Zombies. Perhaps the lamest of the creatures ever to be turned into horror icons. I mean really, a shuffling, moaning corpse with an insatiable desire for brains is supposed to scare the crap out of someone? Never mind that they are dead and, for the most part, are depicted in various forms of decay and dismemberment. They've always been kind of funny, at least that's how I used to think of them.
I say I used to think of them this way because I just read World War Z by Max Brooks. No, it's not a terribly new book, but it is the first piece of fiction I've encountered where zombies become truly horrifying, though not for what I thought they would be.
Yes, they eat brains. Yes, they're still the shuffling, moaning creatures that we all know. However, in the novel, these creatures become the very thing that drives mankind nearly to extinction, and Brooks does an excellent job of creating a scenario where it could actually happen. How does he do this? He turns the zombie phenomenon into an epidemic, a disease that spreads until every section of the world is infested. Zombie infestation causes mass panic, drastic relocations and refugees, economic collapse, and death to millions.
In many ways, the terrifying thing is not so much the zombies as it is the effects the zombies have on the world, economically, socially, politically. It explores the war from the point of view of "veterans" of that war, and carries with it the traumas, stigma, and wounds that inevitably mark ones' psyche after incidents as horrible as that. But the zombie infestation could have been anything else, disease, a global disaster, or environmental collapse and I would not be surprised to read testimonials which share a lot of the scars that the "veterans" of this war suffered.
Yonkers was the winner of an art contest held for World War Z.It captures the perspective of the book very well.
It is also an investigation into ourselves, a reflection of how we all are as people, as nations, as societies. And while the zombies are ever present in the novel, they are more a framework, a backdrop, by which Brooks has decided to place ourselves in a position to look more closely at our own follies and weaknesses.
The book was scary, but not for the obvious. It was scary not because of the zombies alone, but it was scary because of what people do, or do not do, when faced with things as horrible as zombies.
It's worth a read. If only to give zombies a little more street cred in the ghoul hierarchy.
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