death. It’s remarkable how long zombies have been prevalent in human culture for a very long time, from Gilgamesh to Zombieland. And the prevalence of the undead, across numerous cultures, speaks to this shared, human fear.

HM: Do you think zombies are going to become big in fantasy and urban fantasy to finally kick out vampires and shapeshifters from their throne?

Thea: Oh, I think they are definitely giving them a run for their money already! This year alone has been a big one for the zombie in speculative fiction - taking a look at trends in the young adult market, it seems that zombies are the new fairy (which were the new vampire). At least, that’s my take on it. And the cool thing is that zombies are so varied across the fantasy landscape! You’ve got the traditional slow-movers, the flesh-eaters, the non-eaters, the benevolent zombies and the cursed ones...it’s anyone’s game, really. The young adult market has done a great job with the transition, but it hasn’t really been seen in the adult urban fantasy market as much. But then again, with new titles like Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner or Black Blood by John Meaney coming out, the adult Urban Fantasy genre isn’t too far behind...

Zombie Week: "The Walking Dead"

There is much debate on what the best the zombie genre can offer is and what you must read in order to call yourself a respected zombie fan. Each person defines their own zombie Bible so to say and for me that position is filled by “The Walking Dead”, a monthly released comic book series that has persisted and managed to hit past the 60 issue mark since it started back in the year 2003.

There are three key features, which keep this story alive and progressing issue by issue to garner more fans. First is the amazing artistic talent of cover artist Tony Moore and penciller Charlie Adlard, who successfully scared the sanity right of my eye sockets with their black and white nightmare collages of haunting cadavers and raw human drama and emotions. I claim second to be the excellent, logic and realistic depiction of the survival horror genre as well as bringing credibility to the whole zombie apocalypse scenario. I blame writer Robert Kirkman for this as well as writing a comic book series that is about zombies, but not really about the zombies, but the human side.

Now to expand on my points. Charlie Adlard resembles Mike Mignola in his portrayal of the undead as he melds them into the darkness, disproportions and mask them in murky blotches, disfigures them with edgy lines and melds them into one formless mass. However when the zombies come into the foreground frightening details reveal themselves one after the other and to be honest I do believe that the black and white format only enhances the contrast and amplifies the horror. However grounding in reality is the work dedicated on the cast, which although large and ever changing is memorable for their realism. Each survivor is unique in age, body type, sex and posture, which speaks tons on behalf of Adlard’s artistic capabilities.

These images set into motion with Kirkman’s vision and winding storytelling that promises no end in near sight create an atmosphere, where the impossible is transferred accurately in reality. No problem is every solved the easy way. There are no lucky finds the first minute and usually somebody dies. One crisis is solved only for another to arise and no place is safe no matter how many barriers you may build. Army weapons and food that are conveniently supplied in other stories are luxury items that are hard to come across and come in possession after countless trials and wandering.

Although this is survival horror, the zombies aren’t the point. They may be the menace, the horror, but they are also the stage on which the human soul of the series is showcased. In this day and time you can create your own microcosm and interact with the people you chose to, do the things that you want to and most importantly isolate yourself from the things that annoy you and rely on technology to supply for you. This leads to apathy, often displayed in our society as well as the disruption of traditional relationships in society and leniency of human survival skills and their diversity.

Using zombies as that catalyst to force the human to connect, reach out and rely on people, strangers and those that he doesn’t like, letting actions rather than words do the introductions the readers are introduced to the depths of pain, of love, grief, loyalty, trust and friendship. “The Walking Dead” also try to draw the line between what is necessary to be done and what turns you into a monster, even worse than a zombie…

Zombie Week: "Marvel Zombies" Volume 4

“Marvel Zombies” is the perfect zombie read for me, because it combines the two greatest myths that touched me early on in my adolescence: zombies at the age of 8 and superheroes at the age of 10. To be honest I thought with great despair that the series would end, because the whole Earth was devoured in the first and second mini-series, but thanks to Marvel and their handy multi-verse we get different scenarios.

Volume 4 tops my favorite list by far combining zombies, super heroes and magic, which is always a handful in Marvel titles. To me this is the ultimate un-holy trinity especially when blood and gore is involved. The four issues follow the Midnight Sons, super hero team formed by A.R.M.OR. composed out of C and D-listers like Morbius, Werewolf by Night, Hellstorm and Jennifer Kale, who track down escaped from a zombie infested dimension Simon Garth aka the Zombie and zombified Deadpool, though just his head is carried around. Their mission leads them to the island of Taino in the Caribbean Sea to villain Black Talon, who wishes to use the zombie virus as weapon and sell it to the Hood, kind-of the new Kingpin in that universe. The Midnight Sons have to battle out zombie Fish Men and a super villain team called the Night Shift before the day is saved for good or is it?

Each issue opens with a final video and testament of one of the Midnight Sons, where the writer Fred Van Lente cleverly inserts information about the reality of this Earth, the virus and its nature as well as shading the character’s past and personality. The Marvel universe is a rich and potent place to create new superheroes and see those pushed behind by front runners such as the X-Men and the Avengers ascend to the spotlight for their own fifteen minutes of fame. While the first two volumes concentrate on the gore factor and enjoying a good zombie apocalypse, where beloved characters die off and come as flesh eating dicks, volume four returns to the more typical outbreak and survival horror traditions, from which the greatest zombie stories stem. The scientific look on the zombie virus and the creation of a vaccine that can kill it as well as its evolution into ‘superbug’ status kill the hellish atmosphere, but never diminish the horror.

Artist Kev Walker has done an impressive job at delivering decomposition and rot on the human anatomy with enough detail to stay in the realm of super hero art style, while scary enough to drop a stone in your stomach. My preferences lie within the flashy magical aspects of any story, so the climax of this story with one major aerobe cloud that can resurrect and sew together corpses and a possessed by Dormamu Jennifer Kale battle it out to save this Earth completely won me over. Among the action there is also the human angle such as greed and human drama as well as comic relief in the face of the zombie Deadpool, also referred to as Z-pool, who never fails to make me laugh with such lines as:

‘Do not be alarmed! We do not, we repeat, we do not want to eat you! That is an ugly stereotype! ’

It’s a must-read for zombie fans.

Zombie Week: Gallery

In order to diversify my Zombie Week program and show just how much I love zombies I am going to showcase three pieces that represent zombies in three different faces and if I am not completely mistaken in three different techniques and art styles as well.

First stop is “Zombie Bride”, a piece done by Mark Brooks, one of Marvel’s illustrators and a fantastic comic book artist. This piece is the sum of my fascination with comic book art and horror as well, not to mention zombies as well. First we have the flattering, if anatomically improved and boosted, feminine features that combined with the menacing and demonic face expression create the perfect paranormal femme fatale. This defiant sexuality is an element I have always been attracted to and usually goes hand in hand with horror. Now the zombies here are more or less portrayed in their demonic origins as the scourge of hell rather than a genetic plague and through the artist’s attention to detail we get an interwoven tapestry of grotesque and horrifying creatures. Splendid, huh?

Second stop is “Zombie Mosaic”, painted by German artists Steffi Schütze and Christian Nauck, who do a lovely job to create a flowing composition with strokes that bring a certain mist quality as colors blend into each other. It’s a very harrowing and haunting image that combines zombies and the Wild West in a gripping manner. My attention is immediately drawn to the center, where the warmer colors are and my heart skips a beat taking in the gruesome details. After that my eyes wander into the edges, where the night melts into the horizon and the scenery seems almost tranquil. There is a certain balance between the horror and eerie peace.

Last but not least we have “Zombie” by digital artist Ian Fields-Richards, who shows the god like capabilities of photo shop by adapting this stock photo into this portrait of emptiness and loneliness. Apart from the obvious superiority of his work and technique he manages to give something as a message in his work by veiling human emotional states with rotten flesh. In my opinion zombies can stand as a metaphor for a long list of subjects, but the dissatisfaction with life, especially in this time and age, and denied contact as well as human warmth can carve the soul out, leaving an empty and decaying shell caught in one sheer moan of despair. I simply love it.

"Highschool of the Dead"

What better way to start Zombie Week than with a Japanese spin on the survival horror genre with zombies and the undead. Incidentally “Highschool of the Dead” is one of my random manga picks for the Japanese Reading Challenge and can easily fit in Carl’s R.I.P challenge, but let’s not push my luck and stick with this title being a shared submission for just two events.

The great thing about Japanese horror artists and writers is that they are demented, brutal and they seem to be caught in a race to out-scare, out-gross and out-disturb one another, which gives plenty of creative material to take zombies and kick the scare factor to overload. I wish to point out that despite this manga series features a main cast predominantly in its teens, this is seinen manga, aimed for a male audience between 18 and 30 usually. This alone promises no censorship and the output of gore is industrious. The series so far have 23 chapters out with three extras, but sadly has been in hiatus since June 2009, which doesn’t fair well in Japan’s ever competitive and fast paced publishing world.

So, why is this, a perfect choice for the zombie fan? For one, if you are like me, then you most certainly have read and experienced the zombie the way Westerners have so far. The change of scenery, culture and human behavior is refreshing, while at the same it gives the reader the opportunity to enjoy survival horror in a different manner. Japanese tradition in entertainment is marked by over-the-top performances. Westerners enjoy subtleties and gradual building, whereas from my experience with manga, the Easterners magnify every element surrounding a story.

In “Highschool of the Dead” every trip is an ambush of undead, every argument becomes a scandal that reopens old still aching wounds and action sequences toy with what’s believable and what is fairly impossible. The cast is an example of what I am illustrating here. Almost all characters are high school sophomores or seniors, who all have fighting capabilities like the sadistic Saeko, who is excellent at close combat, or Kohta, a frighteningly good and nutty sharpshooter. Although it’s believable that teens in Japan do have useful skills, since there is not a single teen in Japan not enrolled in a sports or arts and crafts or science club, how long can a group of teens last in a metropolis filled with the undead? Not to mention their luck in raiding the house of a sniper in Japan’s Special Assault Team. It’s plausible, but unbelievable at the same time.

I recently started Chapter 14 ‘Dead Storm Rising’ and can testify that as far as plotting goes Japanese manga writers know how to start small and then expand to let the reader see the bigger picture. As it does, the reader sees other survivors, the generational gap and attitude between teens and adults as well as seedy agendas forming. This a dark survival story with a lot of scares, moments of disgust by living and undead alike as well as the typical for horror genre sexual tension. It’s the kind of inner human exploration the horror genres executes in a manner that only can originate from Japan.

A zombie must-read.

Dead Set: Some Brit Horror

In my opinion you can almost never go wrong with zombies. Even the weakest movies with these gruesome creatures as critter feature are entertaining to me. Comedies go well with them as well as horror movies. Comic books thrive in this niche and even literature picks up on the zombie myth. It was a matter of time before a mini-series were to be made and with this overture coming to an end I present to you “Dead Set”, a five episode series about a zombie outbreak hitting Britain. The focus falls on the Big Brother house, where the sole survivors are actually the housemates inside and some of the TV shows’s personnel.

As per with most good survival horror adventures much about the outbreak’s origin and nature is not known and even if people wanted to know that wouldn’t help them stay any more alive and out of danger. The best part of the whole mini series is that it didn’t hold back in the gore section. Blood, organs and body parts grace the silver screen with great deal of realism. The zombie species featured is the runner, which is not as ominous as its shuffling and moaning cousin, since to me the slow zombie is the symbol for inevitable death, from which you can run, but you can’t really escape. However the fast zombie delivers a great number of scare moments, popping out from nothing with glazed over eyes and a predatory shriek. I found it most enjoyable to see actors abandon their characters and then go completely animalistic. It’s the commitment that makes it believable and exciting, because the cast managed to make me believe in their metamorphosis into undead.

The main protagonist as far as I can tell is Kelly, a runner for the show, who before the outbreak tries everything to excel in the television business, but ultimately gets bossed around by Patrick the producer. After the outbreak she is lucky enough to survive and hides in the Big Brother house, where her bloodied appearance and her story of hungry dead were met by the housemates as another mission. Once however one zombie breaks in and infects two of the survivors, things change and from here on starts the battle to outsmart the predators, fortify the house and manage provisions. It all goes well until Patrick the producer manages to get in the house and drag everybody in a messed up escape plan, which ultimately leads to the loss of every advantage the survivors had.

Perhaps it’s because I am partial to the bulked out tension and the question “Will a zombie attack them now?”, but I found this mini-series quite refreshing. Considering the fact it got nominated for the BAFTA award. To hardcore Romero fans it will be also a scavenger hunt for references to the ‘Living Dead’ series. Apart from that I can’t help but spin some theories to why the writers chose to place this story in the Big Brother house and tie it with live TV. I view this as a grotesque representation of our current culture at the time being. With reality TV being intelligence’s current sworn nemesis the zombie outbreak can be interpreted as society’s collective drop of IQ. The fact that the only channel on TV still functioning is not CNN or anything watch-worthy but the Big Brother Live Feed, speaks that much to me. Of course I can be wrong and nevertheless it’s cool to se the Big Brother house used as a bunker.

Zombie Three: “Passion Play”, “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”, “How the Day Runs Down”

Believe it or not, this is the final post about the closing stories in “The Living Dead” anthology, something I didn’t believe I would get to, considering how often I forgot to read the anthology. This is the problem with electronic versions of books. The icon always fades in comparison to the Mozilla Firefox short cut. With no further ado, let’s finally wrap this up.

“Passion Play” by Nancy Holder: When you read about zombies, at least I would like to believe; your thoughts point towards the apocalypse and then more or less to good old fateful Bible and the Second Coming. But zombie stories are usually either psychological or survival horror or just plain weird and religion gets elbowed away by primal instincts. Thank you Miss Holder for your author intervention and showing some zombie turmoil in the hearts of clergy men. This story isn’t gruesome, well not most of the time, but explores the gruesome nature of humans and the hypocrisy of the church. In a nutshell the German Father Meyer has to witness the sacrilege of the Christian principles and human morals all for praising the glory and greatness of God by enacting the Passions of Christ using a zombie and crucifying it. The reason is to keep the small village of Oberammergau protected from the new plague aka zombies, an old tradition that worked like a charm back with the great plague. What bothers the crap out of me is that every clergy man is okay with the idea of torturing a former living being for two reasons: 1) the holy Church has gone through a transformation to accommodate itself with the new reality and 2) everybody in showbiz does it and why not, when all humane organizations claim that zombies are not really people. The subtle notion that Christianity in all its forms just adapts to whatever comes and in the process swallows everything its path just so that it remains number one in the Religion Top Five Chart List is impressively displayed with a very morbid and uncomfortable experience for the reader. Best part about this story is that everybody get what they deserve aka die miserably.

“Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” by Scott Edelman: I rather enjoyed this story, because it indulges in one of my guilty pleasures and namely the stream-of-consciousness gig, but as with all things guilty, when you kick it into excess it sours the whole experience. Basically we have an author, who is caught in the library, when the zombie apocalypse strikes and he works out his stress by depicting various unfortunate and a little eccentric people, dying in often bizarre ways or handling the situation in an interesting manner. Prose is amusing enough to keep you going, but the self conscious narration and often self correction can affect the nerves of the readers as it happened with me. In its essence the story is more or less a scrapbook of thoughts about zombies, survival, life and vignettes that bring the point. Even as I list all these things that bugged me I also would like to point out that they are more or less dictated by my own taste rather than the skill of Mister Edelman, who has done a formidable job at this genre and wins my overall thumbs-up for the great concept.

“How the Day Runs Down” by John Langan: I find this the perfect closing story for the anthology once I got to the ending, but the sad part was that I had to skip the second half to satisfy my curiosity. Much like “Almost the Last Story by the Almost Last Man” this is a series of monologues and dialogues about zombies spreading through the world and killing people off. However what tired me and killed my interest was the format. I just don’t like screenplays and the theatre and this story was morphed to be a performance in a theatre, depicted word by word with the audience and stage effects and the typical typed lines with no description fitted. This just turns me off from even the greatest ideas, a reason I also didn’t enjoy Faust as well [though it had that verse thing as well to make me go crazy].

Zombie Three: “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves”,“Followed”,“The Song The Zombie Sang”

“Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” by Poppy Z. Brite: I am heavily relying on the author’s comment about the story itself to get in its nature and thank god it’s labeled as a freakish travelogue, because this story is not driven by plot and its goal isn’t to sweep you into a whirlwind of action and adrenaline. I guess it primarily aims to paint a surrealistic portrait of Calcutta with its living and its dead entwined together into a lazy, scorching and uneventful summer told by a very strange protagonist. In the Indian spirit, where beauty and the gruesome mix together in an irresistible and exotic experience, I was mesmerized by the picturesque prose and the high caliber descriptions with much imagination. What was even more impressive was the fact that the language was utilized into highly detailed depictions of zombies eating people and still manages to captivate me as a reader in a certain state of shock, disgust and at the same time magnetic awe. There is also a certain sense of mythology involved as the protagonist seems to be fond of the goddess Kali, who here seems to watch over the risen dead. My only disappointment came from the fact that the story just wandered into the nothing with almost no plot to tie the scenes together. Nevertheless my blood got frozen and so shall yours be as well.

“Followed” by Will McIntosh: I felt this to be an extremely interesting story world building wise, mainly for the way zombies are used as a device within the story. It would seem that the living dead are a common part of everyday life and people just try to ignore them, unless they are being followed by the zombies. The way I understand things in this story having a zombie on your heels would mean that you haven’t been living your life according to the norms and moral rules. This happens to our protagonist Peter, who is a generally good guy and a professor at a university, who falls into hysteria, when he is stalked by a creepy little dead girl. Peter’s emotional breakdown has been executed flawlessly and I personally felt a little nervous for quite some time after reading the story, like I have had too much coffee and anxiety was getting the best of me. At the same time with relatively less plot we are also given an interesting lesson about the sins we have committed and whether or not we can live and accept ourselves. A strange way to make a statement like that, but interesting nevertheless.

“The Song The Zombie Sang” by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg: Again this is not horror, but at least it’s entertaining and very thought through and deep. The reader is introduced to a future, where the dead can be raised for a couple of hours and so is the case with the great pianist Nils Bekh, who is forced to play seemingly forever on concerts. Being a thing, neither dead nor alive, is torture for the artist, who feels wretched, used and just an instrument for show has lost his talent and ability to grow artistically. In a word, he is a player piano. At the same time Rhoda, who attended Bekh’s latest concert and is a talented and flawless musician as well, detaches herself from the world more and more and in a sense has become automated in her art. This is until both meet, when Rhoda decides to confront Bekh about the abomination he has become. It takes both sides, the living and the dead to experience music as an experience, as a powerful wave of emotions and power. Precisely this looking into the mirror and seeing the opposite, which is a part of the real object, is what happens here. I am not sure whether I am making any sense in how I perceive the whole picture, but I encourage you to read and judge for yourselves.

Zombie Five: “The Age of Sorrow”,“Bitter Grounds”,“She’s Taking her Tits to the Grave”, “Dead Like Me”,“Zora and the Zombie”

“The Age of Sorrow” by Nancy Kilpatrick: This short story is a sort of a feminist take on the usual zombie survival mythos that a tough man would be able to trick death and its minions by the sheer force of his muscles, frame, endurance and instinct, all of which are part of the male mythos in culture. In case of danger, who do you look at: beefy brave guy, trying to save everybody or the considerably shorter and lighter girl, who is a screaming machine? Nancy asks “what if” and takes the idea for a spin, which results into a post nuclear war world inhabited by zombies, who fear the daylight, presumably because with the ozone layer almost vanished the UV rays can be harmful towards rotting flesh. The origins of this undead plague are microbes released from the completely molten ice caps. Presumably of course. And amidst all of this we have a sole woman in New Zealand or so she thinks, who managed to secure a compound and turn it into a fortress. Every page is etched with depression, loneliness and hysteria all bubbling inside as isolation for several years dissolves the heroine’s sanity. Nancy features extensive flashbacks that show the past, when the heroine was considerably ordinary and yet after those passages come the memories from dealing with every problem around her survival and succeeding. Every day she faces hell and being alone doesn’t help, until it builds and the insanity of living the same day in routine demands for a dramatic change. Reading this felt like watching a hanging bridge in the middle of a storm, wondering whether it would give or not.

“Bitter Grounds” by Neil Gaiman: If you have a flare for the Haiti branch of zombies, the special zombie powder and mysteries, then you will probably love this. I was pretty much left hanging in how I was to understand this concoction of ideas and bizarre occurrences. On one hand we have a nameless protagonist, who drives out for apples and instead journeys with no purpose as he has no life. At the beginning I get the idea that zombies will be metaphorically evoked, but then he arrives in New Orleans, fakes being an anthropologist and reads a left behind research peace on little zombie girls, who sell coffee. Pretty much after that I was lost and though the story was written beautifully and as a strange dream that defies reality I am still clueless.

“She’s Taking her Tits to the Grave” by Catherine Cheek: Though Miss Cheek declares the story explores the idea of what trouble and mischief an undead can cause, I find the topic of vanity in society hiding in this humorous piece. The reader is introduced to the newly resurrected Melanie, a trophy wife with a rich husband and energetic lover, as she navigates through the world of the living and seeing things from a different perspective. At first she tries to fit in back to how things used to be, but the people she knew and thought mattered to her showed their true color. At the same time her rotting flesh, a process which is irreversible and unsalvageable, teaches Melanie that no liposuction, lifting, facial or hair appointments matter anymore. From page one to the very last sentence we see Melanie go under a metamorphose as she exits the world of plastic empty people and shiny slick brands and goes back to nature, back to her childhood memories, when she was pure. By the end as her flesh has been stripped so has her vanity and she has come to terms that everybody gets old, everybody gets betrayed by their body and that despite being disgusting everybody rots away.

“Dead Like Me” by Adam Troy-Castro: I really loved this story despite it being the saddest one with a nameless protagonist, who is the most pathetic human being. Since I was old enough to understand what a zombie was I always asked the questions. Zombies are stupid; can’t we fool them by acting like them? In “Shaun of the Dead” this was done in a hilarious way and I ever since then hoped it would be done somewhere else. At the same time I also wondered how did zombies hunt, if they were pretty much dead and their eyes were always slack and unfocused? Mister Castro answers these questions in instructions directed to the reader, which aim to instruct a zombie apocalypse victim how to survive among so many of the undead. The recipe is simple and the worst possible for an individual: become a dead shell and you will fool the zombie into believing you are one of them. In the zombie survival genre people try to fight the dead, try to fight their personal demons, try to preserve who they are and the horror here is the opposite. The zombies aren’t causing the terror it’s the willingness to elevate doormat personality and generic face in the crowd to an art form, while at the same time you kill yourself is more blood chilling than any bloodbath I have yet to read.

“Zora and the Zombie” by Andy Duncan: Another weak link in the oh-so-powerful list of stories so far, mainly because it is for a smaller circle of people. I am not introduced to the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston and I am not particularly interested in the Haiti zombie legends either. The zombie powder mythology is not my cup of tea and with this story dragging I couldn’t finish it at all. Hopefully there will be people, who can enjoy it, but as it turned out I am not much into it.

Zombie Five: “Less than Zombie”, “Sparks Fly Upward” ,“Meathouse Man”,“Deadman’s Road”,“The Skull-Faced Boy”

“Less than Zombie” by Douglas E. Winter: This is the only story so far that I couldn’t finish at all and didn’t like. I don’t usually do that. I don’t skip. I don’t neglect and yet I was bored or rather impatient with the long winded sentences that trailed into the nothing, simulating the feeling of being high and at the same going nowhere in my opinion. There were merits, since giving credibility to a high profile junkie is rather hard, so kudos there, but unexciting as whole.

“Sparks Fly Upward” by Lisa Morton: A little charmer this one, written as consecutive diary entries by a woman in a new colony amidst the zombie apocalypse. The story revolves around abortion as the woman has to travel to the nearest town to use the equipment in a small hospital to do an abortion. There are zombies though the main focus here is on the matter of abortion. Is it murder or not? The answer depends on whether or not the fetus will resurrect or not, but I am so keeping that to myself. Another interesting bit is that this is the first story ever, in which I find survivors, who have reacted like the ingenious species I know humans ought to be, and have built a fort colony in the wilderness up North with person ratio and government. Good job Miss Morton for giving back humans their pride.

“Meathouse Man” by George R.R Martin: Reading this story hurt on an emotional level, since zombies and death although are as much of a physical aspect and masterfully engineered world building decisions, they are also rooted deep into the symbology and message Martin has installed in his work. The plot follows the life of Trager, a corpse handler, who earns his living by manipulating corpses via special technology. Unlike most of the other people, who he feels are dead, he strives for love and the hope that he is worth something to someone and we see his travels from planet to planet and job to job and his series of heartache. We see a cycle starting from being dead to being alive and then dying again all inside. It was a privilege to read such an emotional and personal piece of work, which grows in power with every page turned and leaves the reader in silent devastation once the end comes in sight. A very strong number.

“Deadman’s Road” by Joe R. Lansdale: I never thought that westerns can mix that well with horror, but now I am proved wrong. I think I even rediscovered my long lost love for the genre as a whole. Lansdale tells the story of Reverend Jebidiah Rains, who is the local demon hunter in the wild west and God’s executor, who has to fight everything that is evil. Chance meeting at the cabin of Old Timer leads to the discovery of Deadman’s Road, where a ghastly corpse hunts down any traveler at night. Naturally the Reverend has to hunt it down and he is not especially happy about it. Slaughter, graphic and well described, with chilling visual description, great handle over suspense and you get a thrill ride, which is always to love.

“The Skull-Faced Boy” by David Barr Kirtley: Another interesting story to read about, which is emotional as well as pure joy to read due to the world building decisions. According to Kirtley newly deceased of natural causes and incidents come back as zombies, who are intelligent, but also with no hunger. This however is not the case with those dead for a longer period of time or already munched on. The main protagonists are Jack and Dustin, who die in a car crash the night zombies decide to rise and while has an intact humanity and moral compass, while Dustin raises an army of dead and decides to conquer the living in America. Fun, huh? But not for Jack, who has to be an outsider and treated with hate by the living and feel not in place with the other intelligent dead. I can really connect with this story since it is largely about those people, the minorities, the misfits, who are usually looked down on and mistreated for being different.

Zombie Five: “Those Who Seek Forgiveness” ,“In Beauty, Like The Night” ,“Prairie”,““Home Delivery”,“Everything is Better with Zombies”

“Those Who Seek Forgiveness” by Laurell K. Hamilton: For the fans of Anita Blake I think I have a real treat for you, since this is the first work ever to feature Anita Blake as a character. For me this was an interesting read, because I have had no chance of sampling Hamilton’s writing style with my poor time management skills. Working as an animator can be a tough nut to crack as a career and Anita has seen quite the share of people coming to her for her services, but nothing as weird as Carla Fiske. This particular client is her first precedent ever, losing a life during a reanimation. I won’t add spoilers, but the punch is in the end. Hamilton has put some effort into trying to explain the complex human rules of attachment and manages a satisfactory balance of both entertainment aka bloodshed and deeper meaning.

“In Beauty, Like The Night” by Norman Partridge: What I love about zombies is that you can have countless angles to look at them and mister Partridge provides an interesting concept to amp up the suspense. He mixes up an anti-hero protagonist, who I personally disliked as a human being, but wanted to be in regard to social status. Nathan Grimes is a big shot clone of Hugh Heffner in his younger years and knows how the world of money and seducing women better than anyone. So when the zombie plague hits the world he evacuates his photographer and a couple of his models on his private island, waiting for things to be over. However his plans go wrong, when the plane crashes and he discovers that the undead are mimicking the living. The cat and mouse game goes on a whole new level and at the same time sun tanned and erotic zombie models on an exotic island makes for a splendid read.

“Prairie” by Brian Evenson: I think that a reader has been acquainted with Cabeza de Vaca’s sixteenth century account of crossing North America after being shipwrecked, and Werner Herzog’s movie Aguirre, the Wrath of God perhaps there will be more understanding of what goes on in this story. I am as lost as a piece of debris in a tornado. What I can share is that it carries something quite disturbing in its simplicity and stating a fact nature. The acts that the protagonist names come out as outlandish and quite shocking, sine the authors plunges the reader in a world without much back story and goes on breaking the taboos without knowing whether they are within the norm.

“Everything is Better with Zombies” by Hannah Wolf Bowen: Despite the title sounding so much the story itself is rather tame and timid for a zombie story and carries a more soul searching sort of coming of age spirit that happens to have a main protagonist think about zombies a lot. In places it caught my interest; in others it didn’t. At large I can say that it didn’t quite resonate within me as a reader, so I am going to leave it at that. However I do believe that there will be people, who will find quite the little treasure.

“Home Delivery” by Stephen King: I think I can talk much on the subject of Stephen King as an entity in literature and on Home Delivery, but I will try to be short. No need to spoil the fun and there will be a lot of fun. The dead rise from the graves and it seems the reason seems to come from outer space, which immediately adds a certain flavor to the whole, even though the focus falls on a small island in the Pacific called by its inhabitants Jenny. I won’t comment on the writing, because Stephen King is the synonym for several compliments and repeating them would be futile. I can just say that the hairs on my back stood up on several places and I held my breath pretty much from the start. The protagonist in question is the pregnant widow Maddie Pace, who has to deal with the loss of her husband, his resurrection and the end of the world, considering she finds choosing the color of curtains hard. This story unfolded like a dream for me and I claim it as another favorite.

Zombie Five: “Malthusian’s Zombie”, “Beautiful Stuff”,“Sex, Death and Starshine”, “Stockholm Syndrom”, “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead”

I tried something awhile back with the way I reviewed anthologies and seems that going for the one by one approach might work better for serial killers rather than serial reviews, so I am going for a different approach. I am determined to get done with “The Living Dead” anthology this week, so I will group five stories into one review. Ingenious? I sure hope so, because I really want to do justice to all stories featured an anthology, but also manage it in under four months such as the case is.

“Malthusian’s Zombie” by Jeffrey Ford: Perhaps this story is one of the more imaginative in the whole anthology, but also one of the more bizarre and harder to comprehend stories as well. I enjoyed the concept that human kind has the technology to create a living brain washed zombie, which can do anything in the power of the human organism by simply voicing the wish, such as ‘learn French’. It’s creepy. It’s frightening and I don’t envy the protagonist in the story, who has to take care of the zombie left him by the crazy scientist Malthusian. Even though the family eases to the idea of having a helping hand around the house, which never poses a threat or causes a conflict, the fear of dealing with the government is skillfully interwoven within the story telling as a subtle note. But no matter the skill of the writer and Jeffrey Ford is a big name on the fantasy scene, I couldn’t get the ending, which leaves you kind of questioning whether you read the story correct or not. If anybody gets it, please explain it to me.

“Beautiful Stuff” by Susan Palwick: I recently read an article about Death Tourism, which apparently markets places of tragedy as interesting travel destinations and it seems exploiting death has become even more popular despite the moral repercussions. In the world, where reviving the dead through technology and the dead being the perfect tabula rasa, existentially pure and innocent, Susan Palwick makes a take on the topic of making money on the back of those, who have died. Death ends a cycle. What a person was is no more and the main character Rusty tries to do the right thing and teach the living about the value of what they have in their lives. The thing about Rusty is that he was never a good guy back in his living days and for me that is the message of the story. That there is no more need for causing pain and that we can still reform, should we choose to. Of course showing us this with zombies is very clever, so I won’t spoil the actual situation.

“Sex, Death and Starshine” by Clive Barker: Certainly this short story is rather tame for the writer and director of the Hellraiser saga, but also has an interesting point to make. You have heard that great art lives on forever and can transcend even death and so is the case here, but with a minor twist. It’s not only the art, which survives death, it’s also its vessels, in this case the actors. When the final play for the Elysium Theatre “Twelfth Night” looms to be a disaster unlike any other the woman wordy to play Viola, who is also dead comes to save the day. Her admirers also attend the play and needless to say they are dead as well. There is not much of a deeper meaning to the story, but the entertainment value is top notch, which makes it a very suitable gothic read.

“Stockholm Syndrom” by David Tallerman: Gruesome. This is the word that can describe it at best and also the reason I claim it as a favorite so far. As a reader I prefer and enjoy when the author chooses to break the rules, play with some taboos and leaves the provocation to work up some messed up reaction. Mixing the psychological effects of having to survive a zombie army, isolation and waking everyday in suspense with an intelligent child zombie Tallerman offers a first seat ride to the whole process of losing sanity. In this tale the survivor, who remains unnamed only to show that anyone can be in his shoes, having secured his safe fortress with canned food and unnoticeable spot for zombies, observes the behavior of zombies only to draw some similarities between humans and their dead version. By the end I saw the thwart in the prime human values and shuddered. This story is a bliss for the lovers of the genre.

“Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead” by Joe Hill: This is definitely harmless and can be viewed as very weird mainstream, considering that the only zombies are the ones make-up for Romero’s original “Dawn of the Dead”. The story itself is the chance meeting between two former lovers with a difficult past and both with snarky senses of humor, who meet at the set of “Dawn of the Dead” as none other than zombies. Past sparks and irritable friction occur, since Bobby Connor failed in his dream to become a popular comedian and Harriett Rutherford is married, something Bobby doesn’t particularly warms up to. But in the end they reconcile and in its essence this tale is sort of romance, but as Joe Hill states his short story is all about his love towards the Romero movies. And what I make of it is that zombies bring people together.

"The Dead Kid" by Darrel Schweitzer

Author: Darrel Schweitzer
Title: “The Dead Kid”
Anthology: "The Living Dead" [Title Post]
Position: 8
Length: 12 pages

Author Info: Darrell Schweitzer is the author of the novels The Shattered Goddess and The Mask of the Sorcerer, as well as numerous short stories, which have been collected in Transients, Nightscapes, Refugees from an Imaginary Country, and Necromancies and Netherworlds. Well-known as an editor and critic, he co-edited the magazine Weird Tales for several years, and is currently co-editing anthologies with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW Books, such as The Secret History of Vampires.

Summary: The story develops in the summer of 1957, when two brothers David and Albert make a strange connection to a dead boy. It all begins with a dare and a trip to bad boy’s Luke Bradley’s fort in the outskirts of Rednor, Pennsylvania, where both boys see a dead boy in a box. After their first meeting the boys are changed and have a connection with the corpse and are later to liberate him and let him have a good time.

Favorite Snip: We carried the dead kid between us. We took him back across the golf course, under the bushes, to our special places. We showed him the secret signs. Then we took him into town. We showed him the storefronts, Wayne Toy Town where I bought models, where there were always neat displays of miniature battlefields or of monsters in the windows. We showed him where the pet store was and the ice cream store, and where you got comic books.
Albert sat down on the merry-go-round in the playground, holding the dead kid’s box securely beside him. I pushed them around slowly. Metal creaked.
We stood in front of our school for a while, and Albert and the dead kid were holding hands, but it seemed natural and right.

Analysis: “The Dead Kid” is one of the most bizarre short stories I have encountered so far and not much of a typical zombie tale. I think I can classify it as zombie tale for teens in love with horror with a moral. Aesop oughta be real proud. But if you do look for the background and reason, why Schweitzer wrote this story, it is to give closure to one killed boy in real life, who never had the chance to experience life or get a happy ending.

“The Dead Kid” is maybe a message meant for minors about peer pressure being a negative force in one’s development and how somewhere someone loves you for who you are. But in a twisted kind of way. Unlike other zombies this dead kid doesn’t seem from the flesh eating ones. Perhaps he is a vegan or I guess mad scientist zombies are flawed in that department and it with the two brothers have a great time together in the ending, which is even endearing.

The strongest trait in the story and the factor that turns into the most disturbing 12 pages to read in your life, is the yet again proved maxima: “Children are cruel.” Yes, kids are cuddly and laugh and are the sunshine in your life, but you don’t remember grade school and high school very fondly. Yes, kids from your childhood formed packs and stalked you ready to pounce and make you feel miserable. In “The Dead Kid” we revisit the dare devil dominative bully to see how a bunch of 12 year olds defile a walking body pretty much in the same fashion sunny days, a magnifying glass and insects make one great blast. As much as I never would want to admit that a modern kid these days can go as far, it is pretty plausible child violence to get out of hand.

“The Dead” by Michael Swanwick

Author: Michael Swanwick
Title: “The Dead”
Anthology: "The Living Dead" [Title Post]
Position: 7
Length: 10 pages

Author Info: Michael Swanwick has received the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards for his work. Stations of the Tide was honored with the Nebula Award and was also nominated for the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. "The Edge of the World," was awarded the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 1989. It was also nominated for both the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. "Radio Waves" received the World Fantasy Award in 1996. "The Very Pulse of the Machine" received the Hugo Award in 1999, as did "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" in 2000.

Summary: One night in a fancy restaurant with Courtney, the vicious businesswoman determined to get him in her company, Donald is offered a new position in a company, which desires to make death as profitable as possible. In a world, where zombies are a commodity, you would have to wonder what can happen when the business world wants to introduce them to the mass market. One world is dying slowly and a new one is born in the shadows and Donald is left in quite the tight place, as much as he is revolted.

Favorite Snip: Then he was down; he’d never even had a chance. He must’ve known early on that it was hopeless, that he wasn’t going to win, but he’d refused to take a fall. He had to be pounded into the ground. He went down raging, proud and uncomplaining. I had to admire that. But he lost anyway. That, I realized, was the message I was meant to take away from this. Not just that the product was robust. But that only those who backed it were going to win. I could see, even if the audience couldn’t, that it was the end of an era. A man’s body wasn’t worth a damn anymore.

Analysis: This is another accusing finger pointing at humanity, but this time directed towards the rich and influential businesspeople. Reality has proven that as a species we can we cold hearted and this story takes the idea of how perverted individuals might become after an unhealthy corruption, money and power. You have heard the tales. Ruthless confident sharks in their fields do whatever it takes to seal a deal or skyrocket a project of theirs no matter the consequences outside their micro cosmos or the collateral damage. The same people allegedly have replaced their heart with a calculator and cross moral boundaries light-headedly.

Well this is story is about these people and everybody knows that these people exist to one degree or another otherwise there wouldn’t be a massive chunk of entertainment culture devoted to them. But then of course the image is elevated to new plains. Enter the zombies, which are nothing gruesome, quite the opposite. They are manufactured like everything else today and cost quite a lot. Trading people and handling them like goods isn’t a new idea. We have the sex slave market, the black market for newborns and well the mysterious kidney legends. However if you did anything to a human being after death, the act is perceived something of a taboo.

Now imagine planning to replace people with zombies in companies thus creating the economy’s biggest problem yet, while virtually getting rotten rich. On top of that then imagine using your zombie slave as a sex toy. Even though that body is fine and functional it’s still necrophilia. This is the business world Swanwick presents through Donald’s eyes, but the works so well, because Donald still belongs to the old world, an epoch where people had boundaries one way or another. Swanwick shows how resistance is futile, when money demands the change and it’s quite shocking really to see how many lives will be affected by the conscious decision of handful for the worse.

“The Third Dead Body” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Author: Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Title: “The Third Dead Body”
Anthology: "The Living Dead" [Title Post]
Position: 6
Length: 16 pages

Author Info: Nina Kiriki Hoffman is the author of several novels, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning The Thread That Binds the Bones, A Fistful of Sky, A Stir of Bones, Spirits That Walk in Shadow, and Catalyst, which was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her short fiction has appeared in such magazines as Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and in numerous anthologies, such as Firebirds, The Coyote Road, and Redshift. Her work has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Nebula Award four times each.

Summary: Sheila wakes up one night, naked and numb, in a rural spot outside Seattle only to discover that she is a bit dead. She sets out to find Richie, the one to end her life, but not because of revenge, but curse laid by her grandmother demands Sheila to love the one thing that hurts her most. Along the way she hikes a ride from Marti, traveling to see her daughter’s show. As soon as Marti of Sheila’s predicament, a fact that has her running through the forest initially; she takes the dead girl’s problems to heart and tries to resolve them. An interesting ending enfolds.

Favorite Snip: Her eyes were wide, her broad face pale under her tan.
“You need help,” she said. “Hospital? Police?”
“Seattle,” I said.
“Medical attention!”
“Won’t help me now.” I shrugged.
“You could get infections, die from septicemia or something. I have a first aid kit in the car. At least let me—”
“What would help me,” I said, “is a mirror.”

Analysis: “The Living Dead” as an anthology so far has covered violent deaths, bloodbaths and the perversions of the human mind. Everything has been wrapped up metaphorically in a bow and aims to present a very unpleasant mirror and reflection of our own spirit. Despite the fact that “The Third Dead Body” deals with a different predator, the serial killer, the feature that sets the story apart from all the rest is its sense of humor.

Hoffman does the impossible for me, raises a victim from the grave and through life’s irony to lace her journey with some pretty good jokes. First of all it is striking how the living undead are portrayed more like a conscious fabrication of Southern magic with the terminology and such as for instance the mentioning of goofer dust, which is the dirt surrounding a dead corpse, rumored to have some kind of power. And again out of context for zombies Sheila is incredibly normal and rational for a zombie. The situations she falls in while trying to deal with her new life after death involve some funny moments and throughout the most part, it’s still light hearted.

But as the poet has said “Many a true word is spoken in jest” and that is the general rule, which Hoffman uses to try and scratch the surface of a killer’s psyche and the trauma of a victim. As I view it this is the best approach for such a topic, since among from the interesting and outlandish reincarnation of the zombie in this piece and the jokes, the reader can catch a whiff off something deeper.

The human being is amazing in his complexity and identifies himself in various ways. One can use different roles in society and in life. Another through the periods in life and Hoffman chooses names. Sheila is an intertwined trinity of what she had been, was not so long ago and never had the chance to be. Mary Jefferson was the girl, which suffered after speaking for herself and Tawanda Foote was the woman, who had to work on the streets without any real power in her life, whilst Sheila is the strong woman, she always wanted to be. As the story progresses the reader sees the struggles and debates Sheila goes through to battle the curse, which is branded in hers and possibly in the heart of every victim’s heart, and break the psyche of being a victim and then go against her aggressor.

As a conclusion I do have to say that this is very well executed and entertaining to no end with an interesting moral as much as people don’t like taking advices.