The Living Dead (novel)

The Living Dead is a 2020 horror novel written by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus. The book was unfinished at Romero's death in 2017 and Kraus was hired to complete it using Romero's notes and incorporating an old short story by Romero.

Synopsis
The book is divided into three acts; "The Birth of Death", "The Life of Death", and "The Death of Death". The acts each cover a period of time from the first known undead attack and forward to the next eleven years. Each act consists of chapters of certain characters' stories, both living and dead.

The story begins in a Washington D.C. government building, where statistician Etta Hoffman finds an anomaly: the recording of a death and birth of a patient in San Diego on 10/23.From the same patient in San Diego this then leads to the story of Luis Acocella and Charlie Ratajkowski, in the San Diego medical examiner's office, who are working on an autopsy of a John Doe who suddenly comes back from the dead. During the "birth of death", Luis contacts his superior JT at an event in Las Vegas and learns that the dead ("They") are rising across the country. The ensuing chaos leads to JT committing suicide while on the phone with Luis and Charlie, the phone is then picked up by a mysterious guest at the Vegas convention named Richard Lindhof, whose callous reaction concerns and scares Luis and Charlie.

The story then shifts to the viewpoint of Greer Morgan, a teenage girl in a poor community in Missouri. She has to immediately come to terms with the events unfolding outside of her trailer, while also finding out about the neighbors whom she has come to know while living there with her father and brother. Greer's survival is dependent on those neighbors defending her from "Them" while she frantically looks for her father. Simultaneously, the TV media in Atlanta becomes aware of the events and fights over how to present the events as gang attacks or the unthinkable truth instead. Nathan Baseman is a producer whose acquires footage confirming the spread of the undead. Baseman fights with his coworkers about how to distribute the footage. Miss Glass, a successful talk show host whose used to spinning news for ratings has been chosen to covey things as gang attacks. Ultimately, Baseman recruits longtime anchor Chuck Corso to reveal the truth about the attacks from "them" as the rising dead to the public prior to Miss Glass conveying the lies to calm the panicked public. Nathan Baseman's young studio intern also patches a White House live feed to Chuck's broadcast confirming that the dead are attacking.

Meanwhile, a NAVY aircraft carrier ship far west of the California coast learns of the undead from Corso's broadcast. Some naval staff cannot cope and commit suicide by drug overdose on board, unleashing the dead within the ships captivity. An unhinged Navy chaplain uses the events to take control of the ship for his own perverse benefit, and to make a new society in his warped religious perspective. According to the Chaplin, survival on the zombie-plagued ship looks to be dependent on him and his followers. He believes these are "golem" from old Hebrew text sent to become his new army. Japanese American NAVY officer Karl Nishimura, who hopes to reach his husband and family in Buffalo, NY tries to stay alive. He works together with tormented fighter pilot Jenny to escape the Chaplain's followers and the undead. During access to their airplane escape, Jenny is accidentally stabbed by Karl and dies; Karl manages to eject and lands safely in Mexico, and begins his long journey eastward. Prior to the end of the first section, we learn of the outcome of Baseman and Corso's valiant efforts to inform the nation via TV broadcast of the ongoing events and of methods of survival. However, their thereafter further broadcast of helpful information leads to the infiltration of the studio by a group of violent deranged survivors, whose actions lead to the studio being overrun by hordes of the undead. Baseman commits suicide on air and Corso is attacked by the horde, with his fate unknown for now.

The second section, the "life of death", opens by revealing that Etta Hoffman continues to survive in the Washington D.C. government building. She has altered government websites to reflect her landline contact information, throughout which she learns and takes down stories from survivors of the zombie plague. Being in a fortified government facility has given her rations to last for years, and her documentation allows her to gauge the progress of humanities survival. Etta further passes the time with recounts of her former coworker Annie Taylor, who Etta surmises from Annie's email inbox has pursued her love Tonya Maydew to the La Brea Tar Pits out west. The story then shifts to follow undead Annie's journey west. Luis and Charlie meanwhile, who have fled to Luis's San Diego home, learn that Luis's wife Rosa has fled. While at Luis's home, Luis is bitten by his mother, who is undead. Charlie, with nowhere else to go to survive, cares for Luis in his dying days, and the two play out a romance until his death. Greer, who escaped Missouri, has met a musician named Muse King. Prior to the 10/23 outbreak, Muse was a famous guitarist, discovered when he used a guitar as a weapon on a violent man attempting to attack a woman. Following this, Muse was contacted by an older couple, who gave him a guitar that was owned by their deceased son. Their kindness led Muse to a life of non-violence. Greer and Muse fall in love and travel together to Canada. While doing so, Greer becomes significantly skilled at archery, and uses her talents to lead revolts against leaders of abhorrent survivor colonies. They become known as the vigilante couple "the Lion and the Dove", due to Greer's brutality and Muse's pacifism. We also learn that Corso did in fact survive the Atlanta studio attack, but with horrible facial wounds. With help from the young studio intern he hides and heals during the downfall of society. Eventually he stops using his name and goes by "the Face" in an ironic twist of what he once was as a polished TV host to a majorly disfigured survivor, as he moves north to Canada.

Now "they" have a name years later, being referred to as zombies. It is here that we learn that dead Annie Taylor has encountered many of the stories characters while traveling as a zombie across the nation, driven by something beyond hunger as a zombie, but instead to reach Tonda Maydew out west. As years pass in the apocalypse, some zombies are captured for sport by deranged societies, with Annie being upfit with weapons for battles and blades for running. We also learn here that the zombie plague has spread past humans to animals as well, including chimps, rats, and dogs. It also describes the newfound beauty of the world without human and industrial interference. Etta Hoffman's efforts to record the history of the zombie plague are noticed by a faction from Toronto, seemingly led by a woman named "Snoop." Snoop comes to collect Etta and bring her and her documentation to their society in Fort York, Toronto Canada, and it is revealed that Charlie is "Snoop." It is also revealed through past recounts that some of the main characters in the book to date have made it to Fort York as well. Charlie for example, after mourning Luis's death, is taken in by a waste management crew from San Diego, who drive garbage trucks to gather supplies and survivors, one of which is Rosa, Luis wife. They travelled east, first with new combined survivor groups, and then with a fanatical group of survivalists who based their society on extreme violence and misogyny. Charlie eventually escaped and made it to Fort York, where she now leads the group in a tribunal democracy with Karl Nishimura. Fort York is vegetarian and non-violent, and relies in part on enslaved zombie for manual labor to survive, such as plowing fields. Older decaying enslaved zombies are allowed to live in peace in a fortified section of the city across from Fort York, called Slowtown. But Fort York isn't perfect and has limited defenses, with guns turned over by new inhabitants in a locked armory.

The final section of the story, the "death of death", has Fort York is in a state of unrest and dissent, due to the recent new arrival of a voice from the past, Richard Lindhof—the unknown person whom Charlie and Luis spoke to on 10/23. Due to a recent theft and assault of staff and items at Fort York's supply cache, Lindhof advocates for a harsher existence, threatening the years old democracy formed by survivors. Additionally, Muse King has gone missing from Fort York. The section describes Charlie, Etta, Greer, Karl, and the Face patrolling Slowtown on the look for "softies", a term for zombies who are so decayed that they cannot move, and must be taken to a "zombie specific" hospice care in Fort York, formed newly as a way to practice mercy after years of violence. While on patrol, Greer abandons the team to look for Muse, against Karl's orders. Greer finds Muse by the actions of a docile zombie in Slowtown, who might be Charlie's mother from many years ago. Muse is weakened and assures Greer that the zombies are now growing more peaceful and have been working for the earth to rid the planet of humanity's evil, similar to the "golems" mentioned by the Navy ship's Chaplain many years ago to Karl, but instead in a "cleansing" sense, rather than an army. But Greer cannot convince Muse to leave Slowtown. Meanwhile, the team looks for Greer, but in finding the docile zombie, while stunned to see what could be her zombified mother, the docile zombie then bites Charlie's fingers. Karl kills the zombie and rushes Charlie back to Fort York for aid, with the assumption being her certain death and reanimation. On his return, the citizens of Fort York are in the middle of considering a vote to free or not free four jailed society members, known as the brickhouse 4. A maniacal Lindhof has previously pushed for the execution of the four, while Karl had pushed for penalty with eventual freedom. Ultimately, Lindhof successfully inspires Fort York mobs to bypass a vote and to violently storm the jail and execute the brickhouse 4 in horrifying manner. Surprisingly, however, the four do not reanimate and, simultaneously, Charlie survives the bite. Lindhof then leads the mob to Slowtown to exterminate the undead there. Upon Lindhof's arrival, as well as Greer and the Face's arrival, Muse King is seen leading the decaying zombies towards the humans in an effort of non-violent protest, Muse playing guitar and singing. Muse has both a zombie dog and zombie people by his side, and they don't attack Muse, only follow him in solidarity. It appears the decaying zombies are in fact becoming peaceful. Despite their efforts, the mob brutally slaughters all of them, including Muse. Greer is enraged by this sight and shoots Lindhof with an arrow through his heart in the chaos. In his retreat from the slaughter, The Face finds Karl Nishimura dying, having been violently thrown in a well by the mob. Finally, Etta and Charlie, having realized that something has fundamentally changed since Charlie survived her zombie bite, escape Fort York and its downfall. As they make their way to Lake Ontario, they are found by members on incoming boats of a different society further east in Ontario, who explain that the plague appears to have ended there as well, and that they too have believed zombies have ended their mission to cleanse the earth. Finally we learn the fate of Annie Taylor, whose journey is now done as she reaches Tonda Maydew at the La Brea Tar Pits and as they sink into the Tar to be destroyed together forever, the world might now be able to start anew.

Reception
Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a positive review calling it "a spectacular horror epic". The Times called the book "everything you could have hoped for".