The Halloween List: Train to Busan and Flu

Today I’ve got two hot films from Korea, including one of the biggest Horror movies of the year. It’s going to be a good day.

But before we start, I have to talk about an unfortunate parallel. Our first movie, Train to Busan, is fictional Horror about zombies on a train headed to one of South Korean’s biggest cities. But this October, the real Busan was struck by a massive typhoon. If you have any spare money, please consider donating to relief efforts.

Train to Busan

For all the buzz this has gotten as Korean revitalizing the zombie genre, I’m almost surprised to report that Train to Busan is… just another zombie movie. There is no great innovation in Horror or change to the zombie formula in this movie. Instead, it’s two hours of people stuck on a train, trying to fend off zombies from the rear cars. If somehow you are craving more zombie-smashing and tragic losses of survivors, then this is for you.

Why Are Zombie Stories Always Disasters?

Yesterday I finished John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead, and I wanted to call it the most creative zombie story since Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Except Handling the Undead was published the year before Brooks’s novel, and I simply took a while finding it. They’re opposed books, because World War Z is the best at what zombies always are, those rotting hordes of the apocalypse. Handling the Undead makes you question why they’re always that.

At this point, Zombie might as well be a genre. It’s apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, usually gory, stories of survival and moral ambiguity. Humans turn out to be the ultimate evil more regularly than in The Twilight Zone. Every year people proclaim zombies must be done, but The Walking Dead only gets bigger ratings, and more videogames and indie authors produce the rotting hordes. I haven’t fatigued of the zombie, which is the unusual promise that the world we live in will be transformed into a fantasy playground. But I do wonder about it becoming so conventional.

Early on, Handling the Undead de-fangs the zombie apocalypse by showing the police and military immediately rolling in against dangerous ones, while are others are so weak (they’ve been decomposing, for God’s sake) that their families can overtake and even keep them. It’s so matter-of-fact, both from the accounts of survivors and the newspaper-like chapters that fill us in on the world’s reactions, that it wholly disarms the fantasy of the undead toppling everything.

What they topple is the catharsis of death. A mother grieving over a dead son now has something even more inexplicable in her house. She doesn’t know if he’ll recover, if he remembers her, if she can feed or help him. She yearns to, and we read with hands over our mouths, hoping he won’t bite her the next time she leans in.

It’s not a story of headshots and desperate amputations. It made me wonder about Warm Bodies, which I couldn’t stand, but also didn’t give a chance to. YA Romance is so far from my wheelhouse that I didn’t consider it as a property changing the zombie and the story of zombieism. Handling the Undead got more leeway, both because its author wrote Let the Right One In, and because it was about the pathos of the sting of death being removed, which was more novel. Even Shaun of the Dead is really the same old zombie story, but with very funny handling. Part of its appeal is it talked about zombies the way our generation had been doing for years. It wasn’t this disruptive.

Eventually the zombie apocalypse gets so familiar that this happens.

Handling the Undead breaks some explicit and some unspoken rules about zombies. That’s what we all do now, right? You want them to run, you want the bite to be an instant change, etc. For Lindqvist, the undead don’t immediately go after flesh, and he plays on your expectation of this brilliantly, as you’re fearing for mourners who get too close. They seemingly respond to the emotional states of those around them (this is going to start the flesh-eating, isn’t it?).

More pregnant are the unspoken rules it breaks, for instance: zombies no longer spawn like hordes of videogame enemies whenever convenient. I love The Walking Dead comic, but both the comic and show get silly with the number of zombies that show up miles from any source of food or civilization, like they’re smelling the plot. You need that unspoken rule if you’re going to tell an action story. Handling the Undead, though, is about the emotional effects on loved ones of the recently returned.

It’s when you tamper with those “rules” that are actually contrived conventions that audiences can wonder why all those other stories act alike. There’s drama in a mass of zombies banging on the hero’s door when he’s only got two bullets left, but there’s a rarer drama in a devastated grandfather researching what medical equipment might keep his returned grandson alive, and the knowledge that if he can sustain the boy, he’ll have to flee the city to keep him safe from the government.

The disruption underlies what excites me most in all Speculative Fiction. We’ve seen so many cynical zombie stories that we know where most of it will go, that the old world will die and any non-protagonists will probably form negative groups, like cults and corrupt military pockets. But when you take a creature that is typically the engine of global disaster, and instead apply it to the internal life of specific people who don’t even get the reprieve of oppressive social orders disappearing, it can become something else. The humanity of it is unyielding, ironically, because it can’t die anymore.

The Last Cat on Earth

Toby slipped on the thick leather jacket. He flipped up the collar to shield his neck and cheeks. Next came a second pair of jeans, buckling them over the tails of the jacket. Gloves and construction boots were necessary. He looked out the window as he donned the ski mask. He watched the undead shuffling on the street corners before flipping goggles to protect his eyes.

He couldn’t risk getting a speck on him. He was the last man who could do the job.

He followed the undead through the windows of his house. Two windows on the west wall, then the one next to the porch. Four of his former neighbors shambled along the driveways. Their eyes were blind, noses turned up to sniff. Maybe they could smell him. Or maybe they smelled Mr. Tibbs.

Scuffling rose behind him. Toby whirled and saw the basement door shake. He rushed over to it, but the button was depressed. It was locked. He heard his sister – his former sister – groaning down there.

He frowned at her through the door. She couldn’t do this job anymore.

“I’ll take care of it,” he told her. “Even though you know I never wanted it here. Do you know how dangerous it is?”

The deck door slid open quietly. There was a little whoosh of air, and then the saddest sound left on earth. A keening, churning whine. As much as he hated these things, it made even him feel a little sorry.

It padded around the plastic deck furniture. It arched its spine, so that when it walked between their legs it would rub its sides. Mr. Tibbs was a self-petter, but that wasn’t enough affection. Even self-rubbing, it looked so damned pathetic.

Toby drew a plastic sheet from the living room and closed the door. No sense in letting dander get inside. This was going to be an allergic nightmare as it was.

“I don’t like you any more than you like me,” he said down to it. It didn’t seem to dislike him, but cats lied with their faces. “This just doesn’t feel right. And you're not eating the food I throw out here. What's wrong?”

When Toby didn’t immediately pet the little bastard, it keened again. It sounded almost human. Kickably human. The kind of humanoid sorrow that’d haunted him up in his safely boarded study the last three days. His wonderful, hypoallergenic study with the view of the wonderfully silent, dander-free undead.

The plastic chair creaked as he squatted into it. He laid the plastic sheet over his chest and lap, hands flattening it into place over his jacket. When it was ready, he patted his thigh. Mr Tibbs quirked its wretched head, then began to climb into the last lap on earth. Even now, there was a little affection left in the world. But only a little. He’d kill the bastard if it got any hair on him.

Dedicated to Marshall, the cat that inspired this piece. Rest in peace, little guy.

Lit Corner: Where John's Been

Welcome to the last month of my life.

December came with several goals. With better health than November and a few weeks before family returned for the holidays, I decided to finish and submit at least four short stories. It was easy to pick the four, especially the first two: a tiny piece for Apex’s Christmas Flash contest, and a succubus Comedy I brewed up in August. I guarantee if you like my all-dialogue flashes, the succubus story will get you going. It’s the closest thing to Alligators By Twitter that I’ve written in a couple years. Ridiculousness is just in my nature, or too deep in my nurture to dig out.

Both of those stories are already out to markets. The third story is the longest, technically a novelette, and an idea I’ve been struggling to write a good version of for at least five years. There are so many flawed drafts, rewrites and blank slate works alike, that I’ve probably spent more energy word-for-word on this than any of my novels. It wasn't until reading Zelazny's Lord of Light that I hit on the style that really suited the story, but that gave me a white heat and about 14,000 words in one sitting - which I've since cut drastically. It’s a bit of an epilogue to the Magical Girl genre, and a testament to the many ways I’ve felt uncomfortable being so fond of the genre, which I’m calling, “Remember When I Saved the World?”

Thank God the beta readers liked it. It may truly be done. This is the first post-VP piece that my peers have gone over, and they’re a blessing of a group.

This story also got me to watch Madoka Magica, which is a fine piece of trope subversion. I'm thinking of doing a post on my wacky reactions to it, since I was the series-virgin this time, as opposed to our unnamed subject who went blindly into Evangelion. Is that of interest to you, internet?

This leaves me with just one more story to finish, and that project starts today. It is every editor’s least favorite: my totally original take on zombies. Yeah, I can feel Neil Clarke throwing heavy things in my direction already. But it’s an angle on solitude that I don’t see very often and that’s very close to my own life. Besides the zombies and all the Lysol.

Also, at some point I made this.

With those four done, I’ll be able to focus on #bestreads2013 and January. Helene Wecker had to go and write such a magnificent piece of work in The Golem and the Jinni that I’m revising my list of favorite novels, and will probably just let it run long to accommodate. I’m also thinking of doing a separate post about essays and short fiction, as I came across some incredible short pieces this year that don’t feel right to stick next to novels and long comics. What do you say? Maybe “Best Shorts” this Wednesday?

As for January, I have this tradition of starting a new novel every New Years. I’m stuck right now between two possible projects. The first would be rewriting The House That Nobody Built, a task for which my style is now honed enough to handle, and the crits from VP let me know what directions it ought to take.

But the second would be writing more novels in The Last House in the Sky series; those characters were addictive to write about. There’s a certain allure to chasing those thieves across the blown-up world for the rest of my life. Or for the books in the sequence I’ve plotted out. One or the other.

All of this is why the blog has been a little quiet lately. It is, besides shoveling a foot and a half of snow and fending off syndrome tremors, what I’ve been doing with my daily dose of ATP. What have you been up to, internet?

Bathroom Monologue: Zombie Parakeets for Adriana

Mrs. Merrick knew she was going to die. She was a Lapsed Catholic, but even as lapsed as she was, she recognized an apocalypse when it ate everyone in sight. Pet owners pounded on the glass of her shop for sanctuary, but she dared not open up and risk the zombies getting in with them. She had work to do.

Zombieism was an exotic strain of bird flu. Scientists knew it because they had isolated the virus. Mrs. Merrick knew it because all of her parakeets had it, and set about devouring her canaries. She only managed to save ten pigeons and her most obnoxious parrot, forcing the flock of zombie-keets into a glass cage. They only ate their own for now, and that meant working fast.

The parrot went first after it repeated her weight. She found the zombie-keets preferred their parrot raw, and so she put out feathers and bits of wing to start, only letting a zombie-keet bite if it first picked up its string and rod.

By Day 3, they only ate if they carried the rod and string appropriately, and if they visually saw her eat.

By Day 6, the zombie parakeets brought her a bagel in return for some pigeon. No matter what she did, she could not condition them to butter it.

By Day 8, she tied the dozens of strings to her arms and had her first successful takeoff. The zombie-keets didn't even attack their prey until she'd had her bagel.

On Day 11, the inevitable happened. A couple of star-crossed lovers smashed in her front window looking for supplies, and pedestrian zombies followed them in. Mrs. Merrick was bitten before she even got out of bed, and she died with a surprising poise. She'd known this was coming. As the infection overtook her, she slipped on her strings and loosed the flock of parakeets.

You can still see Mrs. Merrick. She planned well, and now she's the terror of downtown. She's the only zombie in the known world that can fly, and her minions never rest until she catches her man.

‘B’ is for ‘Bacteria.’

‘B’ is for ‘Bacteria.’

If there are only two life forms left on the planet, one of them will be bacteria, living off of the other. There will never be only one life form left, because virii and bacteria are brilliant at finding a host and sticking things out. It’s believed that the first apocalypse was probably a massive disease, because all the world needed was a population, and some bacteria. Since then bacteria has caused numerous additional apocalypses, being the only scientifically plausible explanation for the rise of zombies, and later vampiria and tentacalia. Zombieism is just a bacterial reaction, after all. One hundred percent normal, scientific, perfectly magical bacteria.

It’s unsurprising that bacteria were the first magicians. They did almost everything else first, and once they got a little magical potential, their hosts lived longer, hosted them longer, and spread them farther. Imps have the highest magical potential because their uniquely screwed up physiology allows for so many simultaneous magical infections. Just as bacteria evolved to assist digestion and boost height, it thrived in hosts where its magic could do the most good.

It’s unknown if bacteria have ever suffered their own apocalypse. Perhaps some day all diseases may disappear in one great catastrophe. If so, though, it’ll be a problem for more than just the common cold.

Tomorrow: ‘C’ is for ‘Cartography.’

Bathroom Monologue: Herman Crab, Zombie Shield

After his third car, Herman finally embraced his nickname. Kids back in elementary school had called him “Herman Crab” because his skin burned like a boiled lobster at recess. It didn’t matter to those kids that hermit crabs weren’t bright red. They hadn’t gotten to that unit yet. Now, years after they’d all be done with school, most of those people were probably dead.

What defined a hermit crab was its soft exterior and inability to make its own defense against predators. Herman presumed, if hermit crabs were also fending off the zombie apocalypse, then they were in constant search for shells under undead seafood. Herman certainly needed them, though his shells came with four tires.

The first night that Detroit was waylaid by the undead, Herman had been in a fight with Clarice in the front seat of his Smart Car. She was the love of his life, but he was a disappointing meal ticket to her. She hated that little car, and said so in her last words, before slamming the door and walking up the street. He watched after her, uncertain of what to say until a zombie dragged her into an alley. Then he knew what to say: a lot of swear words.

The undead fondled his windshield. One seemed to try to make out with his driver’s side window. They were many and terrifying, but they were also inept and unable to make a fist. At dawn they were still smooshing up against his windows. At dawn, he finally lost the terror of the apocalypse and drove away. He felt awkward, not having been eaten. It seemed rude, at least until his Smart Car got stuck in a mire of human remains.

That was when the Herman Crab came to life. He climbed out through a rear window, hopping into an abandoned Jeep. That had much less trouble running over corpses. Two miles later, he shed the Jeep for a Chevy Silverado that turned zombie into speed bumps.

As the apocalypse wore on, Herman came to realize leg room was more important than company. Groups of survivors shot at you, or held conferences on whether you were trustworthy, or screamed about infections. Cars didn’t do that. Cars sat there, abandoned on the highway, waiting for a patient man to siphon their gas, or to move enough out of the way so that he could drive off in the biggest one.

Today he stood on the roof of a Ford Bronco, squinting a new dawn. He shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned an overpass for anything reliable. He crossed his fore- and middlefinger over his eyebrow, hoping against hope for a monster truck.

Bathroom Monologue: My Zombie Apocalypse Team (see if you can spot the theme)

It’s 120 meters tall, mechanical so it can’t get infected, carries every Weapon of Mass Destruction known to man, has a flight mode, underwater mode, and always comes back in the last act of the movie no matter what went wrong. It's the Brains of the outfit because its brain is yet another laser gun, and since it has its own repair bay, it's set for Medics. A toy of Mechagodzilla can even suffice as our team Mascot.

Instructions? Point my “team” at the zombie apocalypse and leave town for a weekend.

Alright, I might have been kidding about the Mascot. If we're going to sell mechanized weapons at the end of the world, then he can tag along.