Read: "City of the Dead" by Brian Keene

Read: City of the Dead by Brian Keene, 2005, 0843954159.

After reading The Rising I looked into getting another Keene book. I reserved one and, lo and behold, find out that this is a sequel. Keene's Acknowledgements mentions fans who were upset with The Rising's ending and wrote this.

City takes off from where Rising ended: Jim, Martin, and Frankie are in New Jersey to rescue Jim's son from the zombie hoards. The zombies are still dead bodies inhabited by demons from "The Void". Jim gets to his ex-wife's house and goes in for his kid, Danny. Jim finds Danny still alive but zombies burst out from surrounding homes in an ambush. Martin and Frankie enter the house. Shoot-out ensues. (I love how the zombies keep the memories of the bodies they inhabit and shot back, drive cars, etc.) Zombies set the house on fire. Jim and company are able to escape to a neighboring house where Don lives. They all escape that house in Don's SUV.

The SUV crashes and Martin dies in the crash (a shame since Martin was a good character). The rest are about to be eaten by the zombies when a helicopter rescues them. The helicopter is from a NYC skyscraper that holds a group of human survivors led by a fictionalized and insane Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the zombies are organizing for an assault on the skyscraper. We learn more about the zombies and how once they kill all the humans their evil brethren will come and take over and kill all the plants, then the Earth will be burned and the demons will travel to other worlds and do the same.

The zombies assault. A human doctor is banging a tied-up zombie. DonaldTrumpMillionaire masturbates at a skyscraper window. Jim enjoys survival with his son. Survivors try to remain upbeat. Zombies get in the building and start killing everyone. Jim and others escape to the sewers. Danny and Frankie are the only survivors to make it to an underground bomb shelter. Danny and Frankie die in their sleep when demon rats chew their way in. The world dies.

Keene's zombies are fantastic, he makes them very funny and deadpan. The zombies will inhabit another dead body if the one the use is destroyed. Jim's and company's escape from the burning house is accompanied by the zombies singing The house, the house, the house is on fire. We don't need no water let the fucking humans burn, burn fucking humans burn. At one point Keene pokes fun at Tom Piccirilli's name.

Why do horror and apocalyptic novels and films always have a selfish or self-destructive bad guy that ruins things for everyone?