Zombies: More Recent Dead
ZOMBIES:
MORE RECENT DEAD
Edited by Paula Guran
Copyright © 2014 by Paula Guran.
Cover art by Szabo Balaz.
Cover design by Sherin Nicole.
Ebook design by Neil Clarke.
All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors,
and used here with their permission. An extension of this copyright page can be found at the end of the book.
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
ISBN: 978-1-60701-440-9 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-60701-433-1 (trade paperback)
PRIME BOOKS
www.prime-books.com
Germantown, Maryland
For more information, contact Prime Books at [email protected].
Return of the Preshamble
• Paula Guran
The Afflicted
• Matthew Johnson
Dead Song
• Jay Wilburn
Iphigenia in Aulis
• Mike Carey
Pollution
• Don Webb
Becca at the End of the World
• Shira Lipkin
The Naturalist
• Maureen F. McHugh
Selected Sources for the Babylonian Plague of the Dead (572-571 BCE)
• Alex Dally MacFarlane
What Maisie Knew
• David Liss
Rocket Man
• Stephen Graham Jones
The Day the Music Died
• Joe McKinney
The Children’s Hour
• Marge Simon
Delice
• Holly Newstein
Trail of Dead
• Joanne Anderton
The Death and Life of Bob
• William Jablonsky
Stemming the Tide
• Simon Strantzas
Those Beneath the Bog
• Jacques L. Condor (Maka Tai Meh)
What Still Abides
• Marie Brennan
Jack and Jill
• Jonathan Maberry
In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection
• Caitlín R. Kiernan
Rigormarole
• Michael A. Arnzen
Kitty’s Zombie New Year
• Carrie Vaughn
The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring
• Genvieve Valentine
Chew
• Tamsyn Muir
’Til Death Do Us Part
• Shaun Jeffrey
There Is No “E” in Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You or We
• Roxane Gay
What Once We Feared
• Carrie Ryan
The Harrowers
• Eric Gregory
Resurgam
• Lisa Mannetti
I Waltzed with a Zombie
• Ron Goulart
Aftermath
• Joy Kennedy-O’Neill
A Shepherd of the Valley
• Maggie Slater
The Day the Saucers Came
• Neil Gaiman
Love, Resurrected
• Cat Rambo
Present
• Nicole Kornher-Stace
The Hunt: Before, and the Aftermath
• Joe R. Lansdale
Bit Rot
• Charles Stross
Paula Guran
A little over four years ago, I started compiling
Zombies: The Recent Dead.
Published in October 2010, I hoped it was a zombie anthology that not only included outstanding stories, but could serve as an entertaining guide (of sorts) and “historical documentation” to zombie fiction written in the first decade of what had already turned into the Zombie Century.
I was very fortunate to be able to republish an updated version of David J. Schow’s introduction and afterword from his collection
Zombie Jam
(Subterranean Press, 2003). Schow wrote of the impact of George A. Romero’s films on him personally as well as the rest of us culturally. He also explained how the modern archetype of the living dead is derived from cinematic rather than literary roots.
I added two other short introductory essays. The first, “Preshamble,” dealt with the earlier “traditional” zombie mythos (and its one-time popularity). The other, “Deaditorial Note,” briefly covered the rise of the living dead in twenty-first century popular culture, including its literature, and the themes most often explored. (You can find them online here: paulaguran.com/zombies-the-recent-dead-intro).
At the time, I wondered if the demand for all things zombie had peaked, if
Zombies: The Recent Dead
was a last chance at doing an anthology of great fiction about the living dead.
I shouldn’t have worried.
The Walking Dead
premiered on 31 October 2010 on AMC.
The series’ popularity either kept the living dead alive or proved they were even more embedded in our pop cultural brains than ever.
By 2013,
The Walking Dead
averaged 5.6 million viewers per episode: the highest audience ratings in the United States for any television show, broadcast or cable. It was also the most popular TV show with advertiser-preferred viewers between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine. Its fifth season will air this fall.
The summer of 2013 brought the movie
World War Z
: big budget ($190 million for production), big star (Brad Pitt), biggest hordes of zombies ever seen, and at this writing, more than $540 million worldwide gross. Biggest z-movie ever and Brad Pitt’s biggest grosser.
The Max Brooks novel the film was loosely based on—Brooks freely admitted the only thing his novel and the movie had in common is the title—had been one of two books that truly set off twenty-first century zombiemania:
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
(2003), a parody of a survival guide, and
World War Z
(2006), a serious novel documenting a worldwide zombie pandemic. Both by Brooks, these books brought zombies out of the horror genre and into the mainstream.
How far into the mainstream?
The Walking Dead
is not the only hit television series about the living dead. BBC Three’s mini-series
In the Flesh
began airing in the UK on 17 March 2013 with three hour-long episodes. (It won the BAFTA Award as best mini-series of 2014 and its leading actor, Luke Newberry, was also honored in his category.) A second season of six hour-long episodes began on 4 May 2014 in the UK and on 10 May 2014 in the U.S. (carried by BBC America). Rather than focusing on humans making violently sure the living dead are dead dead,
In The Flesh
offers a more compassionate view emphasizing the difficulties of “living” as one of the dead.
Eight episodes of a French series,
The Returned
(
Les Revenants
), based on the 2004 film
They Came Back
(also titled, in French,
Les Revenants
) aired in 2012 on Canal+. It became the pay-TV broadcaster’s most popular original series ever and won an International Emmy for Best Drama Series. A second season followed. It was aired in the UK in 2013. In the U.S., Sundance Channel aired the first season of
Les Revenants
as
The Returned.
Now, A&E has fast-tracked a ten-episode version, also titled
The Returned,
to air fall 2014. Like
In the Flesh,
the undead are humanized in the series while investigating the effect on the living when those from the not-always-resolved past abruptly show up.
The dead return to life in the French series, but it is closer to ABC’s 2013 unrelated series
Resurrection
(based on the novel
The Returned
by Jason Mott) than typical zombie fare. In
Resurrection,
the dead mysteriously appear, look and act as they did while among the living, and have no apparent memory of their deaths or what has passed since then. Perhaps these aren’t zombies? Don’t be so sure. By the end of
Resurrection
’s first season earlier this year, the undead were at least becoming a major problem that was going to have to be dealt with by the living. ABC has renewed
Resurrection
for a second season.
The BBC has commissioned a zombie “reality” game show,
I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse
. BBC Three—set to go online-only in late 2015—will air the show. The premise: eight contestants are trapped in a shopping mall surrounded by the (supposedly) walking dead. Contestants must use urban survival tactics and their wits to avoid being bitten by the “zombies.” Dark humor seems to be intrinsic to the show as a network news release promises that once bitten, contestants “will leave the show in grisly style.” An executive producer is quoted as saying, “It’s nice to finally have a game show where if you get a challenge wrong, you get your arms ripped off and your brains eaten out.”
As for
The Walking Dead,
AMC has announced an as-yet untitled “companion series.” Originally (in late 2013) slated to launch in 2015, the network has not offered any details lately on when it will premiere.
Syfy recently announced a thirteen-episode series,
Z Nation, which “
will follow the struggle for humans to survive post-zombie apocalypse.” It will premiere fall 2014.
World War Z
? Paramount has announced a sequel with Pitt starring, Juan Antonio Bayona directing, and Steven Knight as screenwriter. No date is set, but release in 2016 is expected.
The Lively Living Dead Thriving Elsewhere
Picture books for children featuring zombies (usually light-heartedly) had proliferated by the time
ParaNorman,
a 2012 zombie movie for kids, received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. So had chapter books for older children and young adult novels. All continue to do so.
In the colorful kids’ game
Plants vs. Zombies,
according to the description, a “mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home, and your only defense is an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants . . . Each zombie has its own special skills, so be careful how you use your limited supply of greens and seeds . . . as you battle the fun-dead . . . ” There’s a large line of toys to match—including plush toys for infants—and a comic book series.
Or, you can try the more generic “Glow in the Dark Flesh Eating Zombies Play Set.” (Nine three-inch-tall vinyl glow-in-the-dark flesh-eating zombies. “Turn off the light to see their eerie glow!”) Nerf makes a “Zombie Crossfire Bow Toy,” and, instead of little plastic army figures, you can now buy a bag of zombies (neon green) and zombie hunters (bright blue, includes Swat/Hazmat units).
When it comes to the undead devouring our kids, I could go on . . .
Oh, hold on to your decaying flesh, I won’t.
There are also plenty of zombie comic books, graphic novels, and (yes) manga intended for those a bit older. According to Diamond Comic Distributors, the top-selling comic book of 2013 (not surprisingly) was
The Walking Dead No. 115
and
Walking Dead
volumes accounted for five of the Top Ten graphic novels. But the TV-related franchise isn’t the only comic series, published (or, in some cases, were published until recently.) Along with various graphic versions of z-movies old and new and some novels, there are series like
The New Deadwardians,
iZombie,
Fanboys vs. Zombies,
Revival,
and
Afterlife with Archie
(yes,
that
Archie). Even George Romero returned to the zombie genre this year with comic
Empire of the Dead,
illustrated by Alex Maleev and published by Marvel.
Despite the plethora of already-existing zombie videogames, many gamers found
The Last of Us
—with its realistic post-apocalyptic storyline and uncomfortable moral choices—to be one of the best titles of 2013. Also recently popular is
DayZ,
a multiplayer open world survival game test-released in December 2013 for Windows, and still in alpha-testing stage. Noted for its particularly horrific scenarios, the
DayZ
player is a survivor of a zombie virus who must forage for basic needs while killing or avoiding zombies, as well as killing, co-opting, or avoiding other players.
Among z-games to come:
Dead Island 2
is scheduled for a spring 2015 release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Dying Light,
another action game with zombies will also launch for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, and PC sometime in 2015. Zombie survival game
H1Z1
(the name of yet another zombie-making virus) has a tentative release date of the end of 2014 for PC.
