Zombie, Illinios: A Novel

 Zombie Illinois: A Novel - so as not to be confused with Zombie Illinois: A Candy bar?  Or, Zombie Illinois: A Breakfast Cereal?  And why wasn't the author's earlier NOVEL, Zombie Ohio not Zombie Ohio: A Novel?  

"...So, I take her by the hand and bring her into my house.  I try to make her sit in a chair - the same one where you're sitting now, Pastor - but she won't.  She just wanders through  house.  She is bumping around, knocking things over, like she doesn't even see them! I cannot, for the life of me, understand.  Then something happens you won't believe!"

As if to puncuate this declamation, a loud scratching sound- like a dog trying to open a door- rises from the back of the house.  It falls away after just a few seconds.

Ms Washington looks over her shoulder uneasily.

"What happened?" I press, following her gaze toward the mysterious noise.

"She got....bitey," Ms Washington whispers seriously ..


Zombie, Illinois: A Novel (which shall now be know as ZIAN) follows 3 characters, a black pastor from the south side, a reporter who is a Chicago transplant, and a punk rock drummer who plays in a band that also features - but wait - I don't need to provide spoilers , during the outbreak of the zombie apocolypse in the city of Chicago.  

It has themes consistent with stories of "The Walking Dead".  

The humans are the ones with murder in their souls.  The humans are the ones who discriminate.  Zombies are just the natural disaster.  The opening in the rift for evil to come on through.

What it adds to my zombie experience, is the importance of it's setting, Chicago, and the voice of a pastor as a principal storyteller.  

ZIAN continued my education of the history of Chicago neighborhoods begun in Lady in the Lake.  (Is this going to be my theme for 2023?)  Both the pastor and the reporter reflect upon the changing demographics of neighborhoods in Chicago's South Side - from Jewish communities to African-American communities (as I said - also discussed by Lady..) and Chicago's flamboyant history of political corruption / crime.

From the shadows beyond the spotight, a nightmare figure lopes into view.  It wears a traditional Italian funeral suit and has a porcine, jowly demeanor.  Few alive today have seen the face in life, but there is no not recognizing it.

Good God.  It is Capone.

Yes, in that remarkable, horrible, haunting instant, you just have time to see the Mayor of Chicago realize that he- like the city itself- will never escape from Capone.  "So the mayor.." the anchor beings soberly.  "The mayor is now having his brains eaten by what I'm going to go ahead and call a zombie.  A zombie that, in this reporter's opinin, looks a whole lot like Al Capone."


The pastor passes his experience of the zombies through his lens of Christianity.  


Elsewhere, Pauls says, "The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable."

 It.  The body.  Not the soul.  The body.  Imperishable.  

Like, if a shotgun blasts through it, but it still keeps going? That kind of imperishable, Paul? Could that be what the fuck you meant???

(And here I have just cursed out the Apostle Paul.  Merciful God, forgive me.  Bad pastor. Bad pastor. Bad pastor.)




"...We do what Jesus would do.... in a zombie outbreak."


"Losing a son is hard," he says softly.  "After that, a bunch of damn zombies ain't nothing."



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