Beth A.’s comment > Likes and Comments

The original isn't modernized - if you pick up the right book it still reads like it used to.

This is a modern zombie trope artificially aged to fit the world of a turn of some long forgotten centuries.

There is a story "The Undertaker" in Pushkin's "Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin" (1830) which features a small scale zombie apocalipse. The zombies aren't your usual George Romero zombies, more uptight and civilized, but that's 19th century to you.

Zombies have been an element of popular culture since before the Middle Ages... what with the Chinese Jiangshi... again, people, please, do your research... ^_^