Carnage Road by Gregory Lamberson takes a somewhat different slant on the zombie/undead genre. The story opens with a small outlaw biker gang on a shopping trip after the world has been infested with zombies. What makes this novel appealing is that the characters are well detailed, described and believable. The action is intense, graphic and edge of your seat suspenseful.
Following their foraging trip, the Floating Dragons return to their clubhouse minus a few members and with a wounded leader. Walker and Boone, two buddies in the gang watch as the other members divide themselves into groups to determine who will be the leader when the wounded Deke dies from his zombie inflicted injuries.
As the sequence of events leads the reader in the direction of expecting some form of inner rivalry, a nice little twist emerges. A well armed group of former police officers arrives at the clubhouse and engages the gang in a firefight. In the aftermath of that battle, the number of bikers is further depleted creating a larger rift between the survivors. This was a nice contradiction on a theme as it’s normally a biker gang attacking the survivors not the other way around.
Walker, named as the new leader by the dying Deke, attempts to keep the gang together but is left with only Boone as the others leave. Walker wants to head to Canada but Boone insists that they head for Hollywood based on the simple reason that he’s never been there.
Hey, it’s the end of the world; you have to have your priorities.
The road trip takes them through zombie filled cities and across desolate landscapes. They encounter everything from a rural minister who insists that he attend to his undead flock until God shows him a different path to a mentally unbalanced PTA member who is now mayor of a city that is basically redneck world.
Lamberson’s writing is fresh, intense and in your face graphic with descriptions of outlaw biker slang terms, zombie combat and child like fixations such as Boone wanting to see a movie in what could possibly be the last operating movie theater in an apocalyptic world.
Carnage Road is an exciting read and well worth adding to any zombiephile’s collection of reading material. Seeing a post zombie apocalyptic America through the eyes of a couple of hardened bikers changes the perspective from other novels in the genre. There are no clichés or stereotypes in this work as even the bikers are not your typical biker as seen through the eyes of Hollywood.
If you want a combination of Sons of Anarchy meets Romero’s Land of the Dead, Carnage Road is the book for you.
Available on Amazon 
