Z.A. Recht, Plague of the Dead

Plague of the Dead

Z.A. Recht

Permuted Press, December 2006, $14.59

ISBN: 0978970705

The Morningstar Strain virus was first seen in Africa, and Anna DeMilio of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is the foremost authority on it. Nobody heeded her plea to quarantine every person anywhere who comes down with this illness. Now it is out of control, spreading globally, but also when one dies they are reanimated.

Egypt is lost to the reanimated, so the United States makes a stand at the Suez Canal, but thousands of carriers break through the frontline. Only luck enables Special Forces General Shannon and some of his squad, along with a Red Cross volunteer Julie to escape by ship to America, where like the rest of the world, the virus owns the metropolis areas to include much of suburbia. Anna desperately continues her research, hoping to find a miracle elixir, while Shannon and his remaining force wonder how to fight an insurgency from within.

This first book in the Morningstar Trilogy contains a fresh unique twist to the zombie mythos, with an Ebola like virus that reanimates its dead victims. Z.A. Recht has created characters that seem real, especially the medical researcher and the general, as neither is used to failure, but that seems to be their common thread at this time. PLAGUE FOR THE DEAD is apocalyptic fiction at its thrilling best.