The Living Dead 2 – edited by John Joseph Adams – review

They’re relentless, they hunger for your brains (and, basically, every other part of you), and they’re back! Zombies are, of course, what I’m referring to, and they’re back in the anthology The Living Dead 2. Everyone loves a great sequel, so all of you fans of the horror genre and zombie stories should love this collection of 43 bite-sized tales very much. The Living Dead, Vol. 1 was awesome in its own right, though it contained just 34 stories (some were admittedly longer than the ones in this new anthology), but I think this sequel is even better. The zombie stories in this anthology include ones written by many of today’s most talented horror authors. Like with a bag of Halloween candy, you can’t stop at reading just one.

I’m going to touch on just a handful of the many stand-out tales of zombie mayhem in this marvelous new collection. That’s no slight to the other ones, because, unlike other such anthologies I’ve read in the past, I wasn’t bored by any of the stories in this one, and I didn’t find any clinkers. It’s just a matter of space consideration and time; who am I to disrupt the Space/Time Continuum?

The most recent zombie novel I’ve read was The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer. It’s been described as a romance zombie novel, but I found it to be a witty, darkly humorous, and gore-filled novel, and one of the best takes on the zombie subgenre I’ve ever read. In it, humans become zombie-fied not due to meteorites nor escaped viruses from some government lab, but from a new type of insidious STD (and those people bitten by anyone who has the STD).  Her contribution to this anthology, “Pirates and Zombies,” is in the same vein. From the first sentence on, you will be hooked into the story: “The noise a zombie makes when it’s eating someone is a lot like the sound of drunk people having sloppy sex–grunting and moaning and wet smacking.” Even the story’s narrator, and the other main characters, Kelly, Juicy Lui, Highwater Mark, and Justin Case, worked in the same store, Trader Joe’s, where the main characters of The Loving Dead also worked. They believe they might be able to escape and outlast the zombie epidemic on land if they head out to sea, but that theory and plan very quickly is proven to be, oh, so flawed. I like this story and her novel because she deftly combines dark humor and the gut-spilling horror of being attacked by zombies in her fiction, and I like the twist that an STD is the cause of the zombie outbreak.

Walter Greatshell’s short story, “The Mexican Bus,” is another highlight for me. It, like Beamer’s “Pirates and Zombies,” can be considered a continuation or addition to his previous novels. His books, Xombies: Apocalypse Blues and Xombies: Apocalypticon introduced the world to a very different sort of zombie, ones with blue skin. They are relentless, strong, and fast, and their attacks seem like those of zombies to an extent, but their goal is not to kill their victims and consume them. They, instead, seek to convert them, to make all of humanity like they are. The Xombies are like evangelists of a new religion, converting followers by any means that it takes.  What attracts me to Greatshell’s novels and to this short story is the different approach he has to the genre, and his dark humor and cultural references. I like his writing for basically the same reasons I like Amelia Beamer’s. In “The Mexican Bus,” a sort of On the Road story, an American college drop-out is on a Mexican bus when the Xombie outbreak begins. He has romantic notions of life on the road, and experiencing life via hitting the road, meeting people, and exploring all that life has to offer. When the bus is forced to stop because of a disturbance up ahead blocking the road, his life takes a decided turn, for the better or the worse. The scene of blue-skinned nuns who appear to be giving CPR to the victims of another bus crash (the one blocking the road), and the scene where Xombies run after and climb on top of the bus are two of my favorite parts of this story.

I’ve mentioned in my interview here with David Moody, the author of the novels Hater and Dog Blood, about his short story in this anthology, “Who We Used To Be.” It’s a tale in which everyone in the world becomes a zombie at the same time, and there are no survivors. Being animated but dead, the zombies’ bodies start to rot and decay fairly quickly. In the author’s words, “’Who We Used to Be’ is about a family – mum, dad and one son – who try to keep living their lives as normally as possible after their sudden deaths and subsequent reanimation.” 

Other highlights in this anthology are “The Price of a Slice” by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow, about zombie robots or zombots roaming around the city of San Francisco, the last functioning city in the world after the zombie apocalypse. Then, there’s an excellent short story by Bill Keane, “Lost Canyon of the Dead.” It combines elements of the Western genre with zombies and dinosaurs, and is a very cool read. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, also, David Wellington’s contribution, “Good People.” I haven’t read many of his novels, but I have read his book about Civil War vampires brought back to “life,” 99 Coffins. The vampires are the type that have not only two fangs that they sink into the necks of their prey, but also mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth, which they use to rend chunks of flesh from their victims, similar to how zombies attack in some tales.

The final two short stories from the anthology I’ll mention are Simon R. Green’s Apocalypse, Now- slash Heart of Darkness-inspired piece, “He Said, Laughing,” and Jonathan Maberry’s superb story, “Zero Tolerance.” I have reviewed Green’s From Hell, With Love, and really got into his style, which combines dark humor (as Amelia Beamer and Walter Greatshell do) with the supernatural. “He Said, Laughing,” is set in Vietnam during the war years, and the narrator is a zombie with awareness and intelligence sent out on a mission to track down and kill, if necessary, a Kurtz-like character who’s created a private renegade kingdom in the jungle. I liked it because I’m both a fan of Green’s and Apocalypse, Now.  Jonathan Maberry is perhaps best known as the author of the zombie novel Patient Zero, and the excellent, suspenseful novel of bioterrorism and genetically created monsters, The Dragon Factory, both featuring Captain Joe Ledger. Both are also slated to be made into television series. His short story in this volume, “Zero Tolerance,” features some of the characters from these two novels, like Sergeant “Bunny” Rabbit, the mysterious figure, Church, and Bob “Slim” Faraday. Also, the computer known as MindReader, in The Dragon Factory, whose technology the villains of this novel try to copy and steal, is mentioned. The story is set in Afghanistan during the current war there, and involves the narrator’s (probably Joe Ledger, though his name is never mentioned) leading a team of men in to stop the spread of lab-created zombies (“walkers”) from being used by the Taliban against us. It’s a really well-written Military SF story that I liked because it incorporates characters from Maberry’s other novels into a gem of a tale.

The Living Dead 2 is a treasure trove of zombie fiction, even better and bloodier than The Living Dead, Vol. 1. I just touched on a few of the many truly awesome zombie stories included in this volume, but hopefully enough to give you an idea of how great this anthology is. The Living Dead 2 is a must-have anthology for fans of zombie fiction that I highly recommend. I can hardly wait for next October, when hopefully The Living Dead 3 will come out!