Welcome back, Readers! I know we’re a little ways out from October, but I’ve been in the mood for some good ol’ fashioned zombie horror, lately. Anyone familiar with my other work for this site might remember me talking about my fascination with the undead in my review of Night of the Animated Dead and how I wasn’t exactly enamored with the visual style of the movie. Still! No need to worry about that with a book, right? Speaking of past articles, this is also a returning author! Mark Tufo wrote Devil’s Desk which I thoroughly enjoyed. That one was in the often overlooked genre of bigfoot horror!
Can this book, crawling with things undead, ignite my (Delicious.) brain and keep me reading? Let’s find out!
Book Stats
- Author: Mark Tufo.
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, and Audible.
Price: $21.99 for Hardcover, $16.24 for Paperback, $0.99 for Kindle, and $0.69 for Audible, or one Credit on Audible.
Length: 338 pages or 10 hours and 35 minutes in audio format.
Narrator: Sean Runnette.
Number of books in the series: 26! I think that’s pretty impressive on its own, but Mark Tufo is an extremely prolific author and has tie-in books and series related to the Zombie Fallout universe.
Basic Premise
Remember H1N1? That wacky combination of flu viruses that was comprised of swine, bird and human flu strains? A veritable farmyard’s worth of infection? We should have called it the Bacon and Eggs flu. In this universe, the vaccine for it was what kicked off the zombie apocalypse. (Yeah. Uncomfortable. We’ll talk about it later, I promise.) But once it was kicked off, there was no stopping it.
Mike Talbot is a prepper. (Also a germaphobe! Love seeing my people represented in fiction.) He’s got guns and thousands of rounds in his townhouse, much to his wife’s chagrin. He’s also a horror afficianado who’s seen a bunch of zombie flicks and even references games like Resident Evil. When the undead start pouring into his neighborhood, you’d think he was one of the most prepared people on the face of the planet.
He isn’t. He’s naked and his foot is covered in his bulldog’s finest leavings.
He bundles his family into the car with some guns and ammo and they set out to rescue their son who’s shift at the Walmart hadn’t ended yet. Mike’s already dealt with a couple of zombies by this point, but as he’s driving around the super store, he notices something different about these zombies; some workers are up on the roof (Including his son.) taking pot-shots at the undead with a pellet gun. Not anything strong enough to puncture skulls and render the zombies inert, but enough that they’re apparently able to feel it. Enough that it’s… pissing them off!? That doesn’t track with any of the fictional kinds of zombies Mike is aware of.
They manage to brave the horde and rescue Mike’s son and one of his coworkers – a portly kid by the name of Tommy who has some sort of developmental disability that renders him childlike and innocent in the main.
Once they’re all back at the Little Turtle estate, the gated community they live in, battle plans are drawn up and there’s a few ideas tossed around on how to better protect this community from not only the undead, but fellow survivors. Eventually Mike is sent out to help grab supplies and that’s when he and his son meet a single zombie. A woman who’s clearly dead… but Mike, despite being an ex-marine hardass is also a creature of conscience. He refuses to kill the zombies if they aren’t a direct threat in the moment. They leave this one to her business and Mike is sure that she looks at them with a sort of grateful acknowledgment. She proves later that she appreciates their mercy, and she does so in an incredibly grisly way.
No, these zombies aren’t entirely the brain dead eating machines of The Walking Dead. There’s something going on behind those rotted eyes, alright. But will Mike survive long enough to figure out if that extra bit of cognizance is a blessing or a curse?
You’re going to need to read it to find out! (Or, you can ask Tommy. He’ll partner up with Ryan Seacrest and get back to you.)
My Take
So, I loved Devil’s Desk. I immediately noticed this book was in a markedly different style and the writing wasn’t nearly so polished. This book was released in early 2010, twelve years before Devil’s Desk and I can definitely say that the writing style of Mark Tufo got an upgrade in that decade and a bit. That isn’t at all to say that the writing isn’t good in Zombie Fallout – it’s very fast paced, witty and compelling. I just think Devil’s Desk is an evolution in terms of style.
It’s told in a first person point of view as it’s, primarily, a series of journal entries written by Mike. There are a few chapters in the middle of the book that deviate from this and are either third person omniscient or a journal entry by someone else. That threw me a little, but it was necessary for story reasons.
Speaking of story, I’m sure there’s a lot that will be cleared up in regards to the actual cause and nature of the zombie condition in later books. There’s some mention of worm like creatures living inside the zombies, the idea that flies won’t even land on them and a couple other interesting biological factoids that pop up throughout, but none of it is explained in relation to the Prologue talking about it being vaccine related. If the book were solely from Mike’s perspective, I’d be a little less nettled by this just because how would he know anything about that… but we do deviate from his point of view a couple times so some expository work might have satiated my curiosity a bit. We also learn very little about the state of the world in general despite it being mentioned more than once that news stations are still a thing and TV is still being broadcast. Again, maybe in later books. I will also admit that the vaccine being used as an origin point and Mike being a gun-totin’ prepper made me roll my eyes a little to begin with. But, this book was written in 2010 so maybe that particular confluence wasn’t intentional?
The story itself is pretty fast paced and there are a lot of characters to keep track of. Some don’t make it past book one and I’m assuming a lot do – this is a 26 book series, after all! But, yes. It’s a zombie story. If everyone survives, you have a big problem on your hands, right? I’d also think that some of the more underdeveloped characters get their moments to shine in later stories.
The thing that made me really excited to pick this up was Sean Runnette’s narration. I loved it with Devil’s Desk and the Breeds books by Keith C. Blackmore. He does an exceptional job with this book as well. There’s a section in there where his voice is breaking and on the verge of tears and I was getting genuinely emotional!
So, if you’re looking for a humorous, gory, fun bit of zombie fiction to add to your summer reading list, you should check out Zombie Fallout!
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