Gary Brander - Death Walkers

[dem bones]

Gary Brander - Death Walkers (Hamlyn, 1980)

... A New Dimension In Fear.

What if the person beside you is already dead?

She had drowned ...
Then she breathed again ...
Now every living minute they were waiting for her ....

Joana was one of the dead. But she was brought back to life. That's when people started trying to kill her - nice people - the last people in the world anyone would think capable of murder ... people who were already dead.

Death walkers. The loneliest terror of all.

Joana Raitt's troubles begin when she decides to show off her new swimming costume during a party at the Marina Village Complex in LA (it's the blue maillot number with the slits down the side). While boyfriend Glen Early is getting in the drinks, she dives in the pool and splashes around until she gets a cramp. The swimsuit can't have been that much of a knockout as everyone is too busy disco boogieing to notice that she's turned white and is now floating lifeless on top of the water. For all the efforts of her boyfriend and the hastily summoned Dr. Hovde (aged 55; recently divorced), Joana is a goner. The dead even tell her as much. But she refuses to give up.

Eventually, to the astonishment of all, especially Hovde who's pronounced her dead, she coughs up a load of water and comes around. A miracle! But she remembers the terrible warning of the people in the tunnel:

We will come for you. We will walk. We will bring you back. You may win once, not likely twice, most rarely thrice and four times - never! You must return by the Eve of St. John.

Joana tries to convince both Glen and the doctor that she really has come back from beyond the grave but they dismiss her insane ramblings as usual girly drama queenery so she turns to Peter Landau, medallion man, who she met briefly at the party when he tried to pull her. Landau is a bogus 'psychic counselor' and all-round occult charlatan who is only in it for the shagging. On her way to his funky pad, Joana is nearly mowed down by a mad old woman in a station wagon who promptly 'dies' of a heart attack. What a horrible accident! Except Joana saw the look of fury on the yellow-fanged hag's face as she drove deliberately toward her at speed ....

To be continued ...

[dem bones]

Toothpick-chewing pathologist Dr. Kermit Breedlove is baffled. Yvonne Carlson, the woman who so nearly ran over Joana, couldn't possibly have been driving the car as she'd been dead a good thirteen hours before the incident took place. He reports his findings to Dr. Hovde who gets to wondering if there really could be something in the young woman's story after all.

Meanwhile, Peter Landrau has surprised himself by throwing a tarot for Joana and turning up the most miserable set of cards imaginable no matter how many times he attempts to rig the results. It's got him so troubled that even his colourful social life is suffering.

"Tonight he had a date with an authentic Playboy centerfold named Susu. They were going to a party at Hugh Hefner's mansion .... Ordinarily the prospect would have Peter walking around six inches off the floor. Tonight he just felt like hell."

Susu is understandably furious to be blown out, 'specially as she's gone to the trouble of almost wearing a dress from which "her bosom threatened to spill out at the first sudden movement", but Peter is adamant. She can go to the party but he's staying home to play with his planchette.

After a marathon Ouija board session he finally gets to understand the menace that threatens both Joana and himself. All thoughts of bedding her are gone, now all he wants is to save their lives. He makes a midnight mercy dash to her home in the Hollywood Hills. As he approaches the door, a huge, bumbling Tor Johnson wannabe emerges from the bushes ...

To be continued ...

[dem bones]

The good news for Joana is a surly old Bruja who uses her black sorcery to ascertain that, should the young woman survive through midsummer night, the dead will no longer have any claim on her. Now having survived three attacks (or so she thinks), Joana is due just one more visitor, but the cantankerous old witch-doctor refuses to tell her what the fourth deady will look like ....

I enjoyed Death Walkers, just not as much as Slither, Transplant and similar Hamlyn nasties. It seems to run out of legs toward the end but, as is so often the case with these books, getting there is plenty of fun and the murderous zombies - notably the mad driver - will stay in the memory. And watch out for the brief but scene-stealing cameo from the freak out hippies on Angel Dust!