So, to revive ZOMBIE HORRORS, we have the one-question interview with zombie fiction's newest master: Roy Aiken.
Zombie Horrors: You've mentioned on your blog that the main reason people enjoy
post-apocalyptic fiction is that any apocalypse is better than the one we're
living through now. Would you elaborate on that?”
If you define an “apocalypse” as a series of events effecting a permanent
change for the worst, then, as the old Palmolive soap catchphrase went, “You’re
soaking in it.” I have yet to meet anyone of any political persuasion who thinks
things are getting better.
The hero of my novel BLEEDING KANSAS has been unemployed for four years and
is poised to break back into the professional class when the dead rise to devour
the living. Being flown out at company expense for a second interview is a
blinding stroke of luck for Derek Grace, and I’ll daresay the biggest willing
suspension of disbelief required of my story. The professional classes have
contracted to such an extreme degree that once you’re out, you generally don’t
get back in. If you've got a college education, if you’re smart, articulate, and
generally on the ball, that’s pretty damned apocalyptic. You've worked hard,
you've played by the rules, you've passed the stupid piss test, the background
check, the credit check. You bought all the right clothes, you followed all the
right career advice. Still, you've got a better chance of getting eaten alive by
zombies than you do finding work to support yourself, let alone your
family.
Our real-life apocalypse is such that it won’t take zombies to bring
civilization down, just enough people getting so sick they can’t come into work.
Historically, we’re due for a pandemic along the lines of the Spanish Flu of
1917, yet it won’t take anything nearly that lethal to kick the supports out
from under everything. Even the most essential services are understaffed and
overworked. If one in three people call in sick for long enough, soon
everything’s running on automatic and standing by to break down. Why should the
rest stay on to try and fix what’s running? Their paychecks are probably the
first things that fail to go through.
Short of a pandemic, though, I don’t foresee a catastrophic collapse.
Apocalypses don’t necessarily mean a final ending, just the end of a way of
life, of how survival was transacted before. Consider the Christian apocalypse
of the Bible. It ends with a small elite living in heavenly luxury while the
great majority suffer in darkness outside the gates, with much wailing and
gnashing of teeth. It’s a great metaphor for what’s happening right now, except
we've still got so many people in the darkness convinced they can still get into
Heaven after the final judgment. They’d have better luck fighting a store full
of undead flesh-eaters for a can of cat food. Zombie apocalypses are brutal,
violent and cruel hellscapes. But so long as you’re reasonably clever and handy
with a weapon you have a chance. Not so much here.
BLEEDING KANSAS: By L. Roy Aiken.