DUST & DECAY

Kevin Coolidge

I wake to darkness, open my eyes, and smell…nothing. I must be the first one up. Usually, if my rumbling stomach doesn’t wake me up, my nose teases me awake with the mouth-watering aroma of bacon and eggs wafting up from the kitchen. Grandpa is the best cook. I quickly pull on my jeans, toss on a shirt, unlock my door and rush down the steps. I have never beaten the old man, and today is the day! He’s in his favorite chair still asleep with a dog-eared copy of the Bible in his lap.

“Hey, lazy bones, let’s make breakfast!”

I hear his low answering moan from across the room. His head jerks up; his eyes flutter open--cold and empty--dentures clacking together. Grandpa is gone. No trace of humanity remains--just a creature driven by a need for human flesh. I must quiet him. I will give him peace. I draw my belt knife. I’m gonna have to make this quick…

In Dust & Decay, the follow-up to Rot & Ruin, author Jonathan Maberry remembers that zombies were people too. It’s just a sad fact that after “First Night”, everyone who dies comes back as a zombie. It’s been almost sixteen years since that fatal night. The night that civilization died, and the dead reanimated. We don’t know why. We don’t know how. We just know that the world we knew is gone. Mankind lives inside isolated communities behind fences with the great “Rot & Ruin” lurking outside.

In Rot & Ruin, Benny, the male protagonist, comes of age, and must pick a career. He finally chooses to apprentice with his half-brother as a zombie bounty hunter. He can’t wait to get outside and kill some “zoms”, but he learns more than just survival in the wasteland. He learns about himself, his past, and what it is his brother really does. He also quickly learns that flesh-eating zombies aren’t the most dangerous animals around.

In his young adult novels, Jonathan doesn’t skip on the brains, gore, or the action, but there’s also a lot of heart. There’s a strong focus on the complex relationship between Benny and his brother, Tom. The actions of another cruel bounty hunter drive the plot, and Benny learns more than he ever thought possible about life and death.

Seven months after the end of Rot & Ruin, we find Benny, his friends, and his brother in Dust & Decay. The “Rot & Ruin” may lie outside the secure fences of Mountainside, but what is beyond that? It’s time to leave their home forever and search for a better future. It sounds easy.

But everything goes wrong: they are pursued by the living dead, escaped zoo animals, and deranged murderers. The teens must apply all their training if they wish to stay alive, and what’s worse is that there is evidence that a former foe is still alive, angry, and evil as ever. In the great “Rot & Ruin,” everything wants to kill you, and not everyone is going to come out alive…

In Dust & Decay, we see further character development of Benny and Tom, as well as the romantic relationship with his girlfriend Nix. I found the excerpts from Nix’s diary a great addition to the story, giving the reader more background about other bounty hunters, Nix’s thoughts and feelings. This diary shows us more information about their world, as well as providing thought-provoking questions for the reader—can zombies feel pain? Why don’t they attack each other?

Benny begins to mature and build upon the lessons learned in the “Rot & Ruin”, and grow into a man who is strong, but different from his brother. This series is sure to be satisfying for anyone who enjoyed The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, or World War Z by Max Brooks. This is not just a book that I can enthusiastically recommend to lovers of the zombie or dystopian novel, but to anyone who loves a good coming of age story with heart, brains, and a little intestine…

The Rot? Or the Ruin? Drop me an email at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Taking a dirt nap and miss a past column? See them all at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Looking for a children’s book with heart? “Hobo find a Home” is a children’s book about a cat who found a home and a friend. Be sure to catch Hobo’s next exciting adventure, “Hobo and the Carnivorous Ponies”