When the living dead were hungry, they began falling apart like a fast-food burger put together by a greasy teen on their first day at the job.
The living dead, the gray things, the organ takers: first they ran, then they walked, then they liquefied into the cement as they starved…
Elijah faces threats from all sides: the red-eyed zombies ravenous for blood; the trigger-happy survivors killing for sport; a long, slow death from struggle and starvation. But maybe worst of all are the inescapable nightmares of the family he left behind on the other side of the country. As he travels across the ravaged United States with a young girl who has seen too much but still yearns for kinship, their survival skills and faith are tested to the limits. In a world where the dead have risen again, there is one last thing he needs to lay to rest.
When the living dead were hungry, they began falling apart like a fast-food burger put together by a greasy teen on their first day at the job.
The living dead, the gray things, the organ takers: first they ran, then they walked, then they liquefied into the cement as they starved…
Elijah faces threats from all sides: the red-eyed zombies ravenous for blood; the trigger-happy survivors killing for sport; a long, slow death from struggle and starvation. But maybe worst of all are the inescapable nightmares of the family he left behind on the other side of the country. As he travels across the ravaged United States with a young girl who has seen too much but still yearns for kinship, their survival skills and faith are tested to the limits. In a world where the dead have risen again, there is one last thing he needs to lay to rest.
Elijah hated himself for what he had done.
He had been gathering food and drink supplies for the past three weeks with his fellow men while the women stayed behind at the school to look after the children. That’s just the way it was now, in the land of the living dead. You couldn’t repopulate with ten men and one woman, although you could attempt to repopulate with one man and ten women. From his cot, Eli stared up at the gymnasium ceiling with the heaviest of eyes.
He was not planning to stay awake that night; he was planning to sleep. Although the threat outside was starting to starve to its own version of death, Eli had carried his fellow men on the supply run, as usual. It was the most important run they had done to date. A piss-poor rain pour over the fall had led to the premature deaths of some of their livestock, and their crops, fruits, and vegetables were struggling to grow, leaving them with the smallest amount of food they’d had in a long time. More importantly, one of their own, a young teen named Jacob, had snuck out of the school, never to be seen with all his ligaments attached again. It was a supply run to reassure safety, after Jacob’s burial and his mother’s subsequent suicide. They had gathered everything they needed for about three months—largely canned and pantry goods within expiration date. They had also found a small factory that specialized in end-of-the-world products such as dehydrated meals. That is, before the end of the world had put them out of business. They had also managed to find some new livestock, which was currently roaming the football field.
The ceiling was starting to darken, and Eli was no longer fighting to keep his eyes open. He was nodding off properly for the first time in three weeks and nothing would stop him.
“We should ration the supplies right away,” Seth said.
Goofy-looking Seth was well-intentioned, but he didn’t know the meaning of the word relax. Eli turned on his side to see who Seth was talking to. He didn’t recognize the woman; she must have arrived at the school during the supply run. He suddenly knew what Seth was up to; he was trying to impress the new woman with his ‘leadership skills.’ In a world where sex was still commonplace, Seth had confided to Eli that he was going through a Sahara spell.
A pain shot up and down Eli’s back as he sat up. He was still dressed, and his black boots touched the gymnasium floor. He wrapped his fingers around the edge of his cot and cracked his neck from left to right. He was wearing torn black jeans and a gray sweatshirt he had taken from a dead student’s locker, with the name of the school on it. He had been at the school for six months but in his tired state couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was called. He was also wearing a leather jacket that his late wife had gifted him as an anniversary present before the world changed.
Just like Indiana Jones, she had joked to him.
“I just think that if we do it now, we can rest easy,” Seth continued to the unnamed woman. “We shouldn’t wait until morning.”
Eli took a deep breath and stood up, his back cracking from bottom to top. He looked around the gymnasium at his extended family of recent times. There were almost fifty of them now, with nine children remaining, all in their own sections of the gym with their own cots. They didn’t spend all their time together—it was a big school—but since the death of Jacob they had spent their nights in the gymnasium, to ensure they started and ended each day knowing everyone was okay.
“Everyone, listen up!” Seth shouted to the survivors. “Can you please come over?”
It wasn’t too late in the evening. Everyone had gathered early to celebrate the men returning from their hunt. Eli watched as everyone got up and surrounded Seth and the unnamed woman.
“First of all, I just want to apologize for interrupting your relaxation.”
Get on with it, man, Eli thought.
“I was just speaking to our newbie Emma and we both feel that now is the best time to ration the supplies we brought back today, so we can rest easy tomorrow.”
Eli looked at the survivors, nodding and smiling in agreement. “I think that’s a great idea,” he said, before anyone else could speak, “but can you please excuse me from it? I’m not feeling well.”
Tired. Not unwell. Fuck!
The survivors looked rattled. There were murmurs and rumblings, as Eli was one of the lead protectors of the group. He was one of three men who had gone outside, into the dark, to try to find Jacob the moment it was known he was missing, and the one to carry his corpse back, carefully wrapped up in a blanket. No one else needed to see what he had seen.
“You weren’t bitten, were you?” Emma asked with genuine concern in her voice. “My husband was bitten, and he turned.”
“No, I wasn’t bitten.”
“Or scratched?” she continued.
“I wasn’t scratched, or bitten,” Eli said firmly.
Emma turned to Seth. “We need to check his body. He might be lying.”
“It takes minutes, sometimes hours, not days, to turn. You should know that if it happened to your partner,” Eli said, as calmly as he could.
Seth held up a hand to calm the others and spoke with unusual authority. “Emma. Eli would not risk the safety of everyone here.”
Emma was crying but trying to remain composed. “I only just lost my husband and my final memories of him are the lies he told me until it was too late. After he turned, I had to kill him…again.”
Seth gestured once more to everyone that things were okay. He approached Eli with one arm around Emma. “Eli, can you please explain to Emma what’s wrong?”
“Sure,” Eli replied, keeping his voice measured. He turned to Emma. “I haven’t slept well the past few weeks. I do not have the energy to stay awake for the next hour or more as the ration plan is discussed and finalized. I misspoke when I used the adjective ‘unwell’.”
“I know I haven’t been here long, and I’m sorry. Can you please take off your shirt?”
Seth lowered his head before Eli could lower his. Eli appreciated Seth in that moment. Before anyone was able to tell Emma it wasn’t necessary, Eli had taken off his gray sweatshirt. Underneath was a white T-shirt, which Eli also took off. Before the outbreak he had what his wife called a dad bod. Now, at forty-five, with the rationing and the regular exercise of staying alive, he was in the best shape he had ever been in. He spun around so Emma could look him over.
“The jeans, too, please.”
Without argument, Eli took off his boots, socks, and jeans. He took another spin in his briefs. Emma still didn’t look convinced. “Anything else?” Eli asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to buy me dinner first?”
Eli stood out in the hallway moments later with Emma and Seth. He took off his briefs as magnanimously as he could as Seth averted his gaze. Emma looked him over. There was nothing sexual about it. Everyone had suffered loss, including Eli, so he knew how uncertain Emma must have been feeling about her safety in that moment. She turned away.
“Okay. He’s fine. I’m so sorry.”
After Eli had put his briefs back on, Seth turned to him.
“Is it the nightmares? Is that why you’re not sleeping? When we were on the supply run, you never looked comfortable at night.”
It was the nightmares. They had been breaking up Eli’s sleep of late, but he was not going to talk about it in front of a stranger, even if she had almost gotten to second base with him.
“I’m going to bed.”
They re-entered the gymnasium, Eli first, followed by Seth and Emma. As Eli walked away from them and back to his cot, Seth spoke to the group again with Emma by his side.
“Eli is still one of us!”
Eli got a few pats on the shoulder from his fellow survivors as he put his clothes back on. The group gathered around Seth and Emma as Eli finished getting dressed.
Eli’s footsteps echoed down the dark, empty hallway. He was carrying his cot, folded over under his right arm. He always slept on his cot when not in his truck. It didn’t matter where he was. He wasn’t a stickler for routine as such, but there were some things he would always try to do again and again. He was going to sleep outside, even though it was cold, but he knew that he would be safe. It went against protocol, and he didn’t like going against protocol, but another group leader had agreed to it, provided it was a one-off.
He walked over the grass of the football field. It hadn’t gotten to the point where the icy grass would crunch beneath his feet, but he could see his breath on the night air. The school’s livestock was fenced in, covering one half of the football field, with the crops, fruits, and vegetables growing on the other half. As he walked to the middle of the field, he looked behind himself at the roof of the high school. He nodded to the sniper who was on watch patrol, and the sniper nodded back. When not on supply runs, Eli pulled sniper duty once a week. He had not seen as many of the living dead recently; it was more about keeping an eye out for other groups of survivors who might want what the school had. Eli unfolded his cot and lay down next to the sounds and smells of the animals and the rustlings of the crops. He looked up at the moon. Before he knew it, he was asleep.
Eli knew he was in a nightmare. He’d had it many times before. It was a reenactment of how it all started, and he was powerless to change anything. Each time he would wake up toward the end with a cold sweat. He was back at home on the other side of the United States, back when things were okay. Things weren’t just okay; they were great. He would have given his life to be able to spend one more day there. He was with his wife, Sarah, and his son, Adam. Adam had been born with an extra copy of a chromosome. Trisomy twenty-one, the doctor had called it. Down syndrome, Sarah had called it, before the doctor could call it that. On the day of his birth, Eli pledged he would always keep Adam safe. Eli’s life was his son’s life. He would never stop being there for him, or loving him. They were a part of each other.
They were watching Star Wars with Adam for the first time when Sarah’s phone buzzed. It sounded to Eli like a direct message. After reading her message, Sarah changed the streaming service to a local news station. There was a breaking news strap: STAY INSIDE. A scream came from across the street. Whatever was happening, it was happening fast. Adam called out to his father. Eli placed his hand on his son’s shoulder, and kissed his scraggly hair. Another scream came from outside, and Adam started to cry out. Sarah went to comfort him as Eli ran to the window. He moved the net curtains and peered out. He saw one of his cul-de-sac neighbors dead on the ground, her limbs pulled apart from her body like an alligator’s prey put through a death roll. He saw another person who looked dead eating another person who looked alive. As the screams grew, and the blood flowed, Eli noticed that the people who looked dead were not walking. They were running. That was not good. He closed the curtains.
“Attic. Now,” he said, with his back turned to his wife and son. Sarah had her arms wrapped around Adam, who was rocking back and forth.
“What—”
“Get up in the fucking attic!”
Eli saw a fright in his son’s eyes that he had never seen before. He hadn’t meant to scare him.
Eli woke up, his face covered in beads of sweat in spite of the cold. He had never woken up this early from the events of his nightmare before; it was usually at the end. He found dreams funny. Sometimes they felt like they lasted forever, and he’d only been asleep five minutes. Other times the dream could be quick, and he’d been asleep all night. He did not find nightmares funny.
He looked up at the moon. It had lowered in the night sky while he was asleep. He turned on his side and burst into tears. When the tears stopped, he sat back up and saw the sniper watching him from the roof through the sniper’s scope. There wasn’t much to be entertained by when on sniper duty; anything out of the ordinary broke up the monotony of the night.
Eli walked back through the hallway with his cot, his footsteps echoing once again. He looked left and right at the lockers and thought about all the lives lost. All the first dates that wouldn’t happen. All the school dances that wouldn’t be attended. All the school trophies that wouldn’t be fought for. He heard a quiet groaning coming from one of the science labs. He stopped and looked in through the door’s glass panels. He did a double take: He wasn’t sure if he could believe what he was seeing at first. Seth was having sex with Emma, right up against a periodic table that hung from the wall.
“Clearly misses her husband,” Eli muttered, before continuing to the gymnasium.
Everyone was asleep. He must have been asleep for some time himself. He went back to his spot and unfolded his cot. He sat on the edge of it and looked at the other survivors as they slept. No one knew why the dead had come back to life earlier that year. There was no rhyme, no reason: it had happened, and they had to live with it. Without as many people to feed on, most of the living dead had starved to death, or were in the process of starving to death. However, if one of them got hold of a living person—even with only a small scratch or a tiny bite—that person would turn living dead and could kill a group of survivors, and the balance would tip back in favor of the dead.
The living dead, or the living. One of them was going to run out of food first. It was just a question of who.
The new supplies were in the gymnasium, spread out over several tables taken from the cafeteria. The food would be taken to the cafeteria at sunrise. It was only in the gymnasium because it was a morale boost for the group when the men returned unscathed. They were also now organized as per the ration schedule, whereas before they had just been put down and left. Eli unzipped his rucksack by the canned section and placed a couple of cans of soup inside. Just enough to get by for a couple of days, he thought. He would be able to get more food when he needed it. He also picked up a couple bottles of sparkling water. He could pretend it was a special occasion when he drank it. There was still tap water at the school at least but tap water would always be piss.
Eli zipped up his rucksack. He decided to leave his cot behind. Sleeping routines be damned; it was time for change. He stepped as quietly as he could around his fellow survivors. He stopped at the double door exit. He turned back around to look at them all. Thankfully, there were other men who could keep the group safe. There were women who could keep them all safe, too, but being able to birth new life was vital beyond words.
“You’ll be fine,” he said.
Eli stood outside the science lab again. He opened the door and saw Seth sleeping next to Emma under the periodic table. He nudged Seth awake.
Seth stood with Eli in the corridor, half naked.
“What do you mean you have to go?” he almost shouted. He was near tears.
“There’s something I have to do.”
“Is this about your son? You know you can talk to me.”
Eli stood up straight, towering over Seth. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Seth raised a hand and placed it on Eli’s shoulder. When he was able to get the words out, he said, “whatever it is. Is it more important than us?”
Eli took a deep breath. After all, Seth meant well, and he was the only person Eli had spoken to in any detail about his life before the school. Seth was the person who had brought him to the school in the first place.
“Yes.”
Eli reached the school’s entrance, with Seth behind him. The glass on the doors had been boarded up. Boarding was one of the first jobs the founders had done on arrival, as an extra line of defense. When Seth first showed him around the school, Eli had thought it could prove counterintuitive. What if one of the living dead got inside? It would take away the option of breaking a window to escape. Seth had reminded him that there were fire exits they could use in that scenario. The D-pull door handles had a large chunky chain through them and an obese padlock no bolt cutter could get through; at least not without tremendous force. Eli used the same set of keys he had used to exit onto the football field to unlock the padlock and unchain the handles. He gave Seth the padlock and the keys. Eli was one of only three people who had been entrusted with keys.
Eli placed a hand on Seth’s shoulder. “Put your pants back on, it’s cold.”
“Will you be coming back?”
“Only God knows.”
Eli left the building. Goosebumps formed on the back of his neck and sent a chill down his spine. He was leaving a safety net and going it alone while abandoning good people. He heard Seth close the doors behind him and lock the padlock back through the chains. Eli stopped and looked back at Seth. They held up a hand to each other and Seth turned away.
Eli stood by his red pickup truck, parked outside the school. Externally, the truck was battered and rusted, but it had never let him down since he found it. The family inside had been dead; they weren’t going to use it. The father had shot his children and his wife through the head before shooting himself. Eli had carefully taken the children out from the back of the car, their blood and brains everywhere, and placed them on the ground. He had done the same to the parents, who he remembered feeling heavy as boulders. He had not been able to bury them. In a world where almost everyone was dead, including the living dead, there was not always time to be buried, to have a burial.
Eli placed his rucksack on the back seats. He went to the bed of the truck and lifted the green tarpaulin, revealing an assortment of guns, and an arsenal of weapons to be used only when out of ammunition. Included was a metal bat and a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer was Eli’s favorite. The easiest way to kill the living dead was to kill the brain, and the sledgehammer, when used correctly, could expel the brain from the skull. There were also six bear traps. Eli had lost count of how many living dead he had killed. After he left his home in California, it had taken him over a month to reach Maine. He thought he could get back in one week without distraction. He knew which Interstates he was going to take, and he had a full tank of nearly expired diesel gas, along with four full fuel cans, also in the bed of the truck.
He sat behind the wheel. He took one last look at the school. Bangor High School. Home of the Rams. That was the name on his sweatshirt. He remembered back to when he first met a small group of survivors at the school; how they had built a tall wall around the sports field to protect their outside space with the help of someone who used to be an architect. Eli couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he remembered how he had died on his first ever supply run with them: excruciatingly.
He turned the keys in the ignition and the engine coughed into life. He would drive with the headlights on. The running living dead had largely become the walking living dead. Eli had tried to time their life expectancy after their last meal. His best guess was one month. They went from running to walking quite quickly, but just one small taste of blood, or juicy flesh, or meaty organs, could lead to them being able to break down doors. Eli’s final thought before putting his foot on the gas was just how quickly the past year had gone. The living dead had risen in January. He left his home in April. He had been at the school since May. It was now November.
A fire had been burning through Eli’s veins since burying Jacob, and it was finally time to go back home and do right by his son. He put his foot on the gas, not knowing whether he would survive to return, or even to get home. He would soon be asleep at the wheel of his truck and in his nightmare. It would be one of those times he was asleep for only a moment, but it would feel like a lifetime.
The zombie apocalypse hits suddenly, destroying most of the population in the United States. As the zombies run out of humans to consume, they slow down and slowly die…again. Burial follows Eli and Niece on their journey of survival. Having both lost their families to zombie attacks, the two decide to travel together. Eli has a mission to fulfill in order to honor his little boy, taking them across the country where they encounter ruthless survivors with twisted agendas who threaten their lives.
Reminiscent of The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, Burial by Oliver Edlin is a solid addition to post-apocalyptic zombie horror. The trials that Eli and Niece face are at times graphic and difficult to read, but given the setting, they are entirely realistic. In particular, readers who are sensitive to reading about on-page child death in books will want to steer away from Burial. While some scenes are unsettling, Oliver Edlin takes care to highlight the good in humanity alongside the evil. I especially appreciated Eli’s six-year-old son’s resilience and fortitude and Niece’s unbreakable spirit.
Told from multiple points of view, I found the beginning of Burial somewhat hard to follow. Once I established that the primary characters are Eli and Niece, it became more clear how the other character narrations fit into the plot. The story also jumps between the past and present to gradually reveal certain elements to the reader, but eventually, it all comes together. Overall, I enjoyed the book and the overarching quest Eli must fulfill to find closure. However, it was a struggle to get into the narrative in the beginning due to the multiple points of view. In addition, the book is written by a British author, so certain terms (such as “torch” rather than “flashlight”) and phrasing did not fit the American setting or characters. As a US Army Veteran, I also was shocked that the author referred to a “Humvee” as a “behemoth” that required soldiers to “step up high” to enter it, despite the fact that HMMWVs ride very low to the ground. Perhaps he meant to describe an MRAP or LMTV? Since the author chose to use the United States as the setting for Burial, it would behoove him to find an American editor to clean up problematic areas such as these.