I have several ImagiFriendsTM who are really into zombies. Into them to the point that they’ve thought about the zombie apocalypse…and they have game plans for how to deal with said event.
I dig zombies, too, although maybe not quite as much. So it was with mostly equal parts joy and trepidation that I dove into Jonathan Maberry’s novel Patient Zero. The trepidation stemmed from the fact that I’m usually not drawn to good guy/bad guy shoot-em-up novels all that much. Unless the weapons are phasers. Then I’m cool.
I was happily surprised for the most part. Maberry sets a quick, solid pace and lays down a story that is both captivating and highly unsettling. The latter might be a mostly subjective reaction that stems from the hooks he sinks into the realism of a post-9/11 world. Granted, zombie warfare is a bit far-fetched, but shadows of biological warfare and further terrorist attacks on American soil tap into a wellspring of real fear that, for me, does not make for pleasant reading.
However, Maberry spins a tale that is enough of a m
