Just Finished: "Apocalypse of the Dead" by Joe McKinney

Just Finished: Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney, 2010,9780786023592.

Good. Short description: Zombie novel. Another description: Zombie version of The Stand.

I read an online recommendation for a different zombie novel by McKinney entitled Quarantined. I'd have to get that through ILL but this was at Beaver Dam. This seems to be a follow-up to McKinney's Dead City but I do not know if he continues characters.

Story: About two years ago several hurricanes hit the TX coast. A zombie infection spreads and pretty soon a flooded Houston is overrun by zombies. The government quickly builds a containment wall to quarantine the city and everyone - zombie and living alike - are stuck inside. The Quarantine Authority is established and they and the Coast Guard are tasked with air patrols to make sure no one escapes by land or water. Anyone escaping is shot. Some people do sneak out on a fishing boat, have a sick person aboard, land in Florida and spread the disease.

McKinney follows several groups of people from Las Vegas, Houston (escaping), Florida, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and South Texas. At first everyone is fleeing to a zombie-free safe zone but the zombies spread just as fast. A revivalist preacher in Mississippi has a vision to head to North Dakota and build a safe haven. Word spreads and McKinney's different groups arrive there. The new town, named Grasslands after the park they built on, is well made and organized but the preacher is a nut job, a cult leader. Things happen. People are bitten. People die. Some parts of society fall apart including an Anthony Neil Smith styled biker gang taking over Van Horn, TX. Characters change. Characters interact. Many gunshots. Little sex aside from rape.

Comments:

1. McKinney's zombies change over the time of the disease. He has several characters talk about how zombies move and react. They sleep, don't freeze in the snow, "stage 3" zombies can climb ladders and sometimes respond to names, etc.

2. Insane character Barnes is a wicked fast gunman.

3. Van Horn is very small. I thought about using the Google street view for some of the locations but will not bother.

4. This was 502 freaking pages long. He could have cut 200 of those.