Dead City

According to the blurb on the front of this book, "These are not your mother's zombies."

I was never aware of my mother having had any zombies, and since she passed away several years ago I will never be able to clear this question up. I will say, however, that the zombies wreaking havoc in San Antonio, Texas, in Dead City are not unlike the zombies I have seen in the approximately 100 zombie movies I have watched over the past 40 years. They have no consciousness beyond their desire to feed, their bites are infectious, their numbers spread quickly, only a bullet to the brain can stop them. McKinney solves the classic issue of "slow" vs "fast" zombies by mixing in a few fast ones with the shambling hordes. Also, these zombies are not the reanimated dead. They suffer from a hemorrhagic viral infection, like a really nasty form of ebola that rather than killing you turns you into a killing machine.

Dead City follows cop Eddie Harris through the first night of the new Zombie America. Houston and much of the Gulf Coast lies under many feet of water following a series of five hurricanes in as many weeks. This is where the first reports of evacuees attacking their rescuers surface. Officer Harris answers and early evening call to investigate what sounds like a drunken brawl in an unlikely neighborhood. From the time he arrives at the brawl until the last chapter of the book, all hell just won't stop breaking loose.

This is the first zombie novel I have read, but I am aware that it is its own genre, much of it aimed at the teen market. I am not really its demographic. Zombie movies, both good and bad, are over in about 90 minutes. Dead City is a quick read, but I probably spent five or more hours with it. Every situation was familiar from one movie or another. Whatever shock value there once was in seeing people eat one another on screen has long since worn off, and reading about people eating one another brings nothing new to the experience. McKinney creates some good minor characters, but the one policeman who provides comic relief is so obnoxious I would have fed him to the first hungry mob we encountered. Assuming I had first secured all his guns and ammunition.

Harris narrates the novel, so you know he is going to survive. He is not much given to introspection, and when he comes up with a line like, "Nothing is as protean as a woman," you realize that might not be a bad thing. It's more important that he is a good shot and he doesn't stop moving. The plot line that involves his search for his wife and child is, like so much else in the novel, beyond predictable.

This was McKinney's first novel, and I plan to read his second even though it has the uninspired title Apocalypse of the Dead. It takes place in flooded Houston, a much more promising setting that San Antonio. It was also nominated for the Stoker award, which makes me think, or hope, that McKinney is getting better.