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Less Than Human
Across the East Coast, the dead are rising. Cities are overrun with them, decaying corpses with an insatiable hunger for human meat...
When Ben Ackerman finds himself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, he can only think about saving his son, Jake. Unfortunately for Ben, Jake lives with his mother, about two-hundred miles away. The morning it all goes down, Ben embarks on a journey to rescue his son from this grave new world. However, there are worse things than zombies patrolling the New Jersey border...
Meet the Barker Brothers. Three fun-loving country boys with a love for guns, fried chicken, and their mother. After running into Ben and his small band of travelers, the Barker Brothers offer their hospitality, a room and food for as long as they need. Only, there's an undisclosed price to pay, and it might just cost Ben and his friends their lives...
Less Than Human is a 50,000 word horror/apocalyptic thriller.
When Ben Ackerman finds himself in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, he can only think about saving his son, Jake. Unfortunately for Ben, Jake lives with his mother, about two-hundred miles away. The morning it all goes down, Ben embarks on a journey to rescue his son from this grave new world. However, there are worse things than zombies patrolling the New Jersey border...
Meet the Barker Brothers. Three fun-loving country boys with a love for guns, fried chicken, and their mother. After running into Ben and his small band of travelers, the Barker Brothers offer their hospitality, a room and food for as long as they need. Only, there's an undisclosed price to pay, and it might just cost Ben and his friends their lives...
Less Than Human is a 50,000 word horror/apocalyptic thriller.
158 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 18, 2013
5 people are currently reading
564 people want to read
About the author
Tim Meyer
49 books1,051 followersTim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He's an author, husband, father, podcast host, blogger, coffee connoisseur, beer enthusiast, and explorer of worlds. He writes horror, mysteries, science fiction, and thrillers, although he prefers to blur genres and let the story fall where it may.
You can follow Tim at https://timmeyerwrites.com
OR like his Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/authortimmeyer
You can follow Tim at https://timmeyerwrites.com
OR like his Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/authortimmeyer
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 24, 2017
I enjoyed the method by which Tim combines a conventional yet compelling horror story with zombie apocalypse material. The plot moved along very well, and the book kept my interest. I definitely look forward to more of his work!
November 9, 2015
Started out very promising, but the pace crawled, drawing the whole thing out for way too long. The action, with gore thrown in for nothing more than shock value, is predictable, and slow, the characters are nothing special.
October 26, 2015
Cliche after cliche. Predictable. Bleh.
January 3, 2022
I don't like zombies. Yet I greatly enjoyed this lurid visual 'Less than Human' (2013), because Tim Meyer managed to put depth and a beautiful theme in it between all the undead atrocities.
For starters, the story is not entirely chronological and contains flashbacks. These are used to clarify the situation for the readers and increase the tension due to the violent events. The author has matched this in the right way and that forms a visually very strong but also gruesome page turner.
What makes this book worth five stars? That is the theme with which Meyer shows that he is a writer who can also write literary. In my experience, this must-read for horror fans is about how feelings and experiences make people aware of their humanity and Meyer shows that in a great way.
Very ingeniously he pits the heroes against two different antagonists (zombies and the Barker Brothers) and I associated that with the following. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers has a theory about the philosophical zombie (1). According to him, this is a being that resembles a thinking human being but has no consciousness. With this information, the zombies give ambiguity to the story, making it almost literature.
There are two quotes in the text that support this depth. One about the zombies and one about Barker brothers:
Ben started thinking if the zombies could feel anything. Pain. Sadness. pleasure. anguish. Did they have thoughts? Able to rationalize? Or did they only have the never-ending motor that ran on the consumption of human meat. He didn't know although he suspected the latter. (p.80)
These people aren't human. They're less human than the fucking zombies. (p.106)
The first conclusion shows that feeling and being able to experience are important to be consciously human. The second shows that the Barkers are worse than the zombies because they are selfish, dangerous and ruthless. Both are hunters and are only concerned with their prey for food or fun.
And then there is the motive of the parent-child relationship. Just like in 'The Switch House', this is a topic that comes up in different ways in the story. It forms an intriguing field of tension between Ben Ackerman and Josh Emberson. The constructive way in which this theme keeps coming back in this gruesome story is craftsmanship.
So, the variation in the timeline of the story, the ambiguous themes and the varied play with motifs makes 'Less than Human' more than an apocalyptic thriller. To me it's horror literature #lessthanhuman #timmeyer
(1) Loewer, B. Filosofie in 30 seconden (2014). Driel: Liebrero p.66
For starters, the story is not entirely chronological and contains flashbacks. These are used to clarify the situation for the readers and increase the tension due to the violent events. The author has matched this in the right way and that forms a visually very strong but also gruesome page turner.
What makes this book worth five stars? That is the theme with which Meyer shows that he is a writer who can also write literary. In my experience, this must-read for horror fans is about how feelings and experiences make people aware of their humanity and Meyer shows that in a great way.
Very ingeniously he pits the heroes against two different antagonists (zombies and the Barker Brothers) and I associated that with the following. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers has a theory about the philosophical zombie (1). According to him, this is a being that resembles a thinking human being but has no consciousness. With this information, the zombies give ambiguity to the story, making it almost literature.
There are two quotes in the text that support this depth. One about the zombies and one about Barker brothers:
Ben started thinking if the zombies could feel anything. Pain. Sadness. pleasure. anguish. Did they have thoughts? Able to rationalize? Or did they only have the never-ending motor that ran on the consumption of human meat. He didn't know although he suspected the latter. (p.80)
These people aren't human. They're less human than the fucking zombies. (p.106)
The first conclusion shows that feeling and being able to experience are important to be consciously human. The second shows that the Barkers are worse than the zombies because they are selfish, dangerous and ruthless. Both are hunters and are only concerned with their prey for food or fun.
And then there is the motive of the parent-child relationship. Just like in 'The Switch House', this is a topic that comes up in different ways in the story. It forms an intriguing field of tension between Ben Ackerman and Josh Emberson. The constructive way in which this theme keeps coming back in this gruesome story is craftsmanship.
So, the variation in the timeline of the story, the ambiguous themes and the varied play with motifs makes 'Less than Human' more than an apocalyptic thriller. To me it's horror literature #lessthanhuman #timmeyer
(1) Loewer, B. Filosofie in 30 seconden (2014). Driel: Liebrero p.66
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews