In the recent decade, society has been inundated with a variety of zombie movies.  While zombies have not reached the dizzying romantic hype of other types of undead (vampires, anyone?), they have subtly carved their own niche into the landscape of our fascination.  I don’t want to neglect the societal critiques of a classic like “Return of the Dead” which was put in circulation many years ago, but for the most part zombies have evolved to fit the increasing speed of our daily lives.  I’d like to direct your attention to the British movie “28 Days Later” in which a mutated virus creates a horde of blood thirsty, rage filled humans with a tenacity and speed which is truly frightening.  Will Smith battled similar phenomena in his “I Am Legend” performance, and trust me, there are a slew of other movies which show zombies racing toward their victims in direct violation of the lumbering, moaning zombie stumbling irrevocably toward its prey.  For a less disturbing, humorous and more traditional zombie movie, I direct your attention to “Shaun of the Dead”.

Max Brooks has written a book that combines the traditional view of zombies with a much more modern setting that takes the reader back to that initial fear first felt when zombies descended on small towns to feast on the flesh of the living.  World War Z is a sequel of sorts to what should be a household staple, The Zombie Survival Guide.  How people can sleep at night without an escape plan in case of a zombie attack, I don’t know.  But this latest book, WWZ, takes us past a step-by-step survival plan, and picks up the story after the attack has already happened.  In this version of the world, the zombies have already infested the planet, lurching their way through each country as the governments struggle to at first contain the outbreak, then control it, and finally, fight it.  From the first cases to the fall of nations, the entire struggle is detailed rather brilliantly through personal narratives of those who went through.

Brooks acts as a journalist interviewing those people who lived through the traumatic events.  His interviewees include doctors, government aides, soldiers, civilians and criminals.  Each interview manages to touch on a portion of the world’s struggle with zombies to create a picture which encompasses everything.  Like his previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks uses this novel to critique the societies we live.  While it may be impossible to imagine that zombies ever have or will exist, the way in which people, communities, cities and governments deal with the threat in Brooks’ book don’t seem too far fetched from events that have and are currently taking place in the world.  He details a frightening fictional topic, but it is how he imbues it with a sense of reality that leaves you truly terrified.  A doctor is thrust into a room with the deceased bound and shackled.  A mother finds her children being dragged away in the night.   Russian soldiers attempting to flee the infection are forced to murder their own comrades.  A flood of refugees clogs a road in India and hundreds are trampled as the military loses control of the evacuation.   These personal tales bring the stories of the undead to life.

Is that too cheesy?