Oh, hold on to your decaying flesh, I won’t.
There are also plenty of zombie comic books, graphic novels, and (yes) manga intended for those a bit older. According to Diamond Comic Distributors, the top-selling comic book of 2013 (not surprisingly) was The Walking Dead No. 115 and Walking Dead volumes accounted for five of the Top Ten graphic novels. But the TV-related franchise isn’t the only comic series, published (or, in some cases, were published until recently.) Along with various graphic versions of z-movies old and new and some novels, there are series like The New Deadwardians, iZombie, Fanboys vs. Zombies, Revival, and Afterlife with Archie (yes, that Archie). Even George Romero returned to the zombie genre this year with comic Empire of the Dead, illustrated by Alex Maleev and published by Marvel.
Despite the plethora of already-existing zombie videogames, many gamers found The Last of Us—with its realistic post-apocalyptic storyline and uncomfortable moral choices—to be one of the best titles of 2013. Also recently popular is DayZ, a multiplayer open world survival game test-released in December 2013 for Windows, and still in alpha-testing stage. Noted for its particularly horrific scenarios, the DayZ player is a survivor of a zombie virus who must forage for basic needs while killing or avoiding zombies, as well as killing, co-opting, or avoiding other players.
Among z-games to come: Dead Island 2 is scheduled for a spring 2015 release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Dying Light, another action game with zombies will also launch for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, and PC sometime in 2015. Zombie survival game H1Z1 (the name of yet another zombie-making virus) has a tentative release date of the end of 2014 for PC.
For those inclined to at least shamble rather than remain rotting on the couch, there are zombie walks. A combination of flash-mob/cosplay, these events have been around since 2003 and are now documented in more than twenty countries. The largest gathering, so far, according to Guinness World Records, is 8,027 at Midway Stadium in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 13 October 2012. (A pub crawl following the zombie event involved more than thirty thousand more-or-less zombified participants.)
The living imitating the undead have also raised money for various charities.
Live roleplaying games, most notably Humans vs. Zombies, have proliferated on college campuses and elsewhere. HvZ humans defend themselves against a growing zombie horde with Nerf or other soft-dart guns and rolled-up socks. It is played on six continents and locations including Australia, Denmark, Namibia, and Spain.
Zombie-only versions of “haunted attractions” are beginning to appear as well. Locations are turned into zombie lairs full of the hungry undead and visitors try to survive the flesh-eaters.
The undead are even helping the United States government. In 2012, about a thousand military, law enforcement, and medical personnel participated in a first-responder seminar subsidized by the United States Department of Homeland Security that included a rampaging horde of zombies as part of their emergency response training. It was only a small, tongue-in-cheek part of the training, but using a zombie virus outbreak scenario to train participants for a global pandemic—in which they would need to deal with violent, crazed, and fearful people—proved to be a valuable teaching tool.
That same year, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a whimsical emergency preparedness campaign blog—Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse—which turned into a very effective platform (so many people accessed the once-bland website, it crashed) to reach and engage a wide variety of audiences on hazard preparedness in general. CDC Director Dr. Ali Khan has noted, “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”
There’s more evidence, of course, of our cultural love for these fictional creatures, but to get back to the written word—which is, after all, what we are concerned with here . . .
Other than Quirk Books’ 2009 Jane Austen/zombie mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, “coauthored” by Seth Grahame-Smith, no novel since World War Z has had anywhere near its impact. (And although Pride and Prejudice and Zombies launched a mostly unfortunate subgenre, it now appears to be short-lived and unlikely to crawl forth from its tomb.)
This is not to say there have not been some excellent and/or popular novels since 2006 (I already mentioned some in Zombies: The Recent Dead.) Here is a 2009-2014—admittedly incomplete—selection (alphabetically by author’s last name; U.S. publisher listed unless published significantly earlier elsewhere):
Amelia Beamer: The Loving Dead (Night Shade, 2010)
Alden Belclass="underline" The Reapers Are the Angels (Holt, 2010) and Exit Kingdom (Holt, 2012)
Mira Grant: Newsfeed trilogy (Feed, 2010; Deadline, 2011; Blackout, 2012—all from Orbit)
Daryl Gregory: Raising Stony Mayhall (Del Rey, 2011)
John Ajvide Lindqvist: Handling the Undead (as Hanteringen av odöda in Sweden in 2005; English translation: Quercus, UK, 2009; Thomas Dunne, U.S., 2010)
Jonathan Maberry: Joe Ledger series (Patient Zero, 2009; The Dragon Factory, 2010; The King of Plagues, 2011; Assassins Code, 2012; Extinction Machine, 2013; Code Zero, 2014; with two more forthcoming in 2015 and 2016, all from St. Martin’s Griffin)
Jonathan Maberry (also from St. Martin’s Griffin): Dead of Night, (2011) and Fall of Night (2014)
Colson Whitehead: Zone One (Doubleday, 2011)
And, just a few of many, for Young Adult readers:
Sean Beaudoin: The Infects (2012, Candlewick)
Charlie Higson: Enemy Series: [The Enemy (Puffin, 2009), The Dead (Hyperion, 2010), The Fear (Disney-Hyperion, 2011); The Sacrifice (2012), The Fallen (2013), The Hunted (Puffin, UK, 2014, no U.S. edition as yet)]
Jonathan Maberry: Benny Imura series (Rot & Ruin, 2010; Dust & Decay, 2011; Flesh & Bone, 2012; Fire & Ash, 2013: from Simon & Schuster for Young Readers)
Carrie Ryan: The Forest of Hands and Teeth series (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, 2009; The Dead-Tossed Waves, 2010; The Dark and Hollow Places, 2011: all Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers)
Darren Shan: Zom-B series: Zom-B, 2012; Zom-B Underground, 2013; Zom-B City, 2013; Zom-B Angels, 2013; Zom-B Baby, 2013; Zom-B Gladiator, 2014; Zom-B Mission, 2014: all Simon & Schuster. Zom-B Clans, 2014: Simon & Schuster UK)
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, zombie fiction became even more of a force to contend with in the short form than previously. Now, in the last few years, creative short stories seem to be appearing more frequently in periodicals both online and off, and the walking dead continue to fill anthologies. There don’t seem to be as many compilations these days from the very small presses and fewer of the “intended-to-gross-out” variety, but among those from trade publishers (alphabetically by editor):