Permuted Press’ THE UNDEAD: ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY from 2005 remains a favorite of mine among small-press offerings. The long-awaited sequel THE UNDEAD: SKIN AND BONES is set to join it, being as good as its predecessor, and possibly even better.
What’s really surprising about the 15 contributions within is how different they are from one another. Whereas zombie fiction of late from the likes of Brian Keene and Max Brooks seems content to regurgitate the formula established on film by George Romero, these bits and bites show more imagination and greater depth.
Take, for example, David Wellington’s opening “Cyclopean,” in which a high-rise building is covered in a mysterious, Lovecraftian fungus. The zombies inside are almost secondary to the mystery of the mold. Immediately following, David Dunwoody delivers “The Abbot and the Dragon,” an unusual fantasy about a boy driven from his village after being bitten by a zombie. He’s sent off toward his inevitable death at a safe distance from everyone else when he comes across an undead dragon.
Matthew Shepherd’s clever “Casual Friday” is the first humorous tale in the bunch, imagining a future in which humans and zombies – don’t call them “shamblers,” lest you seek a write-up – can work together in an office … so long as the thermostat is set to a bone-chilling 40 degrees. Satire is a difficult thing, however; in the wrong hands, it can backfire, which it does in Ryan C. Thomas’ “Alive Eye for the Dead Guy,” which concerns a QUEER EYE-style reality show for zombies. Yes, it’s an idea that never should’ve gotten beyond Thomas’ mind, and one of two clinkers in the book.
Joel A. Sutherland tackles zombie fish in “Something Fishy This Way Comes,” Philip Hansen pits the military against the legless monsters in “Agent Red” and Matt Hults’ “The Finger” sets forth a money-making scam in which two guys hope to cash in by placing a finger in their restaurant chili. Too bad the digit comes from a corpse of the infected.
Young men are trained in warfare against zombiedom in Murray Leeder’s “The Traumatized Generation,” while Scott Standridge follows a morgue worker and one of his, um, clients in “‘Til the Lord Comes.” Vince Churchill offers another noteworthy entry with “Misfortune.”
One of my favorite indie authors provides a real highlight in “The Hill.” Here, author Eric Shapiro casts the undead not as the usual, standup guys, but as tortoise-like creatures on all fours. The image he conveys of five or six of them stacking up on one another in order to reach the doorknob of your home is by far the most disturbing in the entire collection.
SKIN AND BONES closes with a novella of the same name by D.L. Snell, who co-edited this anthology with Travis Adkins. Its ever-shifting narrative and overlapping cast of characters include a necrophiliac gravedigger and a serial-masturbating, peeping-tom teenager with a split personality.
As expected, SKIN AND BONES is a veritable buffet of gory horror and gallows humor. It has lots to offer genre fans, as does Permuted Press in general – witness the provided excerpt from Kim Paffenroth’s apocalyptic DYING TO LIVE novel in the back. Eat up. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BLACKEST HEART by Vince Churchill
• DAYS OF ALLISON by Eric Shapiro
• DYING TO LIVE by Kim Paffenroth
• GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD: GEORGE ROMERO’S VISIONS OF HELL ON EARTH by Kim Paffenroth
• MONSTER ISLAND by David Wellington
• ROSES OF BLOOD ON BARBWIRE VINES by D.L. Snell
• STRAWBERRY MAN by Eric Shapiro
• THE UNDEAD: ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY edited by D.L. Snell and Elijah Hall
