Zombie Apocalypse! Endgame

[dem bones]

Stephen Jones (creator) - Zombie Apocalypse! Endgame (Robinson, Oct. 2014)

Joe Roberts

Ramsey Campbell - Ramsey's Ruminations : Moreby In The Media
Stephen Baxter - 1897-1946: Todt Chemie-AG
Jo Fletcher - Our World In Their Hands
Jo Fletcher - Lost Boys
Stephen Baxter - 2005: Obituary Of Barry Pound
Stephen Baxter - 1849: Joseph Bonomi #1: The Mourning Rings
Stephen Baxter - 1878: Joseph Bonomi 2: The Return Of Mobius
Jo Fletcher - The World's Great Mysteries!
Gary McMahon - Bits And Pieces
Michael Marshall Smith - Wethaz
Brian Hodge - Lady Cecilia
Stephen Baxter - 1504: Leonardo Da Vinci: The Testament Of Giovanni
Michael Marshall Smith - Downcount
Stephen Baxter - Tom Lehrer and Morbius
Lou Morgan - Diary Entry #4
Stephen Baxter - Sympathy For The Deathless
Michael Marshall Smith - Endnotes
Paul Kane - He Is Legend
Stephen Baxter - The Two Morebys
Stephen Baxter - 1851: Herman Melville
Brian Hodge - The Return Of The Seven
Nancy Kilpatrick - Family
John Llewellyn Probert - The Three Messiahs
Alison Littlewood - Zombie VS. Zombi
Peter Crowther - Dead Inside
Angela Slatter - Red Dust, White Earth
Paul McAuley - The Return Of The King
Peter Atkins - Z.O.A.
Michael Marshall Smith - Appetite
Pat Cadigan - Rocky III
Thana Niveau - Vile Earth, To Earth Resign
Peter Crowther - An Interview With Bernie Maughmstein
Conrad Williams - Horizon Deep
Lisa Morton - Kevin Needs To Talk About Us
Stephen Baxter - The Three Morebys
Michael Marshall Smith - Things Future
Stephen Jones - Last Rites
Kim Newman - Zombie Apocalypse! Title Song

Blurb:
IS THIS THE END . . . OR JUST THE BEGINNING? Human Reanimation Virus (HRV) has spread around the globe and most of the major cities have fallen or been destroyed. As a new race of intelligent zombies rise to power, the remaining pockets of human resistance make a last, desperate stand in the ruins of a world on the brink of unimaginable change. With the final pieces of the epic puzzle falling into place, a centuries-old Endgame is revealed through interconnected emails, articles, reports, diaries and eyewitness accounts, as past and future hang in the balance. In this third and final volume of the original best-selling Zombie Apocalypse! trilogy, Thomas Moreby's plan for world domination is finally revealed in all its mad glory, as the very fabric of time and space is ripped apart and history itself is about to be changed forever . . .

Usual blow-by-blow account to follow shortly, but 72 pages down - I've just finished Gary McMahon's ghoulish variation on Robert Bloch's Frozen Fear - it's already apparent that many of the documents here-in date from decades, even a century prior to the outbreak of the coalition government and subsequent virus. Can this third and final volume live up to its illustrious predecessors? Who knows, but with early references to H. G. Wells, Nazi scientists, thalidomide and an abduction outside S. E. London's historic Tower of Moab primary school, looks like we are in for another nerve-shredding ride.

Many thanks to Grace

[dem bones]

Randy Broecker

Ramsey Campbell - Ramsey's Ruminations : Moreby In The Media: As the author correctly asserts, asked which occult figure appears most prominently in the media, many of us would surely reply Aleister Crowley. Oh no not so! As this forgotten article from a hard to find (possibly even suppressed?) 1989 issue of Shock Xpress ably demonstrates, the correct answer is Thomas Moreby, that infamous pupil of Satanic architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. It is simply that the many allusions to both Moreby and the Well of Seven in book and film are veiled. Crowley and his disciples are but a pale imitation.

Stephen Baxter - 1897-1946: Todt Chemie-AG: An impassioned letter from Olaf Stapleton to his literary idol H. G. Wells deploring the pessimistic tone of the latter's recent novel, Mind At The End Of Its Tether (1945). It seems both men share a mutual unwanted acquaintance. Ghastly one-eyed German chemist Tomas Moerbitz is a huge fan of their time-travel novels. Moerbitz is suspected of war crimes.

Jo Fletcher - Our World In Their Hands: Tabloid newspaper item. Janet Ramsey's exposé of the New World Pharmaceuticals Group, originally formed and, more importantly, funded by the aforementioned Tomas Moerbitz, who fled to America in 1945 and worked on the space programme. Many believe Moerbitz should have stood trial for the scientific researches he conducted in the Death Camps. Hard News rake up his Nazi past. Elsewhere in the issue, Police appeal for witnesses after the mutilated remains of Jessica Vannhelssin, 29, "a personal assistant for a multinational company", were discovered at a Pembrokeshire beauty spot.

Jo Fletcher - Lost Boys: 1993. Two thirteen year old pupils disappear from the Tower of Moab secondary school. Andy Jarvis is eventually found wandering in the grounds of All Hallows, the local "haunted churchyard" and reputed hang out of Satanists. He has no memory of what happened to him. His friend, Roddy Chu, is never seen again.

Stephen Baxter - 2005: Obituary Of Barry Pound:Having received new information from the family of the deceased, The Guardian newspaper are happy to acknowledge that the reasons behind the rejection of Mr. Pound's proposed Z-Cars script (working title: The Blob Murders) are rather more complex than those stated in their obituary. The editor also notes alarming parallels between The Blob Murders and the real-life homicides perpetuated by 'the Amoeba Killer,' not least that of Mr. Pound.

[dem bones]

Gads, but this is deuced clever stuff!

Stephen Baxter - 1849: Joseph Bonomi #1: The Mourning Rings: The horrific facts surrounding the deaths of four of the great Egyptologist's five children during the whooping cough epidemic of 1849. The brain-devouring, cycloptic imposter who has stolen the body and mind of mathematician Herr Augustus Ferdinand Möbius openly brags of his crucial contribution to the fatalities. He even grants Bonomi a cruel choice of which infant will survive. By means of a potion, Mobius cures the tumour that is fast destroying Joseph. In return, Bonomi must perform a certain duty ....

Stephen Baxter - 1878: Joseph Bonomi 2: The Return Of Mobius: As promised, having no further use for him, Möbius returns to London to claim the tragic Bonomi body and soul.

Jo Fletcher - The World's Great Mysteries!: Gerry Brown's fulsome review of 'super hackette' Janet Ramsey's The World's Great Mysteries! #17 (Hard News Press, n.d) including an extract from same. Strange revelations concerning London's "magnificent seven" garden cemeteries opened between 1833-1841, and the Courney spinsters' mausoleum, or 'The Brompton Time Machine' as it is popularly known in Fortean circles.

Gary McMahon - Bits And Pieces: Blackheath, South East London,in the immediate aftermath of the disturbances at All Hallows church is the setting for this Poe-driven black comedy. The narrator finally plucks up the courage to murder his bed-hopping wife only for Tanya to prove as driven in death as she ever was in life. will no amount of slicing and dicing deter her?

Michael Marshall Smith - Wethaz: A useful zombie-alert app for your mobile phone. Free to use, but you do so at your own risk.

[dem bones]

" ... who's to say they won't take out Birmingham next. Or that we'll see another mushroom cloud, ahead of us this time, and there goes Manchester."

Brian Hodge - Lady Cecilia: Lady Cecilia Fowler (1774-1814), the famous society beauty, was one of the loathsome seven who ritually mutilated Thomas Moreby's bride of two weeks in the basement of a Deptford brothel. Although Moreby himself was walled up alive in the vaults of All Hallows by an enraged mob for his part in "the Hobs End horror", his accomplices went unpunished. Two centuries later, the recently revived Lady Cecilia, by now little more than a shrivelled, one-legged bag of bones, is stranded on a platform at Kings Cross station until Malcolm Morris answers her cries for help. Morris stupidly entrusts her Ladyship with turning his desperate wife, Gerri, who, after painful consideration, has decided she would rather be a zombie than zombie dinner.

With a new body to inhabit, Lady Cecilia grants Morris her protection from the dead. In return, he must "play Driving Miss Daisy [for] a living corpse" - as he puts it - and her pet fleas. On Cecilia's instruction, they set off North to join her old acquaintances.

The Well of Seven, each of whom has commandeered a new body, are reunited at Liverpool docks. They already have big plans for the former colonies ....

Stephen Baxter - 1504: Leonardo Da Vinci: The Testament Of Giovanni: An Anglo-American salvage operation at the burnt out shell of the British Museum. Closer scrutiny of a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript reveals a document beneath, written by his apprentice. The 'Testament Of Giovanni' details his master's relationship with the odious Tomas da Morbi, their adventure aboard a prototype time machine (Chronos Macchina), and the true identity of the model for La Giocondo (and what 'she' had to smile about).

Michael Marshall Smith - Downcount: The ever industrious Zeke@Zapps strikes again with a gloomy little program for the recently bitten.

Stephen Baxter - Tom Lehrer and Morbius: A suppressed 60's protest song versus Tomas Moerbitz and "space program Nazi's" resurfaces on MeTube.

[dem bones]

Alex Schomburg illustration for Ray Cummings' The Dead Who Walk, (Strange Tales, Sept. 1931)

For some strange reason, snatches of Wire's Chairs Missing album were running through my head as I read this next.

Lou Morgan - Diary Entry #4: Diary entries 1-3 are presumably lost for good, but these several pages of fevered outpourings bring us bang up to date with 13 years old Maddy Wood circumstances and at time of writing they were none too healthy. Recently bitten, Mandy and her friends are now true feral children, and hungry, so very hungry. They've a score to settle with nasty Mr. Drake except he's got an axe .....

Stephen Baxter - Sympathy For The Deathless: Mick Jagger's famous lyric receives topical makeover. Accompanying grainy, lo-fi video reveals front-man to be missing an eye. Pop has eaten itself.

Michael Marshall Smith - Endnotes: On the turn? Here's an app for sending that tricky 'goodbye' tweet to mum.

[dem bones]

"According to [Gerald] Gardner, the cult's secret sign - four fingers of the left hand extended at the same time as three on the right, while both thumbs and remaining finger are pressed against the palms (not as easy as it sounds; try it yourself) is concealed in many paintings, including religious images." - Ramsey Campbell reveals the Well of Seven's signature symbol.

Paul Kane - He Is Legend: "Because my radar was definitely up - something bad was coming our way. I just didn't expect it to be a shopping mall full of f**k**g zombies." . It is not unlikely that you have read an early incarnation of this story. As if the title doesn't spell it out there is even a reference to "old man Heston's place." Anyway ...

Early June, shortly after the initial disturbances at the New Festival of Britain site at All Hallows, Blackheath. Nevill (Robert, by any chance?), a council road digger and conspiracy theorist, is enjoying a latte with wife Nat and little Rosie, ten, when the flesh-eating mob attack the shoppers. His wife and daughter are swept away by the rampaging horde, and that is the last he sees of them for the time being. Nevill himself is bitten but proves immune to the virus. Henceforth he wages one-man guerilla warfare on the dead. But the zombies are not without cunning and a surprising capacity to learn fast. They even recover the powers of speech. Soon the former mayor has them organised into a well-drilled unit. The walking dead lay siege to Nevill's booby-trapped hideout.

Stephen Baxter - The Two Morebys: Wisecracking gore-hounds packrat and beherenow slobber over a retrieved video feed from All Hallow's church on the night of the Zombie Apocalypse. Close-ups of the revived Moreby in all his flea-infested glory. Joseph Bonomi's tomb is revealed as a time machine. Cut to the President's chambers in the White House. But packrat and beherenow are old hands at this game and agree it's just that twisted bastard at Anarchy TV posting fake footage again!

Advertisement in Metro, 2014.

Stephen Baxter - 1851: Herman Melville: On a visit to Liverpool, Melville watches appalled as a gang of sailors torment a one-eyed man trapped behind a grid. The prisoner gives as good as he gets and, tiring of the game, effortlessly fights his way to freedom. Melville mishears the name 'Moreby'.

Brian Hodge - The Return Of The Seven: We rejoin Malcolm Morris (see Lady Cecilia) aboard the plague ship. After a terrifying voyage - at least for him and the "rations"; the zombies can live with a spot of seasickness - the ship docks at Virginia and the Well of Seven and their slaves camp in the Arlington National Cemetery. Moreby's bloated red fleas revive America's dead war heroes to fight against their own people - and all just in time for Independence Day. It's a great time to be dead! For Malcolm, however, the worst of the worst is yet to come.

All this, and we're still not even halfway through.

[pc83uk]

I really enjoyed reading demonik's posts on the first two books. Not read the ones in here yet as I'm not very far into the new book -- thus far, I'm not enjoying it as much as I did the others. I'm finding it quite confusing, mostly as I've forgotten the details of how exactly Moreby was introduced originally and so I keep running into things now where I'm sure he was dead and buried at the time these events he's involved in were happening. I should really reread Fightback, or at least the thread on it. I've got trust in Jones and the collective, though.

[dem bones]

Why, thank you kindly, pc. Must admit, I had to begin again after Bits And Pieces to make sense of what had gone before and, yes, a refresher course is probably advisable before even attempting ...Endgame but i'm too lazy. Mr. Jones once mentioned that he was planning an omnibus edition (!) setting the the stories in sequential order, so pages 1-60 of ...Endgame would be right at the beginning. Have you read the spin-off novels? I had a fine old time with Mark Morris's suitably grisly Horror Hospital; haven't seen a copy of Lisa Morton's Washington Deceased yet. As to ...Endgame, to date I have particularly enjoyed the contributions of Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Brian Hodge, Jo Fletcher, Stephen Baxter's two Joseph Bonomi... pieces, and MMS's morbid phone apps. There have been two - what's the word - 'episodes' that mildly irritated me, and another had me screaming for all the wrong reasons, but i'm with you - in Jones and collective we trust!

[dem bones]

.... back with the Z. Apocalypse - two beauties on the bounce:

Nancy Kilpatrick - Family: Josh Magnusson of International Geographic travels to the Arctic Circle to investigate reported sightings of zombies on Baffin Island. Caught in a snow blizzard and completely isolated from the outside world, in his loneliness Josh frantically e-mails his ex-wives, colleagues and friends but receives not a single reply. Eventually he achieves what he came for - suitably grainy footage of a family of three including a little girl who, from what he's seen of her, has yet to turn. So how can she survive in these sub-zero temperatures .....

Mahood (Mahhod Celebrates 30 Years of Hammer Films, The Pick of Punch ed. David Taylor, Grafton, 1988).

John Llewellyn Probert - The Three Messiahs: One week after her 'creation' - i.e. -death/rebirth - by surgeon Graham Harman, Dr. Clare Fremont resumes work in the remnants of the laboratory on Ramsey Island. In short, to affect a cure to the zombie virus, she intends to create life, and with no shortage of fellow zombies on the prowl, there is an abundance of raw material to work with. Luckily for us, Dr. Fremont lovingly details her ghoulish experiments in a log book. After a devastating failure with subject #1, 'Adam', she succeeds in delivering Petri-dish triplets, even if the male specimen's head is hideously disproportionate to a shrivelled and useless lower body.

It is only when Dr. Harman returns to the laboratory at the head of an army of walking dead demanding to pay homage to 'The Three Messiahs' she realises that finding a cure for HRV was furthest from his mind.

[dem bones]

Alison Littlewood - Zombie VS. Zombi: Freelance journo Archie Reynolds' journey to Haiti to investigate the zombi legend coincides with the outbreak of the zombie uprising in England. Reynolds is particularly interested in learning the ingredients of the so-called 'zombie powder'- could this possibly be the very same "essential salts" referenced by Thomas Moreby in his infernal writings? Archie's research programme is interrupted with the arrival of Baron Samedi at the head of a flesh-eating army who make short work of the living. The Zombies have no interest whatsoever in the poor mindless, soulless 'Dead Men Working In The Cane Fields' traditional zombis. The human survivors of the initial attack fast come to the conclusion that their species has had it, and beseech the local Voodoo Priestess to put them under her spell. Better to trade one's soul and become zombi than die horribly, torn apart and feasted upon by their once fellow man. The file dated July 11 makes for hilariously super-sick reading. (Cameron and Blair, I'd expect nothing less, but Zinedine Zidane?)

Panel from an advertisement for a cab firm in the Evening Standard, 27th Nov. 2014

Peter Crowther - Dead Inside: The doom of the Willson family told via computer surveillance, phone taps, video footage , even a post-it note, plus a history of patchwork quilt making in depression-era Nebraska. By now World Dictator-in-waiting Thomas Moreby's experiments are bearing evil fruit. As one horrified eyewitness reports. "It's like that crappy horror movie about a plan from outer space .... there's a bunch of folks walking down the road and they don't have heads." Whole sequences of Dead Inside had me scratching my head on first reading, but it's all so much clearer second time around.

[dem bones]

Attention span of a gnat. Was going great guns with Zombie Apocalypse - Fightback until it was Advent Calendar time, by end of which, I'd forgotten the book ever existed.

We pick up the story in Australia.

Angela Slatter - Red Dust, White Earth: By now it's all come down to kill the dead or be killed, and Dr. Sue Perry of the Sturt's Folly Medical Centre knows that better than most. As a scientist she is used to making difficult decisions, but can she bring herself to destroy her own little girl? To complicate matters, Rosie is the product of Sue's affair with her sister's husband. Maisie is blissfully unaware she even has a niece, though the affair is old news - she and Sue haven't spoken in almost a decade as a result. When their paths cross again, both are making progress on an antidote to the Lazarus virus, Sue via her study of a patient who dined on zombie flesh, Maisie, through a chance discovery at the Kati Thanda salt flats. Hankies at the ready for a tearful reunion! Until ...

A delightfully diseased soap opera.

[dem bones]

Paul McAuley - The Return Of The King: "They can think! They can make plans!" This development is not the bad news it first appears, because there are indications that at least some of these "smart zombies" may even be sympathetic toward the living. Not sure what happened to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, but Charles Windsor is now on the throne - or would be, had he not been bitten and lurched off to Scotland. At story's outset, the King is stood outside the security gates of a West Coast Medical Research Centre, not acting the least aggressive, just passively watching the human folk on the other side of the fence. Incredibly, the living dead still defer to their monarch. Meanwhile, Dr. Alison McReady and colleagues have learned that the virus is laboratory-created and the plague-spreading fleas from the Thomas Moreby mausoleum are cyber-insekts, deliberately loosed on London by New World Pharmaceuticals. Breakthrough! But will the team live long enough to make good on their programme now the team has been infiltrated by NWP agent Dr. Eva Hipfl?

Following Dr. Maisie's heroic "Captain Oates of the Antarctic" moment in preceding story, this time it's the turn of Zombie Prince Charlie to save the day.

Peter Atkins - Z.O.A. : Narrator and daughter are jumped by good ol' God-fearing Guns & Ammo survivalist rednecks. Brother Zebulon and his New Children Of Jerusalem, who make off with lovely Jess for child-bearing duties. Our gun-slinging hero, recently bitten and slowly turning, storms the compound in a final act of fatherly love. Very Pan Horror. Pop culture references include "the Dukes and Duchesses of Hazard" and "Duck Dynasty wannabes."

Michael Marshall Smith - Appetite: A useful app for locating your next meal. Existing Microsoft customers may require upgrade to Windows 10 premium.

[dem bones]

Zombie Apocalypse - Endgame takes a turn for the bleaker still.

Pat Cadigan - Rocky III: Court Martial of Sergeant Rochelle "Rocky" LaFortune, who, shortly after the failed attempt at reclaiming the White House, deserted to go find her wife, Frankenstein fan Private Jolene Lindbloom, missing presumed obliterated in the nuking of Manhattan. Rocky identifies her loved one on video footage shot on Flowerpot Island. Meanwhile, fresh zombies captured by scientists have been rewired and drafted into the army to fight their fellow walking corpses. The couple are reunited in tragic circumstances.

Thana Niveau - Vile Earth, To Earth Resign: An exchange of billets-doux between Peter, a medical student and reluctant employee of New World Pharmaceuticals at their Exmoor research centre, and Elaine, a frisky, smart-zombie and involuntary patient of the sinister boffins. "They call themselves doctors and scientists, but they're a bunch of Nazi's." When the compound is breached and over-run by ravenous corpses, Peter is spirited away by survivalists, and his "zombie mermaid" by her fellow dead. Peter, smitten and bitten during their solitary night of passion, mounts a rescue bid. Another choker. Lady P. bang on form!

Peter Crowther - An Interview With Bernie Maughmstein: Latest pearls of wisdom from the controversial foul-mouthed zombie superstar comedian.

[dem bones]

Conrad Williams - Horizon Deep: Sack the wedding planner! Tough start to married life for loved-up Victor 'Hugo' Hurling and bride, Laura, whose luxury yatch is junked in a typhoon. Washed up on the beach of an uncharted South Pacific island, the honeymooners are "rescued" by Joseph Kalman, an Eastern European fugitive who fancies himself a Dr. Zaroff MK II. Big game, zombie, human hunting, it's all the same to him. A horror-ed up variation on The Most Dangerous Game with a tidy "what's that in the basement?" interlude. Can't see this 'Endgame' ending well for the human race ...

Lisa Morton - Kevin Needs To Talk About Us: Washington has fallen so Kevin Moon heads East with Maxi, the precocious twelve year old he's taken under his wing. Eventually they arrive at Peetersville, a peaceable small town ring-fenced with razor wire where, at first glance, community life goes on as before. Kevin and Maxi can't believe their luck! Good food, running water, shelter, but - here's the fly in the ointment: these friendly folk are insistent their guests attend tomorrow's church service, and they're clearly not happy that Kev's a homosexual. The good Pastor Winn comes as something of a shock, as does his idea of the offertory plate. The field of crucified zombies are the last straw. We've got to get out of this place! Smart zombie's are not to be trusted.

Stephen Baxter - The Three Morebys: So there's the original Black Magician; The clone (aka T. J. Moerbitz of New World Pharmaceuticals); and the President of the USA (who was probably only a hanger on). The original has just seriously killed the Prez, and sent Moerbitz back in time via his perfected Maccina to modify history. Got all that?

Thought it might be tough going, coming back to ZA -Endgame after several months, but these postcards from Hell have been terrific.

[dem bones]

Liverpool Street plague pit

Michael Marshall Smith - Things Future: ...... And we're back where we started with our lawyer friend writing his mum at the outset of the Zombie Apocalypse (MMS's opening story, Things Past). Except ... Moerbitz has sufficiently meddled with history to ensure that this time NWP will be unstoppable. The lawyer and wife Zoe are incensed that Hampstead Heath is to be obliterated to make way for the high speed rail network, along with several historical sites including the local church, St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. A demo outside St. Botolph's attracts only a handful of protesters, but the armed police are already acting jittery, like they've learned something terrible is happening behind them ....

Stephen Jones - Last Rites: Newspaper item concerning the discovery of a suspected plague pit beneath Liverpool Street station as PM Boris Johnson's UKIP Government (talk about piling nightmare upon nightmare) stubbornly press ahead with their unpopular, economy draining HS4 project. But why are the corpses so well preserved, and how the hell did that smart-phone get down there?

Kim Newman - Zombie Apocalypse! Title Song: Given the remarkable effort that has gone into the trilogy, you may feel it deserves better than to end on a lame, desperately unfunny jingle. You'd be right. But fuck it, our Rawhide revision only counts for one of 554 pages, so no harm done.

Is the ZA trilogy Stephen Jones's finest hour? Not having read every story in every one of his books, am in no position to judge. But if he's come up with better, then I'd sure like a copy. Highly recommended, even to those (like me) who've just about had their fill of post-Romero zombies.