Sunday, October 4, 2015

Zombies and Chainsaws (The Dead Rise Book 1)

This book popped up as something to check out while I waited for an anthology to be released in e-reader format. The premise sounded interesting: 4 guys from small town in Iowa venture to a small town in Missouri and encounter the walking dead.

Blogger's Note: Had to Google the city in Iowa and I'll be honest- I damn near kicked myself when I realized how close it is to where I call home in Iowa. The city in Missouri I already knew because I grew up a couple hours away from it.

The story starts off in Adel, IA and most of the action takes place Sedalia, MO. For the map impaired- Adel is roughly 30 minutes away from Des Moines, IA and Sedalia is roughly 90 minutes away from Kansas City, MO. Consult Google Maps if you're not certain where Iowa and Missouri are located. But moving along......

Meet Jude. Jude is a widower scraping by with a tree removal service and raising his 4 year old son with the help of his sister-in-law. Via his former employer (cheapskate with his ex-wife working for him), he gets offered a job to travel with his crew to Missouri to help clear out trees after a massive storm. After a little haggling (thanks to the ex-wife cluing him in to the cheapskate's bottom line for this contract), Jude and his crew are on their way.

At the same time, we're introduced to Phelps. He's the president of a chemical company in Sedalia and after a late night phone call, he shows how much he lacks in ethics. He brings in a couple of lower ranking individuals to get rid of some waste from his company before he's visited by the government and told how his company will need to get up to par with EPA standards, something he says will bankrupt him.

The lower ranking individuals come up with the bright idea to take the chemical leftovers to the cemetery in town because "it's only visited twice a year," (they obviously don't know how death works) and would be the easiest place to dump the stuff without anyone noticing.

We never get to learn what's in the chemical compound, but the dead sure seem to like it because soon they're sprouting up faster than most weeds and they're on a mission- find living things and make them dead things.

Cut back to Jude and his crew. They're in a bar celebrating a job well done and how they'll be getting back on the road home the next day. Attempts are made to enjoy the local "culture," but in a couple of cases, it falls short (but lingering memories and general personality faults are the blame here).

Through various incidents, what happened out in the cemetery spills into town and it's obvious that a couple things need to happen- they need to get out of town and the government needs to be made aware of this. Jude notifies the CDC and the crew work on the getting out of town part. Getting out of town with zombies milling about doesn't prove to be a simple task, compounded when it starts to rain and complicates the situation further (don't drink the kool-aid!)

The CDC arrives, but not in a smooth fashion (not their fault. you witness the same thing and see how calm you'd be!) and we're off to the races to find out the source of this mishap and just how far this is going to go (remember how evaporation works? remember what happens when evaporation happens? and that's how the world ends.)

After a little legwork and a few casualties, they bring the town's zombie problem to Phelps and start working on getting out of town. While successful, they know the storm brewing and set out to notify others.

And this is where we leave this version of the impending zombie apocalypse. Should be interesting to see where the story goes- Does Jude make it home? Does the world take the news seriously? Does the chainsaw wind up with a clever nickname?

Guess we wait to find out! See you next time! 


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