This Friday, THE FINAL CUT, the long-awaited conclusion to The Infection trilogy, publishes on Amazon. Between now and then, the first two books in this classic zombie series are now free for Amazon Kindle!
Get THE INFECTION (book 1) here.
Get THE KILLING FLOOR (book 2) here.
Preorder THE FINAL CUT (book 3) here.
(New audio versions of the first two books and for the third book are coming out in early 2022. The paperback edition of THE FINAL CUT comes out around Friday.)
Thanks for reading!
I’m excited to announce that THE INFECTION, the classic zombie series, is now a trilogy, with the third book, THE FINAL CUT, available for pre-order with a release of December 10, 2021.
THE INFECTION was published by Permuted Press in 2011 and did very well. It was always intended to be a standalone, but the publisher wanted a sequel, and so I gave them THE KILLING FLOOR. Permuted asked for a third book, but my writing journey went on a different trajectory to working with Simon & Schuster and Hachette and also self-publishing. All the while, I often thought about returning to THE INFECTION’s grimdark world to round out a trilogy and provide a stronger sense of closure to the story.
In 2021, I was able to get the rights back to both novels and decided to finally do it. And so THE FINAL CUT was born, where old and new characters struggle with the final question of Infection—extermination, accommodation, or assimilation—and each makes a final choice. I was happy to be able to get to know these people again, give them new life and a voice, and help them find the end of their stories.
Here’s the synopsis:
Infection turned the world into a slaughterhouse. Months later, America is exhausted and dying, its military stalled in the fight to save what’s left.
In the ruins of a West Virginia town, a band of survivors count their losses after a horrific battle to secure a pure sample of Infection. Their destination: “Fort Doom,” USAMRIID, the Army’s germ warfare laboratory, which is under siege.
With humanity facing the possibility of extinction, the Army wants to use the sample to build a superweapon against Infection. One scientist hopes to control Infection; another believes she can cure it. And outside the fort’s walls, a lone survivor offers a new way to survive what’s coming. Each will choose how far they’ll go to survive and what they’re willing to lose to save humanity.
In THE FINAL CUT, Craig DiLouie’s brutal vision of the apocalypse concludes with a revelation of the final mysteries of Infection. Will humanity survive the end of days?
Click here to learn more and pre-order.
Korean historical zombie drama KINGDOM (Netflix) recently aired its second season, which ends with the prince finding a mysterious figure in an abandoned village. A standalone episode, KINGDOM: ASHIN OF THE NORTH answers who this is and tells her backstory, thereby providing answers as to how the zombie-producing plant was discovered and found its way into the royal family.
Ashin is a child living in a village populated by Jucheons, people who migrated from Manchuria to live in Korea. They’re peaceful and loyal, but the Koreans never accepted them, and the Jurcheons no longer consider them the same tribe. As tensions mount on the border, an incident results in a massacre and Ashin wanting revenge. Soon, she discovers her hatred’s real target, resulting in a horrific plan of vengeance.
Fans of KINGDOM will love it, though they should understand this is a prequel set many years before the events in the series. While a standalone episode, at 92 minutes, it’s really a movie. On the plus side, it has the history, simple political machinations, and zombie violence of the series, though with less heart. You root for Ashin, though she’s not as likeable as the series cast, and the episode’s villains aren’t as hateable, so when everything comes together, which it does nicely, it nonetheless wasn’t as satisfying for me.
Anyway, if you’re a fan of the show, definitely check it out.
BLACK SUMMER (Netflix) is a terrific zombie series, brushing aside its low budget with constant tension, culling terror from even a single relentless zombie, interesting characters and set pieces, and a full range of genuine human reactions. Season 2 delivers the same winning formula as the first season, while amping up the conflict to be more human versus human and finding an almost Old West pathos to its grim story. At the same time, it sacrifices an important human element in its bleak depiction of survival, which was unfortunate.
Rose reunited with her daughter at the end of the first season, which saw the major characters either scattered, dead, or having made it to the stadium. Season 2 seemed to promise a story of how this tribe struggles and survives in a zombie-infested world similar to other shows like TWD and Z NATION, but this isn’t them. In this world, food becomes scarce, there’s a massive die off, our tribe is separated into virtually every man or woman for themselves, and various bands of people struggle in the northern wilderness, where the cold freezes many of the zombies.
An interesting antagonist is introduced, a cop who now leads a hardened band of survivalist-type warriors. He’s an intriguing character, a ruthless badass and a fitting antagonist for Rose, though the show doesn’t set up any real antagonism other than their paths cross searching for the same goal, which is unfortunate. If the show had them have a real run in, setting up personal stakes, their antagonism would have meant far more, and it would have been a better, less fragmented story. The camera often lingers on faces and landscapes, giving the whole thing an Old West feel not unlike THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, though again wasting its chance at pathos by not tying the primary characters together more strongly.
Mostly, the story centers around various groups and individuals converging on a house that is a point of communication with a supply plane and supposed sanctuary, and then a race for the plane itself. In the midst of this, Rose will do anything to ensure her daughter survives, though her daughter, so accustomed to danger, may not be able to function in any place that seems safe. Unfortunately, Rose is often so ruthless, sometimes for no practical purpose, it makes you wonder who the villain is. It’s the same with most of the show–there’s so little trust, so natural an inclination to hurt and kill, that it seems to go beyond survival into a commentary about the natural brutality of humanity, brutality for its own sake. Which is unnecessarily bleak, as one of the things I liked about the first season was how people will form tribes and try to work together in the face of adversity.
Overall, despite its flaws and missed opportunities, I liked it a lot. Kinda loved it, actually. I hope it gets a third season.
David Moody’s AUTUMN: DAWN breathes new life into my favorite undead series. The book releases tomorrow (May 31).
In the grisly world of AUTUMN, a deadly germ strikes 99.9% of the population dead in their tracks. The dazed and shocked survivors struggle to make sense of it, some of them grouping together for comfort and survival and to try to keep hope alive. Then the dead rise from where they fell. Rotting and feral, they are attracted to the living, creating a new threat of total extinction.
I was totally impressed with Moody’s vision of an undead world back in the 2000s. He gave the undead a totally originally spin, not the least of which was by focusing heavily on character and realistically portraying the horrifying physical and emotional landscape of a world filled with zombies. His zombies are truly horrible, practically rotting off the page. His characters have a strained, stubborn agency, remarkable not for any heroic qualities but simply because they’re able to function and fight among so much horror and hopelessness.
Enter AUTUMN: DAWN, the start of a new trilogy to extend the series. This time, the setting is London, where there are plenty of survivors but the dead number in the millions. A community of people have gathered and find themselves under siege. A short distance away, another group has formed, though it might as well be on the Moon. And other survivors wait in the shadows. Can they unite and survive among an ocean of feral undead? Can they hold out and survive in London? Or will they strike out of the city to an alleged sanctuary up north?
The first book delivers everything you want in a Moody novel, and now I’m eagerly looking forward to the second.
Zack Snyder’s ARMY OF THE DEAD (2021, Netflix) delivers a fantastic setup with a strong cast of characters and lavish sets and action, only to suck every drop of fun out of it with dumb tropes.
The film follows Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a Las Vegas local who became a legendary hero during the zombie war and who afterwards sank into obscurity. Fast forward: the war’s over, Las Vegas is quarantined, his daughter lives in a nearby quarantine camp, and Ward is a bit broken after everything he suffered to survive and save others. A casino boss hires him to break into Vegas to rob the casino he abandoned, offering $50 million for him and whatever team he assembles. After collecting his old zombie-killing comrades and recruiting other specialists, they venture into a zombie-infected Las Vegas to find the zombies have evolved. The trick is the president has authored Vegas to be nuked, and the clock is ticking.
Wow, right? They had me at Bautista, who makes a terrific understated action hero, but that’s one hell of a great setup. Like something like Adam Baker (TERMINUS, IMPACT, etc.) would cook up. The first half is actually fantastic. The problem is once the team is assembled, it all falls apart.
It’s like the filmmakers didn’t trust themselves (or their audience) to make any of it pay off, so they kitchen-sank every dumb heist and zombie movie trope they could scratch together in the hopes something would stick. You’ve got the Annoying Rebellious Daughter with Principle, Skeevy Security Guard, Tough and Mysterious Scout, Traitorous Scumbag Corporate Guy, Overplayed Unfunny Comic Relief, and so on. As well as hibernating zombies, zombie love right out of I AM LEGEND, alpha parkour zombies, king zombie, animal zombies, and from what some people are saying also robot zombies. The action in the second half is decent, there’s some fun, but mostly I was bored as the predictability of it, found the alpha zombies more annoying than menacing, and didn’t care if anybody died.
Okay, maybe I’m just a party pooper who expected too much from a zombie movie. That’s probably true. I’m just bummed because there was so much goddamn potential in this movie’s setup that I felt the way I felt watching the last season of GAME OF THRONES. They should have torn a page from Baker’s books and simply told a simple story: The team has a legendary past, the band gets back together for a heist, they go in, it goes bad, they barely get out with the clock ticking on a nuke. That’s it. No annoying daughter, no scumbag corporate guy, no skeevy security guard.
Oh, well. It’s certainly not the worst zombie movie, and it has a lot of fun elements to it to make it likeable and a passable watch. It really should have just stuck with its simple premise and core characters and made them pay off. THE DIRTY DOZEN with zombies. It could have been one of the best zombie movies ever.