The Living Dead

By: Arlene Allen

It is universally acknowledged that George A. Romero single-handedly created the concept of the modern zombie. With his groundbreaking 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Romero laid out the concept of the hungry dead rising, shambling around and eating people’s brains. From the Dead franchise to today’s horror series “The Walking Dead,” the concept of the dead coming back to life has fascinated us. Is it because it shows us the worst humanity can become or the best, as we come together to fight a common menace? What triggers the return from the grave has evolved over the decades, but the concept of a virus creating the menace stands strong. Without a doubt, in today’s COVID-19 pandemic this fear of how it will change us closely parallels Romero’s concept of the zombie. We should be afraid, he warns, over and over again. Keep looking over your shoulder; an undead apocalypse is there in the shadowy distance.

Romero left his novel The Living Dead (which is not related to any of the films), unfinished and the reins were taken up by Daniel Kraus, co-author with Guillermo Del Toro of the book The Shape of Water and his own novels Rotters and Bent Heaven. Kraus takes Romero’s work and runs with it, adding in all of the socio-political themes Romero wanted to express in his films but could never take to the level he wanted to for one reason or the other.  The novel opens with the death and rise of Patient Zero or “John Doe” as he is dubbed. This is not a novel for the squeamish as John Doe rises in the middle of his autopsy and things get rather messy as the medical examiners try to fight him off. I’m a die-hard horror fan so gore doesn’t bother me – in fact the more epic, the better. And, boy, does this book get epic. If you are squeamish at all, I’d say this is not the novel for you.

There is a huge cast of characters to follow as the zombie apocalypse quickly spreads across the nation, but some of the main ones are Etta Hoffman (a tribute to E. T. Hoffman whose work inspired Romero’s first zombie film), a statistician who quickly realizes mankind is in trouble as the “zombie” multiply exponentially. Friends Annie Teller and Tawny Maydrew my favorites) meet at Disney World – a horrific place with people jammed in long queues waiting to be eaten (think of what’s happening with COVID-19 and this becomes even more terrifying).  A run-down, multicultural trailer park becomes a showdown between the undead and a black teenage girl and a recent Muslim immigrant. The novel is extremely diverse as plagues don’t spare anyone.

Meanwhile, the media refuses to tell the truth –half of them don’t even understand what the truth is.  Some say it’s all a hoax and others believe it’s the end of the world. If you’re not getting chills yet, you should be. This sounds way too familiar. Fox News – yes, they are mentioned by name – purports it is jihadist terrorists. Writer Kraus sees our world all too clearly. While this is a huge tome of a book, Kraus manages to skewer all of modern society – media, the internet, the reliance on everything and anything rather than ourselves and he shows the price we’re going to pay for it. Kraus is a natural horror writer as he knows how to scare on every level. But he also shows us that there’s always hope, always friendship, and always good people who do the right thing.

I admit, The Living Dead was a long, tough read. There were times I just had to put it down and walk away, as beloved characters die (don’t get attached to anyone) or as things got too close to reality. Additionally, parallels to COVID-19 can’t help but be made. I highly recommend this to horror fans, Romero fans and anyone interested in human socio-politics. As the world literally burns around us it is all too clear: we have met the zombies and they are us.