Me: Oh, god, Amy. I can already tell that you’ll have to read the book I just started. I can TELL.
Me: On second thought…wait, you like books that make you cry, right?
Amy: I LOVE books that make me cry. That’s in the book? That gave me chills!
Me: YES! The whole thing is handwritten notes and transcribed texts from the zombie outbreak. It’s terrifying, thank goodness it’s daylight.
Me: (an hour later) I just finished. Holy shit. My heart is racing.
Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse is NOT a zombie novel, so don’t try to read it like one.
This is all very confusing (even for me), so let me go back a bit -
There’s this social network, lostzombies.com, which posits that the zombie apocalypse is/has happen/ing/ed and they’re creating a documentary about this currently happening zombpocalypse, based on submissions from the community. People make videos, they write letters, they stage photos, all set up to make the participants (and eventually, the moviewatchers) feel as if they’re currently in the middle of this thing RIGHT EFFING NOW.
While I don’t know that I’d be down for a full on immersion like some of these people, I was able to get into it for the hour it took to read this book.
It’s set up at the beginning with a vague timeline of events. First there’s the flu, which is the first super-flu, and it mutates into the Campion Flu (heh, fans of The Stand will get a chuckle out of that, if nothing else), which is the zombie virus. A handwritten note at the beginning explains that everything we find within the pages of this book was contained in the backpack of a little zombie girl that had to be put down.
It’s heartbreaking and breathtaking from its first pages. It’s billed as being a cross between Post Secret (which ALWAYS makes me a little weepy) and World War Z (which has pretty much set the bar for zombie fiction), but it’s more of the former than the latter, I think. At the end of WWZ, I had a feeling of hope for humanity.
Dead Inside: Do Not Enter is rather hopeless and bleak.
Which was why it was perfect for a quick afternoon read. If you read it too slow, it won’t have the same effect – but if you don’t pause to take note of the horrifying aspects of the things you’re reading or allow yourself to BELIEVE that this is currently happening…it just won’t be worth your time.
Not recommended for people that aren’t already fans of zombie literature, but HIGHLY recommended for those that are.
I also want to read World War Z despite being kind of indifferent to zombie books.
