Flesh Eaters

by Joe McKinney
Published by Pinnacle Books

Like the two violent hurricanes that pound and swamp the city of Houston in the opening chapters, Flesh Eaters reads like a swirling wall of wind, debris, and water that knocks you to the ground and traps you there. Unable to escape, just pray that you’re safe. As the storms ultimately clear, something unnatural has spawned in the cesspool of sewage and pollution that is now a mostly submerged city. And that something wants to kill and eat you.

Run.

But how can you, when hundreds of square miles of your city are underwater -- neck-deep in water moccasins, bloated corpses, unrecognizable poisonous goo, and cannibalistic undead?

Flesh Eaters is Joe McKinney’s latest entry in his zombie series that began with Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead. This volume is a prequel, and it tells the interwoven tale of two families struggling to survive in the deteriorating societal breakdown that exists after every mega-disaster weather event. Add to this mix one undead filovirus, and this world becomes a living (or not so living) hell.

The principal story follows Eleanor Norton’s fight to save her family while also fulfilling her duty as an officer of Houston’s Emergency Operations Command. Eleanor is a strong-willed, well-rounded character and her personal challenges mirror the greater disaster that overwhelms her. She is a complex character that will have to dig deeper into her personal values and survival skills than she ever thought possible if she and her family are to survive.

Her boss, Captain Mark Shaw is also trying to save his family while dealing with eighty thousand survivors trapped on high ground - an island of temporary safety in the middle of what is to become a war zone. Supposedly, help is coming, but like so many other disasters in recent history -- it’s too little, and much, much too late. Faced with an imminent catastrophe, Captain Shaw has to make life-and-death choices that directly affect his family and the thousands of civilians under his charge.

Mr. McKinney brings his vast experience in Disaster Planning and Police Operations to flesh out this story and give it a truly haunting sense of reality. His writing is crisp, fast, and he seldom lets the characters (or readers) come up for air.

The tension in Flesh Eaters builds naturally, and under Mr. McKinney’s firm authorial hand, there is plenty of gut-wrenching and ‘blow-their-heads-off’ horror as the outbreak happens. He turns the screw slowly, and we see how normal people must come to grips with world-shattering destruction. Ultimately, this is an apocalyptic story about families... one functional, one dysfunctional, and the choices that they make when the chips are down.

Needless to say, not everyone makes it out alive.

Flesh Eaters is an action-packed must-read. And without a spoiler alert, let’s just hope that Mr. McKinney has a sequel in mind for one of the survivors. Of course, that’s assuming there is one.

Buy it here.

Reviewed by R. B. Payne

R. B. Payne is a dark fiction writer. His stories have appeared in Doorways, Dark Discoveries, Necrotic Tissue, and the recent Stoker-nominated Midnight Walk anthology. He is insanely enthusiastic about writing book reviews for Shroud magazine. But rather than continuing to blurb himself by pretending that someone else wrote this bio, he would prefer you seek out his stories and read them late at night. For the record, he lives in Los Angeles and lurks at www.rbpayne.com. He would love to hear from you as long as it’s not a beating heart delivered in a cardboard box.

APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD

by Joe McKinney
Published by Pinnacle Books

Apocalypse of the Dead is killer. This is an epic tale of human survival in the zombies-are-everywhere-and-I-need-a-freaking-gun tradition. Faced with countless undead, the book's four major storylines follow the survivors of a zombie plague. As the stories interweave, they create a terrifying tapestry of mayhem, weaponry, and gore. When a bite or a scratch can make a friend instantly turn into a drooling, clawing, and hungry zombie, it's a dangerous world indeed.

The story begins two years after the events in McKinney's Dead City. Houston has been walled off with its borders enforced by the Gulf Region Quarantine Authority. Trapped within are countless Infected, along with a handful of non-infected humans struggling to stay alive in a world that has written them off as collateral damage. What they want most is to escape. And escape, they do... accidently taking the undead filovirus with them.

Uncontrolled and unstoppable, the virus spreads around the world and society collapses. The survivors are left to fend for themselves. Needless to say, most are unprepared for such an event. A blind woman, an escaped convict, Florida retirees, a preacher and his flock, a police sharpshooter, a motorcycle gang, and two guys with hookers and an RV, all find themselves living moment-to-moment, fighting for their lives. To make matters worse, not all of the survivors are nice people, and some will do anything to prevail. Anything.

As the stories converge, the survivors are faced with the question of whether it's possible to re-form society in a zombified world. The survivors are embattled and the undead aren't going away anytime soon. To make matters worse, to survive in this new world, one might have to accept the fact that the strong rule, and the weak serve.

McKinney has created his best work to date and it’s a must-read. Reminiscent of The Stand, (not a comparison to be taken lightly), this book starts with a bang and never slows down. The characters come alive (even if only for a little while) and among the twists and turns there are more than a few surprises. Apocalypse of the Dead goes beyond the traditional bash-them-in-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat storyline and offers a few philosophical head-scratchers as well. Not to say that there's not a sufficient supply of rotting flesh, oozing brains, bullets, and leaking body fluids. Yum.

Read this book, if you can. If not, watch out for the headshot that puts you out of your misery.

Buy it here.

Reviewed by R.B.Payne

R. B. Payne is a dark fiction writer. His stories have appeared in Doorways, Dark Discoveries, Necrotic Tissue, and the recent Stoker-nominated Midnight Walk anthology. He is insanely enthusiastic about writing book reviews for Shroud magazine. But rather than continuing to blurb himself by pretending that someone else wrote this bio, he would prefer you seek out his stories and read them late at night. For the record, he lives in Los Angeles and lurks at www.rbpayne.com. He would love to hear from you as long as it’s not a beating heart delivered in a cardboard box.