Be Very Scared

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks

Zombies probably rank low in terms of scare factor amongst supernatural entities. Compared with vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, ghosts and other ghastly ghouls, what do zombies exactly do, right? I mean, gee one vampire can terrorize a suburb without sweating. Werewolves and shapeshifters can outrun pursuers armed with silver bullets. What about a zombie? A single zombie won't probably scare a handful of gamers aware of its weakness. Heck, maybe even a handful of zombies. I mean, they moan and walk slowly you can practically outrun them if you don't have a weapon in hand.

What zombies do is they uh, zombify you if there is even such a term. Infect you with their zombieness. They turn you into one of them, much like werewolves biting you and turning you into one (or vampires for that matter, with the additional act of letting you drink blood but I digress). Then again, zombies are quite easy to defeat. Destroy the brain and that's it. Because they only have one purpose and that is to turn you into one of them. Of course they might decide to tear you limb for limb first as they don't exactly think. Haha. That's as far as the zombie myth I know uh, goes.

Zombies can be quite scary if you have hordes of them and that's the premise of World War Z. Enough zombies causing widespread panic worldwide. Because if you have hordes and hordes and hordes of zombies, how can you practically eliminate the brains of each and every one of them?

So I rambled long enough to introduce the book.

Sometime in the distant future a certain kind of sickness is spreading. People are turning into zombies. Dead people infected are reanimated to life. The science behind the infection is never explained, just that once a person is bitten by another infected then that's it. Automatic infection without a cure. And like all kinds of infection, it starts below the radar and isn't discovered until more than a throng of people have been infected. By then it's too late.

But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn't shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!

The book is told through interviews with the survivors of the war against the undead around the world. Detailed recollections from those who initially reported the sickness, those who first encountered the infected or those earlier reanimations, to the time that different countries unveiled their own plans of attack against the zombies, accounts of fighting by members of the military to that of escape by everyday people. The novel is a story of survival against an enemy and the heroic things that a handful of citizens did to prevent a world ruled by zombies. It is also a story about the foibles, follies, weaknesses of humankind. Because survival doesn't equal heroism. Survival just is.

The zombies themselves were scary enough but it wasn't that fact that made this a gripping read. Well yes, they can be pretty scary but the chilling part for me is the global reaction to a worldwide pandemic and the apparent unpreparedness of every country to handle it.

One story after another, from the time evacuations began with some of them failing up to the time that cities and countries became host to a swarm of undead it is heartbreaking to read that all too human reactions - blame, panic, opportunism - it's all there and more. It is far scarier for me to read all that. It made the whole zombie thing real. It made me uncomfortable. Unsafe. Even if there were no zombies banging through my door at that time.

Oh, c’mon. Can you ever “solve” poverty? Can you ever “solve” crime? Can you ever “solve” disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That’s not cynicism, that’s maturity. You can’t stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won’t leak, or at least won’t leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.

Reading a somewhat cautionary tale such as this in the guise of a horror story is unnerving. It's fiction and yet it's not. It's a possibility if you take out the zombie equation and insert a believable global epidemic, the fictional accounts of the survivors will still ring true.

In any other guises of fiction people are still people; possessing all the possible goodness within them as well as carrying all the inherent evilness. The practical point of view is that in the end it's not even a question of ethics but a question of survival. Some accounts are clear on that. But gray is never a comfortable color in ethics or, as in this story, to those left behind, the forgotten ones who now form part of the undead.

Oh dear, such a serious post for a horror story. So yes, it was scary as hell.

On the other hand I've encountered far scarier zombies. Brooks retained the slowly moving undead in this tome although it was a bit creepy reading about them freezing up or even walking the depths of seas. Yay! But I've been fascinated with the zombies created by Danny Boyle in the movie 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later. If you like your zombies really scary, if you like zombies that will cause you nightmares, go watch those movies. Of course, like this book, those aren't just zombie movies.

If you posted about the book and would like a link of your thoughts here, leave a comment and the link and I'll add yours below.

Other interesting point of view:

Bold. Blue. Adventure.

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I'll use this as my "W" Title for the A-Z Reading Challenge hosted by Joy in lieu of my original choice Wicked by Gregory Maguire.