I wrote How to Create Your Own Zombie Apocalypse years ago, and going back to it now, it’s a little more primitive than I’d like. (See also Jackson Dean Chase’s guide to writing zombie fiction) So I went in to fix it. Then I started working, and realized there was a full novel sitting inside a much smaller book, and the repair turned into a rebuild. I became a better writer in the intervening years and the earlier version shows it.
I like both versions. That isn’t the usual thing to say about something you’ve replaced. The earlier one has problems and the idea underneath it never did, so I intend to go back and rewrite the original as a novelette, fixing it on its own terms. Two versions of one premise at two lengths.
The question the rewrite is built on is what it would take for an ordinary person to become a killer, and that question frightens me far more than any zombie. I wanted a man who gets there through careful, patient, internally consistent logic applied to a premise that happens to be false, because I’ve never believed the dangerous people in the world are the ones foaming at the mouth.
What turns an ordinary person into a killer?
Rage, desperation, poverty, and childhood trauma are the explanations this kind of book usually reaches for, and I think they let the reader off the hook. If the killer is broken in some obvious way, you get to believe you’re safe from ever becoming him. Karl reasons his way there. Patient, careful, internally consistent logic, applied to a premise that’s false. He works it out step by step and every step follows from the one before it. That’s what makes the book uncomfortable instead of lurid. You can follow him the whole way. That’s the problem.
The book on this: Death, Murder, and Zombies is a first person novel about a man reasoning his way into becoming a killer, step by careful step, from a premise that happens to be false.
What makes an unreliable narrator work?
A narrator who’s always wrong about himself and always right about the facts.
That combination is the most uncomfortable one available to a first person novel. If he were wrong about everything you could dismiss him. If he were right about everything you’d have to agree with him. Instead his observations hold up and his conclusions about what they mean don’t.
A narrator who’s always wrong about himself and always right about the facts.
The book opens with Death walking through the wall of a crack house, feeling the pull of a soul about to leave, noting that physical barriers stopped mattering a long time ago. Somewhere in that voice is a part that’s still Karl. Working out how those two things sit together is most of the reading experience.
When do the zombies show up?
Late, and on purpose.
Most of the novel is the descent. A game, a family coming apart, an accident, something that happens close to death, and a theory that forms afterward and won’t let go.
Then there’s the part where a man decides he wants to shoot zombies for real, and starts doing the research, and works out how to fund it, and sets up somewhere to work.
A book that opens with the apocalypse is a book about survival. A book that spends two hundred pages arriving at one is about the person who caused it.
Holding them back was the most satisfying choice in the rebuild for me. The zombies are the payoff, and I didn’t want a single one on the page until the reader understood exactly who was responsible for them.
Where does Death, Murder, and Zombies begin?
In front of a game, alone, and pleased with himself.
He’s killing zombies for experience points and legendary loot, setting personal records, and describing the endorphin hit as a drug. His friend Mike keeps texting. Fresh air, exercise, come out of the house. Karl tells him he’s busy, and notes that it isn’t a lie. Then a text that says, for real, I’m kind of worried about you. Karl’s reaction to that is the first sign of what the book is. He wonders what could possibly be wrong with knowing what you want and pursuing it with dedication. That’s the position, held one degree past where a person should hold it, and the whole novel is the rest of those degrees.
How does the outside world see Karl in Death, Murder, and Zombies?
Through a pizza delivery driver. That’s the only external view the book allows.
Gwynn had delivered to the house maybe fifty times in a year. Same order every time. Large pepperoni and sausage, extra cheese, paid for with crumpled twenties and never a tip. The kid who answered was polite enough and awkward in the way that says he hasn’t spoken to anybody in months.
Karl, she thought his name was. Looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight in a while.
That’s fifty visits of accumulating evidence, held by somebody with no reason to act on it and no standing to. A first person novel about a man losing contact with reality needs at least one person outside the head, and she’s it.
I’m fond of Gwynn. She’s the kind of person real life is full of, someone who notices a kid is in trouble and has no standing to do anything about it. I wanted her there so the reader would feel how many chances the world gets to catch a man like Karl, and how easily every one of them goes by.
How does the theory get built in Death, Murder, and Zombies?
From an observation in a hospital that he refuses to let go of. During a near-death encounter he notices that Death avoids electronic equipment. The entity steps back when a defibrillator charges and keeps its distance from the medical machines. At the time he dismisses it. Later he doesn’t. Certain electromagnetic frequencies disrupt electronic devices, producing temporary malfunction or permanent damage. If Death is a supernatural entity, he reasons, the same logic might apply to it.
Then he builds a cage on that principle, and describes it as the most expensive thing he’s ever made and the most dangerous room he’s ever stood near, and says the combination felt exactly right. Every step there is sound. He observed something, formed a hypothesis, and engineered a test. The only defective part is the premise underneath all of it, and the book has been about that premise the entire time.
Where does Death, Murder, and Zombies turn from funny to serious?
At the point where the cage needs something to attract what he’s hunting.
That problem has no acceptable solution and Karl finds one anyway, working through it with the same care he brought to the electromagnetic research. His notes on the question read like a design constraint being satisfied. The reader is ahead of him by then and has been for a while. That’s the arrangement the book runs on. He’s never wrong about the facts and he’s wrong about what he is, and there’s no scene where he notices.
Is Death, Murder, and Zombies a horror novel?
It’s shelved there and it doesn’t behave like one.
The horror in it comes from method and not from monsters. Animal experiments before human ones. Recruitment. Building the cage. A first test, then an experiment, and a man keeping careful notes throughout because he considers himself a researcher. The book carries a content warning for graphic violence, murder, animal cruelty, and serial killing shown from the inside. All of it is in there and none of it is decorative. No excuses are offered on Karl’s behalf. The novel doesn’t supply a childhood that explains him, and it doesn’t stop him being coherent.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| The game | Killing zombies for points and loot while brushing off Mike’s worried texts |
| The near-death encounter | He notices Death avoids electronic equipment |
| The theory | Frequencies that disrupt electronics might disrupt Death too |
| The cage | Built on that principle; his most expensive and dangerous creation |
| The bait problem | No acceptable solution exists, and he finds one anyway |
| The method | Animal experiments before human ones, recruitment, a first test |
| The zombies | Arrive late, after the reader knows who is responsible |
My take
Careful logic on a false premise is scarier than any zombie. Karl observes, forms a hypothesis, and builds a test, and the horror comes from how sound every step is. The rewrite turned an older, rougher book into a first-person novel about how an ordinary man becomes a killer. Watch Gwynn. She’s every chance the world had to catch him. Read it for the logic, and notice how reasonable it sounds.
Who is Death, Murder, and Zombies for?
Readers of Joe Hill, Paul Tremblay, and Thomas Tryon. That’s horror that works on unease instead of on shock, where the dread comes from a person behaving reasonably inside a frame that’s wrong. If you want a zombie novel, this isn’t really one. If you want to sit inside somebody’s reasoning while it takes him somewhere terrible, it’s exactly one. I’m prouder of this version than I expected to be. It’s an uncomfortable book on purpose, and I’ll gladly lose a reader who wanted cheap gore before I’ll soften Karl into someone easier to dismiss.
Karl works out his logic step by step, and every step follows from the one before it. Death, Murder, and Zombies shows how an ordinary person becomes a killer, from the inside.
