‘Plague of the Dead’ – Z.A. Recht (Pocket Books)

‘Plague of the Dead’ is one of those books that looks all shiny and new on the shelves but has actually been around for longer than you think. Permuted Press first published ‘Plague of the Dead’ way back in 2006 and the sequel, ‘Thunder and Ashes’, followed in 2008. Sadly, Recht passed away in December last year so it may be that we never find out how this one ended (although I read somewhere that his family have the notes for the last book). There was already an agreement to publish ‘Plague’ over here in the UK and that’s how this book came to find its way into my little hands... While ‘Plague’ won’t be up there with my all time favourite zombie stories, there’s enough there to suggest that if Recht was still with us then one of his future books could have been...

The Morningstar Strain, a rampant epidemic that will always mean death for its host. It doesn’t stop there though, death is merely the prelude to the next stage where the corpse rises again to carry on spreading the virus by attacking the living... When the operation to contain the plague in Africa fails, the epidemic becomes pandemic and there isn’t a corner of the world that isn’t under threat.
Half a world away from his home in America, a general resolves to get a ragged group of refugees and soldiers back home although he has no idea what they’ll do (or find) when they get there. They have to fight their way across a continent full of the infected first...
Meanwhile, America is dangerously complacent about the real nature of the threat... all thanks to a shadowy government organisation whose good intentions could well prove fatal. The public need to be warned but at what cost to the Colonel and journalist holding the information...?

‘Plague of the Dead’ takes a page from ‘World War Z’s’ book by depicting the zombie apocalypse as a truly global event rather than something more localised. The action is confined to Africa and North America but we also get brief excerpts where news is given on what is taking place in other countries. By concentrating on a specific group of characters, and giving us little snippets of information from other countries, ‘Plague’ misses a trick in terms of having the same level of impact as the more powerful ‘World War Z’ but there is still a lot to recommend to the zombie fan ‘on the street’.

I’ve said before that if you’re going to give your readers the reasons behind a zombie outbreak then you need to be very sure that you’re at the top of your game. It’s a proven fact after all that keeping things mysterious is the best way to give added impetus to the zombie onslaught itself.
Recht keeps the origin of the virus itself suitably vague but is also suitably detailed as far as showing what it can do and the manner in which modern technology inadvertently spreads it around the globe. You really get a sense of how such an event could unfold, over a relatively short period of time, and this adds to the sense of society rapidly unravelling which is an essential part of all good zombie fiction. Recht certainly nailed it here!

What Recht also gets bang on target is the way that, if something like this was ever to happen, people’s flat out denial of what was happening would prove to be their fatal undoing. Whether it’s an all out fire fight in the Sinai desert or recon in an abandoned American town; Recht shows us that it’s not so much the zombies themselves as that split second of paralysis (in the face of the undead) which is the killer. If you can’t get your head round what’s happening then there isn’t much hope for you. Recht’s depiction of a zombie infested landscape that’s unforgiving to the unwary makes it’s point in a brutally simple manner.

Having said all that though, in a world where quick decisions are the order of the day Recht does like to let his characters talk things out a little too much. I found it surprising that passing zombies didn’t take advantage of the habit of the general’s group to discuss things in committee... Such discussion detracted from the urgency of the plot, causing the pace to slacken off when it really needed to be maintained. I also found that it distracted me from the plot itself; I had to go back and re-read certain passages more than once just because I’d been sidetracked at the just wrong moment...

When things do kick off though, Recht proves to be a master of the ‘full on, pitched zombie battle’ scene; throwing overwhelming hordes of zombies into the path of overwhelming firepower and seeing what happens next. While the results are often what you would expect you’ve got to admire the amount of sheer energy that goes into these moments. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Recht had been on the frontline of one of these situations himself...

In a book that’s predominantly about setting the scene for future books, the characters don’t get an awful lot of chances to shine. It’s almost like they get one defining feature each and have to rely on this to stand out for the rest of the book. The signs are there though that we will get to know more about them in the sequel, a book that I’ll be picking up given half a chance.

‘Plague of the Dead’ does have a few niggles that detract from the overall experience but that experience is still a lot of fun and will make for great reading if you’re a zombie fan. Like I said, I’ll be picking up the sequel; ‘Plague’ has a lot of potential that I’m hoping will be realised in the next book...