Book 1 of The Living Dead Trilogy is titled The Reawakening and is a novel in a new series that finds a small town in Maine dealing with some apocalyptic shit due a scientist’s reactivation of genetic experiments. Written by Joseph Souza the story unfolds as animals begin to develop more aggressive character traits, spreading an virus among the populous. Soon the animals come back to life forcing a small group of survivors to take refuge in a farmhouse as virulent undead herds swarm outside. Not long after cannibalism swells to a horrific level that threatens humanity. Here is an excerpt from Joseph Souza’s site:
The snow didn’t stop. It was relentless and unforgiving. Once it started that first day it kept on coming, which meant that Dar and I stood no chance of returning to Boston until the roads had cleared. Every couple of days we received a fresh coat of powder. It glistened and radiated in the sun’s sallow glow, obscuring the debris that lay strewn across the hardening crust. We took turns shoveling in order to keep clear the path between the doorway and the barn. Every day Rick plowed the snow until the banks built up like a massive wall in front of the driveway. He plowed it up all around the farmhouse so as to provide a natural barrier from the creatures. Other than the flying ones, it would be difficult for the dead to reach us. We made sure to have two sharpshooters tag along with the people shoveling just in case the dead flew down from the roof.
The power died and never returned, which meant that we had to rely strictly on the generator. Rick turned the generator on for about two hours a night. At around nine we lit candles and read or played cards by the flickering light. He’d insulated the house a few years back by spraying foam in the walls and laying loose insulation along the attic floor. That combined with the fireplace kept us relatively warm and dry. We ate cereal and canned goods for breakfast and lunch, and we took turns preparing hot meals for dinner. Coffee in the morning got reheated over the fireplace.
We learned to live with each other, to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies and help deal with the post-traumatic stress we suffered on account of living among such cruel demons. As a result, we worked to tolerate each other’s needs as best we could. The children behaved relatively well, considering the situation we found ourselves in, but they acted up like most children do. Gunner had his hands full taking care of them, especially when Emily cried out for her mother. We all tried to help out as much as possible, but there was only so much any of us could do. Thorn was the exception when it came to the kids. He didn’t want anything to do with them. He did, however, make up for it by performing many of the laborious tasks that no one else wanted to do. In his defense, he claimed he’d rather fight hand-to-hand combat against five flesh-eaters than have to deal with kids.
The snow piled up against the house in long, sweeping arcs, and the temperatures often dropped below zero. Most days the wind whipped hard down from Canada and whistled through the snow-swept valley.
On Thanksgiving Day we ate a hearty meal cooked up by Kate. Instead of turkey we had one of the chickens Rick processed this past summer and stored in his freezer. He kept three freezers filled with poultry, beef, deer and moose meat out in the barn. Though the freezers stopped working because of the power outage, the arctic temperatures did the work for us. Rick had a room in the basement filled with canned goods, dried foods and other supplies, which he figured would last us until the end of spring, assuming we rationed the food in a sensible manner. Had it been just him and Susan, it would have lasted much longer. Although we all changed our eating habits, Thorn seemed to have a hollow leg when it came to his appetite. If we made it to spring, I had high hopes that the government or military would have a handle on the situation and we’d all be allowed to return home.
We played cards often and broke out the board games that first month. I became quite good at chess, though not good enough to beat Thorn, who was quite adept at it. I studied one of his chess books for hours on end, trying to understand the complex strategies involved in the game, imagining the opposing pieces as the dead. I also read a lot. Rick had a considerable library out in the barn that we helped ourselves to. He also had a vast collection of DVDs and VCR tapes that contained everything from old TV shows to movies. Every night at seven he switched on the generator and we all settled in and watched a movie or television show. We even made popcorn from the kernels stored in the large plastic container he kept downstairs.
When not reading, playing chess or performing one of our required daily chores, I began to write. I found myself writing constantly. It kept my mind off the evil that awaited us outside. At first I jotted down a few random notes, but after awhile I began to become more expansive, writing pages at a time about our daily life inside the house. Upon waking early each morning, I made sure to perform my ritual of one hundred push-ups and sit-ups. After that I would jog in place for fifteen minutes. The physical exercise kept my mind focused and helped reduce the stress caused by this suffocating existence. (finish reading here!)
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