Should Permuted Press’ zombie short stories be too short for your liking and its zombie novels too long, the indie publisher is all too happy to meet you in the middle with THE UNDEAD: HEADSHOT QUARTET, a collection of four original zombie novellas. Bring your own weapons, please.
Following the three anthologies in the UNDEAD franchise, HEADSHOT opens with John Sunseri’s MILLION-DOLLAR MONEY SHOT, in which a hitman who’s ripped off the mob, a hotel hooker, a priest and a waiter make their way through a zombie-ridden, tourist-heavy area of Aruba. Reminding me of Steve Niles’ REMAINS, it’s nonstop carnage that proves only a little too tiring when it’s all said and done, and time to clean up.
The heroine of Ryan C. Thomas’ ENEMY UNSEEN is Rhonda, an expert on Cuban intel for the CIA. Her bosses want her to go undercover to find out why a certain person of interest — a black man with a cane topped with an animal skull — has been seen hanging out with known drug dealers and plutonium-hungry terrorists.
There’s good reason to consider him suspect, as when one dealer is offed, he comes back to life as a moaning suicide bomber. With all the talk of an unusual powder, you can probably guess the rest, but given that Thomas tries something new beyond the standard apocalypse tale, you’ll enjoy reading it nonetheless.
Three college buddies spend some vacay time in “just a little house dropped right smack in the middle of the woods” in LOST SOULS by David Dunwoody. It’s a creepy little place located next to a cemetery, so you know things can’t be good. They’re not: Soon, they meet a one-legged zombie and notice how the graveyard is filled with premature-burial bells. Dunwoody’s piece exhibits a real EVIL DEAD / CREEPSHOW vibe (and, at least for the most unfortunate of characters, HELLRAISER) with its unrelenting package of hardcore horror.
Finally, D.L. Snell turns in the imaginative MORTAL GODS, in which an amnesiac who has the unique ability to think things into materializing — rain, guns, spaceships — uses his gift to rid the vicinity of vagrant cannibal zombies. He gets more support when he meets others with powers, like concrete bones and ESP, making the novella like TV’s HEROES, but with a vicious rat attack. The fantasy bent proves the point that zombie stories can make the zombies secondary and still satisfy the undead faithful.
Praise is due to Christina Bivins and Lane Adamson for assembling this anthology. Its four works are different enough from each other — and other zombie fiction in general — to make all of them worth the eyeball time. And we’d be remiss not to mention Joshua Ross, whose awesome, quasi-cartoony cover sets the mood for mayhem. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• THE UNDEAD: FLESH FEAST edited by D.L. Snell and Travis Adkins
• THE UNDEAD: SKIN AND BONES edited by D.L. Snell and Travis Adkins
• THE UNDEAD: ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY edited by D.L. Snell and Elijah Hall
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF D.L. SNELL:
• ROSES OF BLOOD ON BARBWIRE VINES by D.L. Snell
