Day Thirty-Five of Showcasing books published by Parallel Universe Publications: A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead
Day thirty-five of showcasing books published by Parallel Universe Publications and it's the turn of our first (and only) chapbook: A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead by David A. Riley, illustrated throughout by award-winning artist Jim Pitts.
What was intended as the start of a series of low-priced chapbooks, A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead included four previously published short stories by David A. Riley with illustrations by Jim Pitts.
All four stories in this collection cover a wide range of tropes withinthe zombie genre.
Dead Ronnie and I is a taleof high adventure by plane and sea, with an abortive escape by our protagonistto the as yet untainted Isles of Scotland. This was originally published in SanitariumMagazine No 44 in 2016.
His Pale Blue Eyes is probably the most traditional take of zombie stories today,featuring a young girl’s determined search for her parents during a zombieapocalypse. It’s a story, though, about conditioning and how what someone istaught can radically affect their behaviour. Is the horror in this the shamblingundead or the girl herself? See what you think. This first appeared in Bite-SizedHorror edited by Johnny Mains for Obverse Books in 2011.
By contrast Right For You Now, originallypublished in Weirdbook Zombie Annual No 3 in 2021, harks back to the originalconcept of the zombie in Voodoo-haunted Haiti, though this tale is set inpresent-day Britain. It’s a combination of a crime story, revenge, and a man’sobsessive fascination with age-old practices.
Our final tale, Romero’s Children, is morein the way of a science fiction story. The zombies here are certainly the mostdifferent. For a start off they are not dead but have been granted nearimmortality by a drug that swept the world with its promise to stop aging. Alasfor those caught up in the frenzied demand to use it, though, its side effectswere such that they would have been better off dead. This story appeared in2010 in The Seventh Black Book of Horror edited by the late CharlesBlack and was subsequently picked up by American editor Paula Guran for her2012 anthology Extreme Zombies.
