Plot: The
zombie apocalypse is over. The humans have won. Life is back to normal. And Rip
is bored as hell. It's not much of a life sitting in a call center in the poor
town of Spanish Shanty, Florida, answering emails like a drone and listening to
customer complaints.
Rip was ruler of a tiny kingdom in the Lazy River
waterpark, killing zombies by day and making passionate love at night. He
misses the danger, the camaraderie, and the blistering love he once knew. He
longs to feel Santana—his trusty machet—in his hand, and Davia—the fiercest
woman alive—in his arms once again. He can still picture it—life on the razor's
edge—and he would do anything to get that feeling back. But what if Rip could
get it back?
I am intrigued by the novel pictured and described above,
the advertisement for which I received from the SFBC in an email. I love
the idea of a post-POST-Apocalyptic tale where all the so-called "cool
stuff" has already taken place. And that call center employee angle?
Inspired as all get-out! The very concept swells to bursting with the cynicism
of a Christopher Nadeau tale! If only I had thought of something like this!
Oh, wait.
In a now out of print edition of Ghostlight Magazine
(Summer 2011 to be precise) my short story "Cubicle Dwellers" was
published. The plot concerned a man who had spent the so-called zombie
apocalypse in a mental institution, too doped up to realize the world was
falling apart outside his room. Once the meds wear off, he awakens to an
orderly who is no longer alive but still insists on doing his job...badly, of
course. Our hero escapes with his life only to find out the world has changed
as the dead have risen and...gone back to work. What else can he do except the
same thing? Two guesses who the real zombies are.
I've only written two zombie stories and that was the
one that was more open about my disdain for the sub-genre. The other story was
a much more serious historical tale that dealt with racism and the
self-entitlement of the ruling class. Oh, and cannibalism because why not?
Think of it as an homage to the Donner Party, or at least the myth surrounding
them.
I'm not saying Adams' novel is like mine beyond the basic
idea of the mundane aftermath of a supposedly extraordinary event. What I am
saying is I wasn't seeing fiction like this nine years ago when I received
rejection after rejection for not writing in a tiny box that was the only thing
most magazine and anthology publishers seemed interested in putting out. Now
that winking self-awareness is all the rage, books like this are flooding the
market.
Don't get me wrong. It's a good thing. Very good. The
best. You've never seen a better thing. Someone said to me, "Sir, do you
think this good thing is very good?"
Trumpian self-promotion aside, I am glad to see a
long-needed approach to these types of stories appearing. I just want you to
know it didn't happen in a vacuum and that some of us were writing them when
the close-mindedness of those with the power to say yes or no acted as a
barrier.
Now, let's go read "Apocalypse Yesterday" with
its admittedly heavy-handed title and in the meantime I'm going to take another
look at "Cubicle Dwellers" and think long and hard about what type of
retooling it deserves~
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