David Moody's Blog, page 32

Enjoying/enduring Chokehold?

Well the new book has been out a few days and, as I expected, it’s polarising opinion (as have the other books in the series, to be fair). Some folks hated CHOKEHOLD (sorry, Starburst), while others really, really liked it – many thanks to Max at Geeks of Doom for his great review.

CHOKEHOLD is just as the name suggests: a story that viciously grabs ahold of you and will not let go, no matter how much you struggle. It is cutthroat, relentless, and — trust me when I say this — shockingly inspiring.

I had the pleasure of chatting to Jason Henderson at the Castle of Horror about the novel yesterday, and you can hear our conversation here:

All joking apart, the reason for the title of this post is quite straightforward. I don’t write the prettiest of books, and I don’t shirk away from taking my stories down grim pathways if they need it. In the case of CHOKEHOLD, much of it is necessarily bleak. I hope that readers will find some positives from the conclusion of Matt Dunne’s story. I think this final chapter is surprisingly uplifting and it sets the tone nicely for THEM OR US.

What do you think? Have you had chance to read CHOKEHOLD yet? I’d love to know what you think.

If you haven’t yet got hold of a copy, here are the links you need: PRINT  |  AUDIO  |  EBOOK  |  SIGNED.

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Chokehold – out now

Today is my birthday, and it’s also the day that CHOKEHOLD hits the shelves. This book bridges the gap between DOG BLOOD/ALL ROADS END HERE and THEM OR US.

A series of nuclear strikes has left huge swathes of the country uninhabitable. It’s a level playing field now: both Hater and Unchanged alike have to fight to stay alive. Both have retreated to their camps to regroup, less than twenty miles away from each other.

It’s here that the last major battle of the final war will inevitably be fought, but neither side has any idea what’s waiting for them just around the corner.

Both armies are ready to fight to the death, each of their leaders hell-bent on victory. Their tactics are uniformly simple: strike first, get the enemy in a chokehold, then strangle the life out of them.

It’s very bleak, very bloody, and I hope you enjoy it!

PRINT  |  AUDIO  |  EBOOK  |  SIGNED

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One week until CHOKEHOLD is released – read the first chapter now

Just one week to go until CHOKEHOLD hits the shelves. Here’s the first chapter for you…

Fifteen Miles East of Cambridge

The first few enemy figures appear on the horizon, and the fighters lying in wait for them are desperate to engage, starved of conflict. It’s been too long. These fuckers have had it coming. These fuckers will be shown no mercy.

It’s taken weeks to get to this point. Every meter of mud has been fought for; every reclaimed centimeter of concrete and tarmac has been won at a cost. They’re not going to give it up now, not after all those sacrifices, all those lives lost. There’s no going back. It’s them or us.

Word of the approaching attackers spreads quickly along the front line, accompanied by a nervous tension that borders on excitement. Some of these men and women dare to dream that the bulk of the bloodshed is behind them now, that this is the last push of the final war. There’s an unspoken belief that each new bloom of violence will bring them closer to restoring some semblance of normality to what’s left of their lives.

The service station is accessed by a single road that splinters off what used to be one of the major routes into Cambridge. The main road had been midway through a massive, years-long rebuild-and-regeneration program when the war began, and here, alongside the services, lies the abandoned remains of a construction base the size of a small town. The fighters used the roadworks equipment to strengthen and fortify their position while secreting their armored vehicles and heavy weapons among the highway maintenance vans and flatbeds. Diggers were used to carve deep trenches at a distance from the main buildings, and the ballast, soil, and scree they excavated now protects the service station itself—great drifts of the stuff used to block access, strengthen walls, and camouflage metal and glass from view. Inside the building, the familiar plastic façades of long-gone restaurant chains and fast-food outlets remain, reminding people what they’ve lost. But the rawness of their pain is eased knowing that what they have here is more than almost everyone else.

It’s October, but it doesn’t feel like it. Since the bombs dropped, the climate has gone haywire. The sun has been hidden for weeks behind a layer of dirty, stodgy cloud that looks so heavy it feels like it’s about to drop from the sky and smother everything. Gray, muck-filled rain hammers down constantly, leaching color from the landscape. This part of the country was notoriously prone to flooding, and the unprecedented rainfall has had a dramatic effect. Much of the land around here is now submerged. There are stagnant, filthy lakes where towns and villages used to be. Rivers run along once busy roads.

The cold is bone-deep. Day before yesterday, there was sleet. Sleet just after the end of summer! And people are saying things will get worse before they get any better.

Another squad emerges from the service station to bolster the numbers on the front line. Ali Varn climbs down into the trench and works his way along to take up his position. “Gents,” he says as he pushes past, and the two fighters he nestles himself between acknowledge him with the most cursory of grunts. Varn wipes his face and spits to clear his throat. They used to worry about the toxicity of the rain, but not anymore. They’ve all spent days and weeks soaked to the core, and anyway, there are bigger things to worry about. No point worrying about your long-term health when getting through each day is an achievement in itself. A little bit more radiation’s not worth writing home about in the grand scheme of things, Varn thinks. Home. Now there’s a concept he’s struggling with. What’s home these days? This trench? The service station? The derailed train carriage he sheltered in for days on his way to get here? The car trunk he hid in immediately after the bomb? No one belongs anywhere anymore. It feels like the entire population of the country has become nomadic. Feral.

Varn’s glad he has a military background. There are plenty here who don’t. He pities the civvies who’ve come into this without any real experience of fighting, though it’s getting harder to tell the difference. None of them look like soldiers anymore. They’ve all lost weight, skin hanging off their bones like baggy suits. The woman next to him looks sick as a dog. Her hair’s patchy. Bomb-style, he calls it. Big, raw-looking bald spots on her scalp. He knows he doesn’t look any better himself, but that’s the price you pay for picking a fight in the middle of a nuclear winter.

Up ahead, a spotter is flat on his belly with his mud-smeared face peering over the top of an artificial dune that was built here for the purpose of keeping watch. Only the whites of his eyes are visible from up ahead. He turns back and gives a signal to the troops and the bosses watching from the service station. He holds up seven fingers for seven incoming attackers, then gestures with his fist, indicating they appear to be unarmed.

Sometimes Varn thinks the anticipation is worse than the fight. No matter who you are or which side you’re on, it’s nerve-racking waiting to kill when you’ve only got a club and a rusty blade for company, but that’s the way it goes these days. He knows it’ll only be seconds before the battle begins, a minute at most, but that’s plenty long enough to think and rethink and overthink what’s about to happen. Will I survive, or will this be the day my luck runs out? Are any of the attackers any good? Are they here because they know we’re here, or are they just randomers who’ve stumbled across the outpost by chance? He thinks that’s likely the case, because Chappell’s done a good job of keeping this place well hidden. Word in the ranks is that Chappell was a pen pusher before all this, that he put the office into officer, but credit where credit’s due, he picked up the rules of engagement pretty quickly.

The massively reduced population numbers mean there’s more room to hide out here, more space to disappear, but everyone knows that counts for nothing because it only takes one brief encounter to fuck it all up. Meet one of the opposition coming down the track toward you, and you can bet the little you still own that this will be the day only one of you gets where they were going. Varn knows he has to fight and keep fighting, that there are no second chances. He tries to visualize himself bludgeoning the enemy ’til there’s nothing left of them but blood and broken bones.

This looks like something from the Somme, the troops on the front line armed with rudimentary weapons. There are guns and munitions held in the stores, but Chappell’s saving those for the big one, whenever that might be. Until then, they’re relying on aggression and physicality to see them through.

The spidery figures continue to creep forward. Jittery. Uneasy. The spotter signals again, letting the troops know that contact is imminent, and Varn knows he has to strike first, kill before he’s killed. He blinks with nerves and shuffles from foot to foot, toying with the weight of the metal club in his hands and shifting his grip, imagining caving in someone’s skull, battering their face to a pulp and not stopping until they’ve breathed their last.

There’s an expectant, apprehensive hush. Vacuum-like.

Then footsteps.

Wild. Skittering. Frantic.

The first of them tries to pull up fast when he reaches the edge of the unseen trench and realizes he’s about to go over, but his speed and the rain and the greasy mud combine, and he skids and slides and drops into the deep dugout. Varn swings wildly and clubs the man hard around the head and face. They’re not human . . . ignore the screams . . . ignore the blood . . . It makes him feel sick to the stomach, but he does it just the same.

More of them spill into the trench ahead and behind. There’s a mass of chaotic movement right along the narrow space now, everyone fighting for their lives. Varn lifts his club to take out the next of them, but in focusing on one, he loses sight of another. Despite just being slashed across the back of her legs with a machete, this woman still has enough energy and hate to thump her stubby blade down between Varn’s shoulder blades. They collapse on top of each other, both dead in seconds.

The trench is filled with violence. There are more attackers than the spotter first saw, and this next one’s all arms and legs. He drops to the ground with a wet thud, then spins around so fast he loses his footing. Initially appearing weak and spindly, the reality is he’s anything but. There’s wild fury in his eyes as he faces one of the troops, both of them knowing that whatever happens in the next few seconds, one of them won’t survive. The kid—because he is just a kid—digs his fingers into the muddy walls on either side to get a grip, then throws himself forward and is impaled on a fearsome-looking metal spike the soldier holds out in front at the last second. The kid whimpers and looks down at the weapon sticking out of his chest and sounds almost disappointed that the fight’s over before it’s really begun. He tries to pull it out, but there’s so much blood pouring out he can’t get a grip. His hands slip and slide as the soldier pushes the spike deeper.

The line between attack and defense is blurred more than ever. At times like this, it’s impossible to tell who’s a Hater and who’s Unchanged.

The pissing black rain makes it even more difficult to see who’s who and what’s what, but enough remains visible for the soldiers in the trench to know that the sudden burst of fighting is over. For now. Another short-lived, small-scale attack has been successfully repelled, and the service station base has been defended for a while longer.

The soldiers traipse back toward the outpost buildings, swapping places with the next watch. The troops are based in a dilapidated-looking hotel alongside the main building. There’s relative comfort inside with individual rooms and real beds and space to think and breathe, because it’s important our fighting boys and girls stay strong, isn’t it? The civvies, on the other hand, bed down wherever they can find a space in the concourse of the service station next door. A group of them is ordered outside to clear the bodies from the trenches.

There’s little talk among the civilians; nothing much to say. Everyone’s got a job to do, and that’s all there is to it. Dealing with the dead is as straightforward as it sounds. Grab a corpse by the wrists or by its ankles, wait for someone to take the other end, then carry the body over to the pit and chuck it in. A body is a body once they’ve breathed their last—doesn’t matter who or what they were before. We come in the same way, and we all go out the same way in the end.

The pit is an enormous hole in the ground that was originally for the footings of a new bridge spanning the A14. It’s almost certainly the largest mass grave ever dug on British soil, and that’s a record that’ll likely stand, too. Bigger pits may well be dug, but finding enough corpses to fill them will be another matter altogether.

Two of the men—Parker and Dean—go everywhere together. They’re a tag team, they tell people. Dean’s struggling with the weight of the Hater corpse they’re shifting. He loses his balance, then loses his footing, then almost loses his grip altogether. “I think you need a holiday, Dean,” Parker says, sarcastic.

“Wouldn’t say no. A couple of weeks by the sea would do me the world of good.”

They reach the pit where another civilian is directing operations. “Quit talking,” he tells them. “Minimal noise out here, remember.”

“Jesus, Joseph,” Parker sighs, “give us a break.”

Joseph Mallon’s not impressed. “You need to take this seriously. Give those Hater bastards an inch and they’ll destroy everything.”

Parker and Dean swing the corpse between them, then hurl it into the pit. Parker shakes his head. “These ones are dead, remember? You need to take it easy, Joe. You’ll give yourself a heart attack at this rate.”

Joseph ignores him.

Another man delivers the next corpse by himself. He’s odd-looking, this one, with thick-lensed glasses and bad comb-over hair. The dead Hater is draped causally over one shoulder. “Wait,” Joseph says before he can dispose of the body. “Drop that one.”

The other man does as he’s told and lowers the corpse to the ground. Joseph quickly pushes him out of the way, unsheathes a blade, then plunges it into the Hater’s temple. He then rolls the body into the pit and watches it drop heavily into the mass of tangled limbs below.

“Can’t afford to take any chances,” he says. “Thought I saw his eyes move.”

The other man seems taken aback. “I’m pretty sure he was dead anyway.”

“Pretty sure’s not good enough anymore,” Joseph tells him. “Haters think in black and white, and we have to do the same. I got caught out before. Won’t let it happen again.”

The two men walk back toward base. “What do you mean?” the other man asks.

“I fucked up. I made a mistake and gave some of them a way in. I thought I was doing the right thing, thought I was helping all of us stay alive, but I got it wrong and people died. Thousands of people. I tried to tame them, but they’re too far gone. They’re anything but human now.”

They reach the service station entrance. The glass outer doors are permanently wedged open, no longer automatic, and the heavy revolving door beyond can now only be rotated with brute force and much effort. The space between is like an airlock; a shelter from the wind and rain and noise.

“It’s Joseph, isn’t it?” he says, catching up.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Peter, Peter Sutton.”

“Good for you.”

“What you were saying out there just now . . . I’m sure you weren’t completely responsible.”

“No, maybe not, but I contributed, and I’m damn sure I’m not going to let it happen again.”

“We’re all going to have to work bloody hard to get through this in one piece,” Peter says, taking off his glasses and wiping them, “but it’s not impossible. We’re well organized here, and the chiefs have a plan.”

Joseph shakes his head. “If you think this place is going to be your salvation, friend, then I’d think again. The only person you can rely on these days is yourself. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I will.”

“Keep your head down and your mouth shut, Peter, and you might just get through this.”

###

Some familiar faces for you already and we’re only on page 8.

CHOKEHOLD is released on 19 November. Published by Thomas Dunne Books, it’ll be available as a paperback, eBook and audiobook. If you want me to sign a copy for you, click here.

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Share your LOVE of the HATE!

Remember these little beauties? If you’ve been following my work since the early days, you might remember these bloody HATER t-shirts which were popular when the novel was originally released in 2009. Now, because lots of you have been asking, they’re back. Click here or on the image below for more details.

By the way, today marks two weeks until the release of CHOKEHOLD – the absolute final HATER novel. It’ll be published on 19 November by Thomas Dunne Books and will be available from all the usual bookstores and online outlets. You can also pre-order signed copies here.

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RIP Kindle Matchbook

I was sorry to hear about the death of Amazon’s Matchbook today. Matchbook allowed readers to get heavily discounted or free versions of the print books they bought from the site.

As a writer and a publisher, I believe in fairness and in not ripping off my readers. I think if you buy a print version of an Infected Books title, you should automatically get an eBook version too. Matchbook helped me to do that. But there is an alternative solution. Buy a signed copy of one of my Infected Books releases and you’ll be able to download an eBook version immediately. Conversely, if you’ve bought a digital version and you’d like a signed print version as well, you can let me know and I’ll discount the print book by the cost of the eBook you’ve already bought*.

To mark the death of Matchbook, and to make space for the delivery of CHOKEHOLD I’m expecting shortly, I’ve reduced the price of the beautiful hardcover edition of my most recent Infected Books release – THE LAST BIG THING – to under £10 for a limited time.

* terms and conditions apply – redemption required. Please note, this offer only applies to David Moody books published by Infected Books. A full list of titles and further information can be found here.

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Little Monster

A quick post to let you know that James Plumb’s terrific movie LITTLE MONSTER is now available on Amazon in the UK. Download it, stream it, enjoy it.

Your six-year-old daughter has been bitten by a zombie and now hungers for human flesh. What do you do? Do you double tap her in the brain? Or do you become the ultimate enabler and feed her human flesh? And where do you get human flesh from? This is the dilemma that Gareth and Jen face with their beautiful daughter Ana. What will they do? And how far will it go?

As you may remember, this is James’s adaptation of his novella from the YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE series. You can read the original story here. Why not pick up the complete YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE collection? It’s a very weighty, very bloody book which I’m supremely proud of.

 

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The Wave (Bølgen)

I do love a good disaster movie. Trouble is, they don’t make them like they used to. These days they tend to be bombastic and CGI-heavy and usually a). don’t make a lot of sense, and b). star ex-wrestlers.

My wife and I went on holiday to Norway last month, and while we were away I was reminded of a fairly recent disaster movie that I actually enjoyed. I thought it would be a good recommendation for this site. And why was I reminded of this particular film? Because our cruise ship docked in Geiranger, the beautiful and idyllic little village which is wiped out by THE WAVE (Bølgen). Here’s a photo of Lisa soaking up the sun and looking down on the village, just after telling me she hadn’t enjoyed the bus ride up the mountain, so we were going to have to walk back down… 

Although anticipated, no one is really ready when the mountain pass above the scenic, narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger collapses and creates an 85-meter high violent tsunami. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.

I don’t think I’ve ever visited a country that’s as effortlessly beautiful as Norway. While we were there it seemed that every time we looked up there was a waterfall or a fjord or a snow-capped mountain in view. It’s also very different to where I live smack-bang in the middle of the UK, in that towns and villages in Norway are often separated from each other by huge distances with tunnels, bridges and ferries being an integral part of everyday life. It was a quiet, tranquil and relaxing place to be, but it’s no great stretch to imagine those same towns and villages being isolated and exposed in the event of a disaster such as the tsunami which destroys Geiranger in THE WAVE.

The reality of the story is stark: in 1905 and 1934, rockslides triggered tsunamis which killed more than 130 people. Scientists know the same thing is likely to happen again, but they’re unable to predict when. The mountain of Åkerneset, a few miles north of Geirangerfjord, is unstable.

So there we have the set up for this movie; a terrifying, plausible, unstoppable disaster which could (genuinely) strike at any moment. And perhaps that’s one of the main reasons why I found THE WAVE to be such a satisfying movie. There’s no need for over-sensationalism. There’s no need for a A-list Hollywood celebrity to come in and save the day. Ultimately, there’s nothing the people of Geiranger can do to prevent what’s coming, it’s just a question of getting away from the danger when the alarm bells sound.

At its heart, THE WAVE is about a small community dealing with an event of enormous magnitude. The story focuses on Kristian Eikjord and his family. He’s a geologist monitoring the mountain, and they’re about to pack up and leave the village as he’s taken a new job in the city of Stavanger. His partner Idun has another couple of shifts left to work at the hotel, and the family is split. As Kristian and the kids are about to board the ferry to leave, unusual readings are detected in the mountain…

Okay, so you get all the usual disaster movie clichés with THE WAVE, but they’re handled in a (largely) logical way. People do all the stupid things you’d expect, and there’s the occasional stroke of luck and almost super-human feats, but that doesn’t matter so much because the small scale of the movie and the plausible set-up and execution allow you to suspend your disbelief. Other than the family themselves, the remaining characters are often thinly developed, but again, your focus is on the four people who matter. Actors Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp are particularly good, and director Roar Uthaug (what a brilliant name) keeps the action moving along at a great pace.

Many people watch disaster movies for the devastation and special effects, and despite the beautiful and limited location, you certainly get your money’s worth in THE WAVE. The wave itself is well rendered, and you can almost taste the water as you follow Kristian through the ruins of Geiranger.

THE WAVE is definitely worth a couple of hours of your time. It’s available on bluray now if you’d like to take a look (and I’ve just discovered there’s a sequel – THE QUAKE). If you enjoy it, can I make a further recommendation? If you ever get the chance to visit Norway, please do. It’s a remarkable place.

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Our War by Craig DiLouie

As regular readers will know, author CRAIG DILOUIE and I go back a long way. A glance through the archives of this site will show that I’m not just a friend of his I’m also a fan, and I was thrilled when he sent me a copy of his latest novel, OUR WAR.

Since finding huge success with zombie and apocalyptic novels like TOOTH AND NAIL and THE INFECTION, DiLouie’s also found an audience for his meticulously researched war novels, the CRASH DIVE series. In case you’d forgotten, DiLouie, Tim Long and I also co-wrote THE FRONT series, a World War II zombie mash-up which a lot of folks seemed to enjoy.

But DiLouie also writes books with far more personal themes. Of particular note is SUFFER THE CHILDREN, which looks at the lengths parents will go to in order to protect a child. His latest novel, OUR WAR, is set in the near future and, for me, it’s the most successful collision yet of the two strands of his fiction. OUR WAR is a prescient book, and a hard one to read, but it’s one I’d very much like to recommend you pick up.

When the president of the United States is impeached, but refuses to leave office, the country erupts into civil war.

10-year-old Hannah Miller, an orphan living in besieged Indianapolis, has joined a citizen’s militia. She had nowhere else to go. And after seeing the firsthand horrors of war, she’s determined to fight with the Free Women militia.

Hannah’s older brother, Alex, is a soldier too. But he’s loyal to the other side. After being separated from Hannah, he finds a home in a group calling themselves The Liberty Tree militia.

When a UNICEF worker and a reporter discover that both sides are using child soldiers, they set out to shine a light on something they thought could never happen in the United States. But it may be too late because even the most gentle children can find that they’re capable of horrific acts.

In many ways we live in an increasingly polarised society, with what can feel like irreparable divisions springing up between friends, families and communities. As you know, that’s a central theme of my HATER series, and having spent more than a decade studying and writing about intolerance, I’m worried that more than ever we’re spiralling towards the point of no return. You’ve only to look at the first line of the OUR WAR blurb to see how close to reality this piece of speculative fiction really is.

Regardless of which side you support – whether you’re a Trump supporter or not in the US, or a Brexiteer or Remainer over here – since 2016 it’s become increasingly easy to see the effect that wildly differing viewpoints and an inability to compromise can have on society as a whole. Speaking personally, the longer the Brexit saga has continued in the UK, the more bitter I think it has become. Damaging rifts have opened up between people, with actions having been taken which threaten the democratic foundations of our society. And as these rifts deepen, it’s not difficult to imagine an even darker future where arguments become conflicts. DiLouie taps into this fear by telling his story from the perspectives of, amongst others, the members of a fractured family. By focusing on 10-year-old Hannah, and without resorting to over-sentimentality, he demonstrates the devastating impact of war on innocence. Forget about the made-up politics and near-future setting: this is a harsh reality which is being played out today in many parts of the world. Reading OUR WAR, you wonder what it would take for DiLouie’s fiction to become fact in the US and parts of Europe. The more we splinter and divide, and the harder we find it to negotiate and compromise, the greater the propensity for conflict.

OUR WAR is a stark reminder of the high costs of war, and also of the fact that it’s often those least equipped who are forced to pay the highest price. Highly recommended.

The book is available now in print, eBook and audiobook.

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Pre-order CHOKEHOLD

CHOKEHOLD – the final HATER novel – is released on 19 November. Print, eBook and audiobook versions will be available. As is customary, you can pre-order a signed copy directly from me. Click here or on the image below to find out more.

Pre-orders will be shipped as soon as possible (normally a few days before the official release date). The book is also available from all the usual outlets.

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End of the world preparations

Huge thanks to everyone who has been helping spread the word about CHOKEHOLD. As promised in my last post, I’ll be sending out advance copies to a few randomly picked folks. I’m actually going to send more copies than I originally planned, so well done and thank you to Kerry, Bernie, Jess, Susan, Éric, Erika, Amanda and Suzanne – your books will be on the way shortly.

This is a very weird novel to promote, because although it’s the final book in THE FINAL WAR series, it also serves as a sequel to both DOG BLOOD and ALL ROADS END HERE, as well as a prequel to THEM OR US. For maximum effect, I recommend re-reading DOG BLOOD and ALL ROADS, then immediately re-reading THEM OR US when you’ve finished CHOKEHOLD.

Confused? I’m not surprised. Here’s a handy infographic I produced to show how all the HATER books fit together chronologically.

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