Outbreak

Zombies on the Rock #1

by Paul Carberry

Zombies have taken over! #1 Bestseller! Zombie hordes created by the evil Pharmakon company have taken over the world, including the one place that always thought it was safe from the calamities of the the quiet, scenic shores of Newfoundland’s west coast. In this horrifying first volume, the island of Newfoundland is besieged by zombies and are left unprepared for the massacres that follow, struggling to stay alive as the city of Corner Brook falls to the undead hordes.... "[Carberry] draws in his readers from the first page, effortlessly providing the tension and fear necessary to create his terrifying apocalyptic tale." ~ Fiona Cooke Hogan, author of What Happened In Dingle

Genres: Horror

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 11, 2017

About the author

Paul Carberry is a huge proponent of the horror genre and its place in literature. He has two children, daughter Dana and son Rick, with his wife Leah.

Paul has published three novels with Engen Books: Zombies on the Rock: Outbreak, Zombies on the Rock: The Viking Trail, and Zombies on the Rock: The Republic of Newfoundland. He has also had numerous short stories featured in publication, including The Light of Cabot Tower, Into the Forest, and Halloween Mummers.

Reviews

[Shannon Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a great story with good references to other zombie works. Very fun to read but it could use another pass by an editor.

[Fiona Cooke Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zombies On The Rocks – Book1 – Outbreak
By Paul Carberry

This is a page turner, a fast paced, adrenaline fuelled read.

The story opens in Black Duck Siding, Newfoundland and student Tina Caine is home to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. Whilst walking down by the river she encounters a horribly injured and mutilated man in the woods. Distressed, she raises the alarm but the seemingly dead man has disappeared leaving only a trail of dark blood behind.

Things quickly escalate from footage of a deadly virus in a quarantined village in South Africa to a full scale world epidemic. A zombie apocalypse has come to Corner Brook. Zombie On The Rocks tracks the outbreak through the eyes of Eric Jones, an Officer with the Corner Brook Police Force. We follow his desperate bid to save the people he loves as life as his knows it disintegrates into madness and chaos and his attempt to figure out the mysterious goings on in the research facility on Fox Island.

There is a lot of zombie fiction out there and not all of it shines. Paul Carberry is a writer to watch out for. He draws in his readers from the first page effortlessly providing the tension and fear necessary to create his terrifying apocalyptic tale. He leaves his readers hanging, eager to find out what happens next in Corner Brook.

The second book in the series cannot come out soon enough.

[Cate Marsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing beats the pleasure of a good zombie story set in the place you live. BRB, stocking up on food and weapons now.

[Ed Ryder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Zombies on the Rock is set in the near future where corporations have bailed out Canada’s bankrupt Government, and as a result have a free rein to do what they want. With a top secret pharmaceutical site just a short drive away from the small town of Corner Brook, what can possibly go wrong?

The tale opens with the discovery of a terribly injured man in the woods, who strangely disappears by the time the police turn up to investigate. Was he murdered, attacked by coyotes or something else? It’s not long before a series of strange attacks occur in and around the town – could they be the result of a new drug or alcoholism, or are they connected to the news reports of a strange viral outbreak and quarantined cities around the world?

The story is told through a fairly large ensemble cast’s POV but mainly concentrates on the characters Eric (a policeman) and Jason (a Government wildlife officer), two friends who are thrust into the middle of events as they unfold around them. The first act does a good job in establishing the location with some nice details and descriptions (I didn’t really know much about the geography of Newfoundland so I looked it up on Google Maps – looks like a nice place to visit!) and slowly cranks up the tension as Eric tries to investigate despite pressure from above to let it go. The plot is a nice mix of (Fear the) Walking Dead, Resident Evil and the beginning bit of 28 Days Later that we never saw. A lot of it feels very familiar, but to be fair there’s a limited number of ways that the beginning of the zombie apocalypse can play out, especially if you are concentrating on normal people.

I won’t spoil any more of the story here, but overall I found the plot very well paced and exciting throughout. There are some caveats, however. Although there are some great tense scenes in the novel, some of the impact is diminished by the lack of familiarity with the characters of the rapidly growing cast within them. Apart from Eric and Jason who are well rounded, I felt the other characters really needed fleshing out a bit to make me care more about what happened to them. When you’ve got a zombie snapping and chomping at someone’s leg, it’s much more dramatic if you feel like it’s one of your friend’s life at stake. An example would be the antagonism between Jason and David Steele, the security head at Pharmakon. Although David’s extreme behaviour is explained and he has a history of being a bully to Jason, it’s seems much more personal to David than is initially explored. Although this doesn’t detract from an exciting set-piece between the two, it would have made it even better if I understood a bit more of the background. This is also highlighted when things kick off and the town starts to be overrun. Characters are introduced in one paragraph only to be killed off a few pages later before we get to know them at all. Although I think this choice was made to show a broad canvas of events unfold, focusing more on a smaller number of people would have made for a much more intense experience. The zombie attacks, while very detailed for the squeamish amongst us (it gets very ‘intestiney’ at numerous points), start to feel a bit repetitive after a while but again there’s only so many ways that zombies can bite people.

Zombies on the Rock is very much a ‘Ronseal’ book. If you’re not from the UK and have no idea what I’m talking about, Ronseal is a company whose advertising slogan for many years was “It does exactly what it says on the tin”. This book promises zombies, gore, action and the fate of the world at stake, and that’s what it delivers. I enjoyed it a lot and I’m looking forward to the next part of the series to see how things pan out, and hopefully learn more about the people within the world he has created.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good, solid story

I was pleasantly surprised by this great zombie tale. I took a chance on an unknown and read in one day :) worth a look, kept me interested and Ive read hundreds of books in this genre. On to the next one!

[Andrew Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preamble

Zombies On The Rock: Outbreak had been on my TBR list for a while now. I am a great lover of fantasy but horror, and zombie horror in particular, is a type of fiction that I particularly enjoy. Not sure what our obsession with apocalyptica says about the current collective unconscious of the human psyche, but ever since my friend booted up Resident Evil 2 on his PlayStation back when I was thirteen, I have not been able to shake my adoration of it. Between video games, movies, comic books, Max Brooks’ stuff – I have love seeing shit going sideways thanks to the chompy dead.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review – 5/5

Having grown up in Newfoundland, I can’t really tell what it must be like for an outsider consuming media related to my home and native land (that’s a lyrical reference to the provincial anthem Ode To Newfoundland for the uninitiated). Still, the popularity of Hudson and Rex and The Republic of Doyle suggest that come from aways dig what we’ve got. Some stuff written on The Rock (which is a reference to the colloquial name for Newfoundland and has nothing to do with the dated Sean Connery vehicle or wrestler become A-list action star), is subtle about its influence. Some writing sports Newfie geographical pants like Stephen King wears Maine slacks. And other printed bits are in your face with the toutons (a fried bread breakfast item that trumps pancakes), the moose (an introduced species that has flourished and is responsible for many car accidents and divine game meat that makes a mean sausage), the puffins (colourful birds well-known to frequent the coast), and the bakeapples (AKA cloudberries: delicious and rare orange things that grow in the swamps here and in Scandinavia).

As you can guess from the almost comically ‘what you see is what you get’ title, Zombies On The Rock makes no bones about what’s on the menu: Newfoundland and zombies.

The tropes are all here folks. From the evil pharmaceutical company to the troubled hero cop to the news reports from other parts of the country to the super soldier serum and the latent psychopath who has finally found his existential milieu in the wreckage of the apocalypse, there are so many elements and nods to other horror works that I get the feeling that Skipper (a local honorific that hearkens back to the golden years of fishing on the island) Carberry has enjoyed his share of zombie fiction in his day. Most everything is written in bombastic caricature reminiscent of schlocky B-horror, from moments of absolutely ludicrous dialogue and visceral and gratuitous munching of leg flesh to the necessary hospital outbreak scene (where else do you go when you get sick?)

In Newfoundland, we have a way of referring to the country, a place that is quite expansive on what is actually a rather large land mass (anything west of ‘the overpass’ leading out of St. John’s on the eastern tip): the bay. In a reversal of how ‘townie’ is done on the mainland, people from ‘the bay’ are called ‘baymen’ regardless of sex whilst city folk coming out of the large capital of St. John’s are ‘townies.’ Being a born and raised townie, I can still appreciate how the bay feels, having spent some time ‘around the bay’ in my years. Skipper Carberry certainly conveyed the feeling of the bay, as Outbreak is largely set in the western part of the island, featuring various familiar town names and the one other city on The Rock (Corner Brook).

Full disclosure: there are a few rough edges, including various grammatical, punctuation, and usage errors, and the characterization is not particularly deep, but I would encourage you not to let these types of things trip you up. It is a relatively quick read and the language is quite approachable – Skipper Carberry does not mess around with any dialect play, though there is fertile linguistic ground for doing so on this fine island of ours. Instead, the English is quite clear and the Queen’s own.

Bottom line: if you like zombies and Newfoundland, or are interested in either, you would do well to check out Skipper Carberry’s multi-part zombie opus. I understand that he’s released part four at this point, and there is enough of a hook to bring you into the next book in the series (titled The Viking Trail, hopefully a reference to Viking zombies coming out of the historic Viking landing site in L'Anse-Aux-Meadows at the northern tip of the island - not probable, given that these are virus zombies and not grave zombies, but a man can dream...)

I now feel the strange urge to go to Marie’s (a local convenience store) and get some touton dough. Thankfully, there’s some molasses in my cupboard – maple syrup on toutons is a goddamn travesty.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've known Paul for over 2 years (that's just Facebook, I suspect longer), he's a great guy, an excellent father and someone I'm happy to count as a con-friend (by that I mean someone I only see at conventions. All that said I'm doing an honest review of his book, with a couple of caveats I'll explain shortly. I've always liked zombies but only really came to love reading about them when I got into The Walking Dead comic book. Truthfully this is the first zombie novel I have ever read and it certainly won't be the last. Like vampires they are a very popular villain/creature and have lots of opportunities to be done a little different by the author.

So the caveats, I discussed this book with Paul a few months ago. He was aware that it is too long and needed a lot more editing. Since he has since but out a new version of the book (and I read the older one) I'll not touch on those issues anymore.

This book has some good ideas and once the apocalypse starts, it has plenty of excitement. I liked the idea of the government collapsing and corporations taking over the governments role in Newfoundland (NL). I also enjoyed how has a lot of scenes set in Corner Brook (CB). While I'm not from CB I've visited there many times, it's a beautiful area and having chapters set there makes it easy for me to picture them.

I suppose going any further I should add SPOILER ALERT!

I also enjoyed how the zombies were an after effect/mistake from a super solider program. NL is full of isolated places and would be a good spot for a company to carry out secret experiments with little chance of detection. I liked how he doesn't pull any punches when describing both how people die (mostly from zombies) and how zombies look, sound and smell. I also liked how zombies were created here, some are fast and some aren't. The fact that the company who created them hasn't gone away at the end was a nice surprise and how the military is also still present in CB made sense. I also liked how people banded together near their cabins outside the city, many Newfoundlander's are hardy and used to living in wooded areas. I think NL would be better off that many large cities for a zombie invasion and I'm glad Paul recognizes that.

That said he also has many people who just couldn't accept that civilization is gone and monsters are real, is also good. Lots of people would buckle under the stress and pressure and simply be useless (and often the first to do). Survival of the fittest would start to apply once again to the human race..

He has no problem killing characters! I won't say how but don't get attached, like Walking Dead people die a lot. That said he creates some interesting, likable (and hateful which is also important for the reader) and memorable characters. I also enjoyed how their are mentions of the zombie apocalypse happening all over the world, I hope in future books he gives us a glimpse of some other places. The book has some interesting twists and turns and has a nice ending which leaves you wanting more (and is something of a cliffhanger).

As an author myself I can't resist giving advice on how Paul's writing can be improved (and I'm sure he won't mind). Dialogue is a hard thing to get right, I still struggle with it and I would encourage him to work on it, the dialogue here is often unrealistic and filled with curse words. While it's the end of the world for the characters (at least for most of the book) I think they say "fuck" far too often. Swearing in a novel is meant for dramatic effect, if it's used all the time it loses that effect (unless you're hard core erotica of course). I could picture Corner Brook well because I've been there but I think a little more description of the places would be a benefit to other readers outside of NL. He often uses the word ghoul instead of zombie, while the causal reader may not know the difference for me this was annoying. Ghouls and zombies are two different things, at least that's what D&D taught me.

Finally I would add that while I like very graphic descriptions of violence and gore, he should perhaps tone it down in future works. Many readers are more easily offended and sometimes what you imagine is more scary than what is shown to you.

I look forward to reading more from Paul and I will certainly pick up a signed copy of book two. I do recommend it to any horror/zombie fan. I would also say to pick up the newest version. Due to violence and language ages 18+, until next time.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zombies on the Rock: Outbreak is fast paced and exhilarating – a no-holds barred rollercoaster ride of a book that I could not put down!

Set in Corner Brook, Newfoundland (and it’s surrounding areas) I knew from the moment that the character Dana mused “I’m sure it won’t affect us over here.” that things, indeed, would affect us over here. I absolutely love these little glimpses that we get in the early chapters that almost come with a wink and a nod … because we all know what’s coming. And it’s not just the zombies you have to keep an eye on because there are more monsters in this book than those of the flesh-eating variety.

Cleverly crafted and reminiscent of classic, old-school zombie tales there is a slow rising action and a nail biting set up but once it starts, it is relentless and Carberry does not disappoint. It is gory, it is gruesome and no one is safe! Just the way I like it!

If zombies are your thing, then this book is an absolute must read!

[Doctor Doom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Run of the mill zombie novel with excessive foul language. While not a bad story the chapters are so peppered with bad language it makes it hard reading for those of us who prefer a higher standard (yes, even in our zombie novels). Frank Tayell has a whole series of approximately 20 volumes and did it all with tight writing, a clean vocabulary and a great continuity (even though the books can stand alone just fine).

[Cathy Regular · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.7/5.0

Hidden Gems:

There seemed to be something strange taking place in the town of Corner Brook.

[Matthew Ledrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

"While the action takes place primarily on the west coast of Newfoundland (including several shout-outs of a place near and dear to my heart, Burgeo), Carberry makes it clear that this is a global event: as the first half of the noel progresses, news programs and stories come in about a rabies-like viral outbreak happening at different points around the globe… this is happening everywhere, Carberry just chooses to tell us the regional story of how this event affects those local to western Newfoundland. "
Read full review on Other Indie