Fictitious Musings

So, zombie apocalypse. You’re ready?

I keep a Templar sword by the bed. Just in case. Actually scared to death of the hungry dead. On one of our first dates, my future wife and I rented Dawn of the Dead and about five minutes in, I quietly got to my feet, tiptoed out, and retrieved my wood-ax from the shed. Set it right against my armchair. Felt much better through the whole movie after that. The fact that Jessica was more amused than alarmed by this likely is one reason she and I now wear wedding rings.

Actually though, you have to understand that it’s not just one big outbreak we have to watch for. Zombies have been here all along, devouring our history from the inside. In every generation, there has been a plague somewhere. That’s what The Zombie Bible is about – how generations of our ancestors wrestled with the restless dead. How they fought for survival and for sanity in the centuries before electricity or guns or the CDC. Moviemakers like to freak me out with warnings of an imminent global collapse and a world rendered wasteland inhabited only by the dead gnawing on the last bones. But in fact tomorrow or the day after may only be the latest chapter in a long and grisly story

I’ve been collecting these tales for a while. I have a place up in Colorado where there are few trees and you can see the dead coming from a long way off. I write each evening to scholars and archaeologists who can piece together bits of our half-eaten and half-forgotten memory. If you stop by or take a look in one of my books, I’ll tell you a few tales. How the prophet Jeremiah was left in a dry well three days with the dead tossed in after him. How Polycarp the martyr used to bring rest to dozens of the dead with a touch of his hand and his soul-searching eyes. How in the twelfth century BC Devora, an aging prophetess, led a tribal people against great herds of dead, her blade uplifted above her like a slice of moon against the night sky.

These are tales that will fascinate you and they are tales that will break the heart. Because whether today or three thousand years ago, one’s dead are never faced without terrible cost. Our ancestors understood that better than we, and we can learn from their stories.

This is a guest post by Stant Litore, author of Strangers in the Land (47North), a new entry in The Zombie Bible.

Four must stand against the dead. The aging prophetess Devora. Hurriya, the slave girl. Zadok, a legend among warriors. And the widower Barak, who has sworn to defend his homeland from a migration of walking corpses greater than has ever been seen.

Devora is all too familiar with the unclean dead. She was there when her mother was pulled screaming from her tent by zombies. And when her mother rose, famished for flesh, it was Devora’s hand that ended her hunger. Now Devora has struck an uneasy alliance with those she fears most among the living. Yet the strangers in the land must stand together if they are to rid the land of its curse.

About the Author

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Born a farmer’s son in the Pacific Northwest, Stant Litore took the college road and eventually earned his PhD in English, but remains passionate for things that grow. He spent several years in a dim corner of a library, repairing bruised and battered books, before heading overseas to backpack through Europe. Haunted by the hunger and poverty he witnessed at home and abroad, he began spinning stories about the hungers that devour us and the hopes that preserve us. Today he lives in Colorado with his wife and their two daughters, writing about the restless dead and the restless living. He avoids certain parts of the mountains during the dark of the moon.

Tags:47North, Apocalypse, Stant Litore, Strangers in the Land, The Zombie Bible, Zombies