Xombies: Apocalypse Blues by Walter Greatshell – review

What price would you pay, what sacrifice would you make, for the chance to have eternal life? These are underlying premises of several vampire novels and movies. The quest for immortality is usually not thought of as being a theme of zombie literature, but it is – not many people would want to become zombies willingly, but it is a type of eternal existence, albeit a nasty one. It’s one that involves the consumption of people’s brains, at least as generally portrayed in most zombie stories and novels. But, what if you might resemble and act like a zombie in some ways, but kept your intellect and identity, and didn’t have to eat brains to do it? What if you could do this, become super strong, almost immortal, and only suffered the side effects of having blue colored skin and a desire to convert other people into being like you, akin to the desire of some religious zealots? Walter Greatshell’s approach to zombies in his highly entertaining book Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, (originally titled Xombies) is to ask these questions, and answer them through the eyes and adventures of its first-person narrator, seventeen-year-old Louise (Lulu) Pangloss.

People around the world have been exposed to a virus called Agent X. It’s also known as Maenad Cytosis, and its victims are called Exes, Ex-humans, and Xombies. Xombies are very difficult to destroy. When a Xombie attacks a person, it looks like it’s planting a big kiss on the person’s mouth – this is how it infects others and turns them into Xombies. What’s more, if a person dies naturally, even, he or she will become a Xombie, and rise anew to try to claim further victims.

Lulu and her mother are traveling the highways and byways of the United States in an obsessive search for Lulu’s father, Fred Cowper (whom the mother wants to get money from) and are ignorant of the apocalyptic calamity that’s befallen much of the populace of America. That’s because they take stay away from highly populated cities in their effort to travel on the cheap, and Lulu’s mom doesn’t like to watch commercials on television, and won’t listen to the radio because “most popular music disturbed her chi.”

Their first clue that something strange is going on is when Lulu’s mom tries to cash a monthly check Lulu receives from Cowper, which goes to buying food and paying off debts. Her mom comes back without any groceries, and tells her “Everything’s blocked off,” and that “Traffic was all jammed up.” She pulls out a Hello Kitty portable radio from a bag, telling Lulu she got it from a gas station on Route 1, and she also has a trunkload of army rations (MREs) that she says were “just lying around loose.” She tells Lulu they’ll be safe if they “just stay out of sight.” Lulu wants to know “Safe from what?” and her mom relates to her daughter what she heard when she decided to turn on the radio:

“From women, honey. Sick women! It’s called Agent X, but it’s some kind of disease like rabies. It’s a real epidemic. It infects everyone, but it starts with women. They’re out there like – like typhoid Mary or something, crazy, and if they catch you, you get it. Or you can also catch it from men, once they’ve been infected, but either way we’re not supposed to go outside! ‘Beware any aggressive, unusual, or disheveled-looking people.’” She giggled hysterically. “”That’s us, isn’t it?”

That’s just the start of Greatshell’s intruiging novel. Lulu’s own mother turns into a Xombie, and Lulu has to rely on and put her faith in Fred Cowper, a man who’s seemed to have wanted very little to do with her for all of her life up until the bizarre epidemic occurs. After she meets up with him, their efforts focus on trying to reach a submarine to head to a military base in Thule, Greenland, where presumably they’ll find other survivors who are working on a cure for the virus. Also, the submarine is loaded up with military secrets, information needed to help ensure that one day the United States can be restored to her former self.

The idea of zombies/Xombies has been around for a long time, originating from African and Haitian voodoo religious beliefs. What I think sets Xombies: Apocalypse Blues apart from most other zombie tales is that Walter Greatshell attempts to approach the concept of people becoming zombies scientifically and medically. His explanation of where and how the outbreak started is described in a plausible way, whether or not such a thing could actually one day happen. I particularly liked the explanation of Doctor Langhorne in Thule to Lulu about their attempts to create “In effect, blank DNA. Writable DNA,” that was like a virus, but was also different:

“…instead of killing the cells, it streamlined them, radically simplifying the metabolic processes and turning each cell into an independent unit within the whole. The body as colony organism, analogous, I suppose, to a jellyfish. Strictly speaking, the host was no longer human, or even alive as we know it, but it was far more efficient and resilient. The organic structure remained, but it was arbitrary – a bag of obsolete parts governed by a solid-state master. Think analog to digital.”

Also, Greatshell’s descriptions of the submarine Lulu and Cowper travel on seem to be very realistic to me, as if the author either served on a sub himself or did tons of research on them. This adds a further degree of realism to the novel, which helps one accept some of the more fantastical things and ideas the author brings up. As well, the weapons mentioned are ones that exist today, and the author also describes these as if he has first-hand knowledge of them.

One minor aspect I liked about the novel is the appearance of a group of four ethnic Pakistanis from England who call themselves the Blackpudlians. They’re a Beatles cover band, and since one of my favorite bands is the Beatles, I liked the idea to include these characters in the novel, and I especially enjoyed all of the chapters in which they played a part.

Xombies: Apocalpyse Blues is the first of a series of books Walter Greatshell has in the works. The first chapter of his next novel, Xombies: Apocalypticon, is at the conclusion of the novel, and, while Lulu isn’t featured in it, I believe from what I read that it should also be a very good book if you’re a fan of zombie literature. Lulu is a vivid, memorable character, so I hope that she’ll also be a major character in the sequel, and I can learn more about what happens to her. I always like reading books that take a slightly different take on tried-and-true themes that run through the SF, Fantasy, and Horror genres, and so I got a kick out of Xombies: Apocalypse Blues. If you’re feeling a bit blue, then this novel by Walter Greatshell is a book you’ll want to add to your reading lists!