Hello All!
What can you say about zombies?
They’re horrible, hungry, mobile corpses that don’t feel exhaustion,  fear, pain, or pity. They don’t have any kind of “battle plan” or hierarchy, they don’t jockey for power within their group/nest/herd, they don’t have a plan to “rule the world” and farm people like cattle…
They’re really just the equivalent of a meat-based, very basic computer with an unchangeable, simple operating system, programmed to do one thing (and one thing only) until they either finally decay and fall apart or are put down.
That one thing is: to feed. Feed upon hapless human flesh/blood/brains. Upon the unwitting bubble-headed cheerleader as she falls (of course) for the umpteenth time and suddenly forgets how to stand as they close in, upon the odd corporate big-wig as he flees the now-overrun city, upon the beaten-down soldier/survivor when they finally give up and surrender to the awful inevitability of their situation as they sit trapped in their fortress by an army of maggot-infested droolers. That’s what any sane person doesn’t like about zombies, really. In large numbers, they’re damn near unstoppable. Perhaps that’s the reason all of us have such an attraction to them. We picture ourselves and what our thoughts/reactions would be, if tossed headlong into the zombie apocalypse.
That’s what I liked about Robert F. Mazrim’s “Zombie 1979”. It’s a peek into that gore-soaked sub-culture of the shambling dead. Within the book’s deceptively innocent-seeming pages, Mazrim takes you back to the gestation of the modern zombie mythos. It touches on the first appearance of the infected, brought to life by the High Lord of Harmful Matter (the honorable George A. Romero) and onward to the resurgence of the horde in the classic “Dawn of the Dead”. It tips a hat to all those who were first fans, and then went on to become pioneers,  within the terrible world of the zombie. It takes you from a certain, well-known mall in Monroeville, PA that lay empty on the celluloid screen for a small group of survivors to inhabit, to one long-abandoned and forgotten (and frighteningly similar) in real-world Chicago, IL.
You may think that a book sans the gratuitous fights, escapes and (ever-satisfying) decapitation scenes necessary in a great novel of the zombie apocalypse too dry for you to enjoy, but I tell you this is not the case. Tales of low-budget films, made with an 8mm in a warehouse outside Admiralty Point Condos (again, a place far too like the ruined world of the dead) took me back to my younger days as a fan of the horror genre.
One reason I enjoyed “Zombie 1979” (and recommend it to others) is that later in the book, I had a flash of absolute terror. More specifically, it was during Marzim’s account of a massive  dust storm hitting a lake he was boating on with friends. His thoughts at the time of how it may actually have been caused by a Doomsday event (because let’s face it, dust storm on a lake? I’d be crapping my shorts, too.) reminded me of my thoughts during a certain moment in my life. I won’t bore you with the details of my memory or about what said memory was, suffice it to say I honestly thought at the time that the world as we know it had come to an end. I’ll be frank, after living though an event as frightening, it takes something damn special to cause an almost palatable chill to shoot up my spine and into my brain. Well, Marzim did it. The memory was so vivid, that it actually forced me to put the novel down for a few minutes, step outside, and have a cigarette as I attempted to still my violently shaking hands. Speaking as a fan of zombies, horror, and apocalyptic fiction in general; when an author (either through design or mere chance) is able to generate that kind of physical reaction from me, their work is worth a read.
While “Zombie 1979” isn’t your normal glut of gore, glitz, glam and graphic violence, in no way do I regret the hours I spent reading about Marzim’s time focused on the living dead. Anyone who saw a zombie movie late at night in their youth (especially if you’re lucky enough to have watched one in the now-endangered species know as a “Drive-In”) is going to be transported back in their memories and maybe, just maybe, remember their own fear. Fear that only the hungry dead can cause.
Until next time friends, drink your Dark by the pint, hold your redhead close, and keep your crowbar handy…
Available on Amazon
