Any book that begins with the author’s confession that it all came to him in a dream, or in the case of this book, a three part mini-series dream, would normally have me back-clicking quickly— Run away! Run away! You’ve got a dream? Awesome. I’ve got one too, but in mine I have to go back to high school to complete a single course, only I can’t find the room and I’m naked… Not scary, you think? Well, you haven’t seen me naked. But back to dream novels…aside from the morphine induced Kubla Khan, they are usually just a big red flag. And I only pretended to like Kubla Khan.
But I am glad I didn’t walk away from this little horror novella because I would have missed a tale worth reading.
Now then…on with the zombies.
Harri (Harriet) is only seven when the dead come calling. Alone with parents who die then resurrect, she hides from them, but they keep coming. She is trapped in a woodshed with an ax almost too heavy to lift, when her father breaks through. Crying, she brings it down into his head.
He barely flinched or made a sound as it sunk deep into his brain…That was the first time I ever killed a zombie and certainly would not be the last. Why did it have to be my father though? I was only seven.
The story jumps in time from the present—a bleak, frozen wasteland bereft of survivors, sunshine or sundries, to the past were we witness Harri’s small group of survivors die off one by one by one, until she is utterly alone and half mad. The closest visual companion I can compare this story to would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, for its sheer gloom. There is nothing left—no food, no warmth, no crackerjack team of former soldiers, no fortresses on a hill. This is not a story about how the human spirit will forge on or how civilization will rebuild against the odds. For Harri, the odds are up. She has rolled craps.
As Harri struggles through the frozen wasteland, we learn her story. There were other survivors, a short love affair and the death of an infant who is born with the virus. The irony is that her only love, Marquis Quinn, never leaves her. He may have succumbed to the virus but he follows her across vast, faceless plains, a lonely suitor moaning to her for a response. His moans wake her from nightmares, urging her on to her final journey—recovering the baby she left behind years ago and going home.
There are some excellent images in this story. These are not “rock and roll” zombies— there are no great head shots, no “Holy Cow!” moments. There is only the same grim determination shared between the living and the dead--to keep moving.
“ Where Dom’s corpse had once been there was now just a red stain on the floorboards. Harri knew what was moving up there now and could not face to see it. As quietly as she had climbed up the stairs, she sneaked back down …Pausing she could hear a dragging noise coming from behind her. Turning her head, she saw the silhouette of a body dragging itself up to the bottom of the staircase from the back of the house. Harri…noticed it had no legs. Entrails dragged behind it leaving a trail of blood and faeces behind in its wake. Harri raised her hand to her mouth when she recognized the woolen cardigan it was wearing.”
Harri retraces a route she took many years before, as her physical and mental state deteriorates. She breaks a bone and gets gangrene. She talks to zombies and to dead dogs, who talk back in reasonable tones about how they could have helped her just end it. She recalls in hallucination and we see brief glimpses from when she was still in the safety of a group and how, death by death, it was lost. Finally her last hope for new life flees when the baby is born with the virus. With Marquis by her side, they plan a joint-suicide from a cliff overlooking crashing waves and rocky shore. It does not go as planned and Harri is left utterly alone.
Nearing the end of her journey, the author allows only windswept icy silence, broken by Harri’s labored breaths as she struggles to reach her family home. Even the zombies are frozen. “ The occasional body twitched but was not intact enough to move towards her. Eyes watched her as she walked past but they were dark and rotten.”
Harri comes home, dragging her broken body, her infant and the ever faithful Marquis close behind. In a scene reminiscent of the The Little Match Girl , Harri experiences flashbacks from the day the world ended and a macabre family reunion. Compelled by fever and misery, she surrounds herself with bones of her long-dead parents—a conversational memento mori. She awaits the final member of the family—Marquis, who does not disappoint.
Harri’s last moments turn from bucolic bliss and a long-forgotten world to frozen gray blood and reality. Worst of all, pain and fear return. Her last thoughts, “ The world was a cruel place but at least she would not have to endure it for much longer. ” With open arms, Harri welcomes her fate.
At this point, many writers would leave Harri to her solitary end. Instead, Emerick gives us one last kicker in an unexpected epilogue--akin to the final scene in the original Night of the Living Dead, where help comes but too late.
Despite grammatical woes in this story, I would recommend it for a fast read on a cold blustery night. It will stay with you longer than you would like, and that is a good recommendation.