Hello All!
Last week, since the Dead in my Head were moaning so loudly, I took some time to  read a book a little outside my normal “modern day apocalyptic festival of semi-automatic weaponry and sarcasm”.
(Yes. I do read novels set in other genres. Try not to faint.)
It didn’t involve any hard-boiled, spell-slinging detectives, it didn’t have any sexy, green-skinned alien dancing girls, and there wasn’t a single reference to “Midichlorians”  held within it’s pages either. While I greatly enjoy books on each and every one of those subjects, I was looking for one outside my comfort zone (the head-shrinkers are going to have some fun picking apart that comment). It was a western.
I know, I know. You’re thinking “Um, this is a good thing why…?”
We-e-e-ell, it was a zombie western. More specifically, Jason Thacker’s “Dead Are Alive”.
The novel is set in the secluded town of Hazel during the late 1800’s, just after Albert Calmette discovered the first anti-venom for snakes at the Pasture Institute in France (you may think that an extraneous little info-bit at first, but trust me, it has heavy bearing on the story). The town’s doctor uses an untested anti-venom of his own creation, in an attempt to save a pair of young boys who are stung by dozens of scorpions. Unfortunately for the citizens of Hazel, the anti-venom is not only useless, but also has a side effect that’s as unwanted as a rattlesnake in an outhouse.
It turns the boys into hungry revenants.
A particularly disturbing  (while still viscerally satisfying) scene follows, where the pair consume not only their mother, but their older sister as well when the women panic in the face of their transformed kin. While you may judge the female characters within “Dead Are Alive” weak at first, remember: this is set over a hundred years ago. People (both men and women) had a different mindset. Not better, different. At that point in time; good was good, bad was bad, men were men, women were women, and no one would’ve had the first inkling how to combat shambling hordes of the hungry dead.
I must say Thacker did an excellent job relaying these points over the course of the book. More importantly (at least to me) his characters remained IN CHARACTER, which is vital if attempting to tell a story set in the past. You didn’t see Deputy Hansen suddenly whip out a Laser gun, the primary antagonist made me want to punch his worthless teeth in with all his smarmy egotism, and the local, down and out gunslinger Douglas (my personal favorite character in the novel) didn’t have all the answers.
Before you “poo-poo” the idea of a zombie outbreak in the Old West, you have to remember frontier medicine was preformed ON THE FRONTIER. There were no planes, trains, or automobiles, telephones hadn’t been invented as of yet, and (sorry all you Wiki fans) the World Wide Web didn’t come into being for about, oh… another hundred years. Being “civilized” was a sometimes thing, and the only law to be had was at the barrel of a gun. Life didn’t move at the break-neck pace of the hectic, modern world we’re all used to, either. Hence, when it came to developing antidotes, painkillers, antibiotics, and treatments, quite frequently doctors didn’t have the luxury of waiting for approval from the medical community and had to “shoot from the hip” (shameless quick-draw reference there). That meant, more often than not; to save a patient’s life, you had to engage in risky and sometimes fatal procedures.
That fact alone lends possibility to Thacker’s story of ghouls and gunslingers, I think.
Now let me say something that will put my opinion of  this novel in perspective for you.
I am not a fan of westerns.
I don’t read them. Hell, I don’t even watch many western-themed movies, really. While Fistful of Dollars, Hang ‘Em High and High Plains Drifter are all brilliantly done classics, I don’t reach for them when I want to enjoy an evening of fun in a celluloid, alternate reality. To be honest? I usually reach for something like Dawn/Shaun/Day of the Dead, or other zombie-based goodness lining my DVD shelves. I’m the same way with novels, too. Give me something with a civilization-ending threat; aliens, worldwide zombies uprisings, large-scale demonic invasions, rogue comets, intergalactic war, pandemics, secret societies of ninja assassins (or any combination thereof), preferably chock full of sarcasm and scantily-clad, red-haired women who are good with heavy weaponry.
(No. That’s not the opinion of a sexist. It’s the opinion of a heterosexual male with a deep affection for all things fantasy/sci-fi/horror. Work with me here, people.)
That said, I have to admit I enjoyed reading “Dead Are Alive”.
The characters spoke/thought/acted as you’d expect someone would in the Old West and were believable, the supporting cast was worthwhile to the story and not just window dressing, the action/fight sequences were not thrown in at odd times unnecessarily to move the plot along…
Thacker’s story of shamblers and six-guns is a rather quick read (now again, that’s just my personal taste. I tend to like multi-installment, saga-length novel/novels) 175 pages, but there’s also a bonus short story at the back (The Heist)Â which is fairly well done and an interesting take on the mobile dead.
All in all, I’d have to say (again,while not being a fan of Western-themed fiction) “Dead Are Alive” is an entertaining read, and proof that single-shot rifles and wheel-guns actually are dependable weapons with which to kill zombies.
Well, that’s all for this installment folks.
Until next time, hold your redhead close, drink your Dark by the pint, and keep your crowbar handy…!
Available on Amazon.
