What’s ‘Darpocalypse’ About?
The second wave of the plague has struck with a brutal vengeance and a full-on zombie apocalypse has spread throughout every corner of the world.
Abandoned by her father, Dar has managed to set up a camp in the Boston Common. Surrounded by hordes of ravenous zombies, one person living inside the camp holds the key to their survival.
A few lucky people on Earth have developed a mysterious immunity from the plague. Known as ghosts, they are prized for their ability to walk among the dead and gather food and supplies without fear. The Boston camp harbors one such person, and President Roberts orders the Army’s finest soldier to bring their ghost to Washington, D.C. at any cost.
As the world descends into apocalyptic madness, the horde grows increasingly aggressive, threatening the wellbeing of every survivor in Dar’s camp. Boston Common becomes ground zero for a dramatic showdown, and Dar realizes that she must make a decision that threatens not only her life, but the survival of every person she’s been entrusted to protect.
Our ‘Darpocalypse’ Review
Darpocalypse is Book 2 of Souza’s the Living Dead series. It takes up with Dar, the central character now living inside the walled and fenced off Boston Commons with her small son Styx and her friend Annabelle.
The first few chapters cut between what’s going on at the Commons and a special operations unit attempting to secure the Cedar Junctions nuclear power plant. The reader is exposed to how Dar has taken control of the Commons and runs it like Tina Turner ran Thunderdome in the third Mad Max film. Its here we find out that Annabelle is what is known as a ‘Ghost’. She has the ability to wander among the infected without them attacking her. However, there is always the chance that mixed among the infected will be one that can still see her as a meal.
Dar uses Annabelle not only for entertainment, as Annabelle was a rock star pre-infection, but also as a forager for the community that lives behind the walls. The only problem with her as a forager is that when she leaves the Commons, everyone there suffers from migraine headaches. That is explained away by putting the blame on the infected. Apparently, they emit some kind of mental signal that causes high tech machined to not function and for humans not in the presence of a Ghost, to suffer migraines until said Ghost returns.
Toss into this mix a domestic terrorist who also has the same ability which he uses to escape from the SuperMax prison he was in and a president that is on the verge of losing what remains of the nation and we have a volatile mix that becomes Book 2 of the Living Dead Series.
Now comes the part that I know most of you dread.
There were some issues with Book 2. Not something that can be easily overlooked. Going back to the special ops teams attempting to secure Cedar Junction power plant, let’s look at some issues. As explained in the prologue, it’s been six months since outbreak yet these Tier 1 Operators seem to have little if no knowledge that the world is now infected with zombies. These guys are on the tip of the spear, the hard chargers who would have access to that vital tidbit of info especially if it involved their mission. Colonel Tiberius Gritz, kind of a high rank to be in the field still running high risk missions, ends up losing all his men during that op, not to mention the helicopters that were supposed to extract his team. He ends up being exfilled by a surplus UH-1 Huey. But, the Cedar Junction power plant, a nuclear plant, goes critical, has a meltdown and then explodes in a nice mushroom cloud while Gritz is still onboard the helo. The blast didn’t seem to affect the aircraft which is unusual. If it had been a nuclear blast, that aircraft would have been swatted out of the sky and kissed the ground in a nice fireball then tossed like a leaf on the wind by the pressure wave. Once Gritz returns to Washington D.C., it’s revealed that he was exposed to a level of radiation equal to those that were at Chernobyl. That’s a death sentence. But, and this is stretching it, he somehow lives through the next three months without getting cancer, losing his hair or developing tumors or petechial marks on face and body from that exposure. In fact, at no time does anyone even offer him anything to prevent radiation sickness. He actually gets stronger and healthier because he has a mission. His mission is to infiltrate the Boston Commons, retrieve Annabelle and bring her back to D.C. All this is revealed when the president tells him they have satellite photo’s of the Commons taken from high flying fighter aircraft. Let’s think about that for just a minute. Satellite Photographs from a jet aircraft. That’s confusing as satellites are in orbit whereas jet fighters normally are not. So you either get satellite photos or you get reconnaissance photos from aircraft equipped with a recon pod.
In a later part of the story, we have a military pilot using keys to start up a military helicopter. Sorry, not going happen. Military aircraft and vehicles do not require a key to start them. It’s during that same sequence that this same pilot has rescued the president who ends up leaving without her shoes yet somehow has found a pair when they land on top of the Trump Tower as she uses said shoes to kick a zombie in the head.
Overall, Darpocalypse was an interesting read. Not having read Book 1 of the series I was pretty much heading into this one blind. The story was engrossing enough for me to continue to find out what would happen to the characters
