Zombies and Shit

After reading Carlton Mellick III's Zombies and Shit, I think it's safe to say that I have a new favorite zombie novel. The book describes itself as "Battle Royale meets Return of the Living Dead," and unlike most comparisons on the back covers of books, this one is accurate.

A group of twenty people wake up to find that they've been dumped in the middle of a zombie-infested city and are now the unwilling contestants on a reality show called Zombie Survival. Each contestant is given a weapon and told that the only way out is to make it to a helicopter on the other side of the city. Unfortunately, there's only one seat on the helicopter, so only one person gets to return to civilization.

There are quite a lot of interesting characters. As with much of bizarro, there is a strong punk influence, and several of the characters are punks including the members of a punk street gang and a squad of "merc punks," who are professional zombie killers. Then there's a washed-up writer and his back-stabbing wife, an inventor, an underage prostitute, the former host of the  show, a Nazi, a genetically engineered killing machine, and a cybernetic Mr. T.

That's right, Mr. T is a character in this book, and I pity the fool who doesn't read it.