Stranger An Unusual Zombie Story

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STRANGER
by Simon Clark

“There was another question, too. A weird, twisty one. One that lurked in the background but seemed every bit as sinister as the rest. What had gone wrong with that human head we found tangled up in the branch? How could it bud an extra pair of eyes?”

GENRE:

Horror Fiction, Adventure Fiction

DESCRIPTORS:

Plagues, Isolation, Survivalists, Government Installations, Drugs, Psychological Warfare, Mutations, Evolution, Hive Minds, Collapse of Civilizations

SUMMARY:

The world as we know it is gone, destroyed in just a few months by a highly contagious plague called Gantose Syndrome (nicknamed Jumpy) which causes uncontrollable fear and results in deadly murderous rage. People who haven’t contracted it are targeted to be killed or captured by those who have it.

The town of Sullivan is curiously unaffected by it, being isolated by the fact that it sits in the middle of a lake on a peninsula. They’ve further isolated themselves from the tattered remnants of the outside world and protected by a former stranger named Greg Valdiva. Valdiva instinctively senses any new arrival who is afflicted with Jumpy — even if they aren’t showing any symptoms — and kills them in a murderous rage beyond his control.

However, the paranoia and fear that grips the town has begun eating at its moral core and forces Greg and his friend Ben to leave quickly or risk capital punishment. They flee to a nearby dead city named Lewis. There they encounter the hornets, people enthralled by something hideous to procure food for it, especially if it means hunting and killing.

In the outside world, they are befriended by Michaela and her ragtag band of survivors. In their search for a safe haven they stumble into a government underground bunker; one designed for scientific and medical research in the time of crisis. It is a bunker run by the enigmatic Phoenix. Slowly they discover the full and terrifying nature of Jumpy: The evolution of mankind into something terrible.

APPEAL:

This story starts with the horror already present. The world is already dead. People with a scary infection exist. There is build up because from that very bad point you watch things get worse for the protagonists as they find out more about the plague that destroyed civilization.

Clark uses a moderate pacing with lost of description interspersed between bouts of explosive action. Only a few characters like Greg, Ben and Michaela are developed over time into fully fleshed out people. There is a single plotline with a few flashbacks. The story is told in 1st person past tense, limited omniscience. It is Greg’s narration of events. He clearly makes out when he is going into flashback.

The focus is on several lives intertwined by fate. The reader is seduced into a slow identification with the protagonist, Greg Valdiva. Greg is usually a level headed, sane individual who is given to explosive murderous rages when he gets near someone with the plague. Then you begin to find out the truth about the plague which begins to cast an uncomfortable light on Greg.

Simon Clark writes about a place somewhere in America. The characters are American. However, sometimes he slips and uses a British turn of phrase.

NOTES:

Simon Clark is a British horror writer.

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