The Reapers are the Angels

An age in which the dead walk the earth is often presumed to be a life of constant fear, dire hunger, and forced or self-imposed immobility. In Alden Bell's novel 'The Reapers are the Angels', examples of these circumstances and attitudes are given, but alternate possibilities are considered as well.

The story centers around the travels of a teenage girl who has never known life without the hazards of the undead. Consequently, she views their presence as simply another challenge of every day life. Flashes from earlier and different periods of her life are shared, but in general she seems to have grown into the role of a self reliant wanderer, intent on experiencing the sights and small beauties that remain in the world.

This girl is a pretty fantastic character with a balance of practical skills, pragmatic logic, and a rather harmonious, perhaps zen-like, understanding, acceptance, and appreciation of the world around her. Not surprisingly, however, this outward harmony is haunted by deeply rooted emotional scars that keep our warrior princess pretty torn up just under the surface.

*Warning* Spoilers

Aside from a delightfully gritty and unreserved character portrait, the twists, turns, and details of the undead scenario itself are highly entertaining as well.

Broadly speaking, the scenario is set in the continental United States, maybe twenty or so years after an emergence of cannibalistic undead has destroyed the modern world. The living population is only a fraction of its former size, but interestingly, the undead population does not appear to be of a correspondingly inverse magnitude.

Small populations of living survive in isolated homes and fortified portions of towns and cities, but they aren't inundated by oceans of undead. Movement and travel is actually relatively easy for anyone with a bit of experience and a level head. The dead are drawn to the living, and this is even a scenario where everyone reanimates upon death (bitten or not), but, for whatever reason, the undead are not astronomically numerous.

This aspect of the story seems a little odd to me, but the specifics of this plague are not completely spelled out, and there are a couple of significant deviations from the standard formula that may be relevant.

For one, the undead are willing to prey upon each other. The living appear to remain their cuisine of choice, but there is at least one instance where our girl is witness to a mob of ghouls tearing each other apart, specifically the weaker of their members, to satisfy their compulsion to feed.

Secondly, the undead do appear to actually require sustenance to maintain their strength. I don't recall if the story explicitly stated whether the undead would entirely waste away for want of flesh, but there were examples of zombies who were too weak to be any threat. Perhaps this condition, in conjunction with the above mentioned actions, is the reason for seemingly low numbers of undead overall.

Another deviation from the norm is that our wanderer crosses paths with folks who don't just hunt the undead, but barbecue and eat their flesh as well. Wow. Yeah, not sure what to say about that. We've had a few recent films addressing the topic of cannibalism in a post-apocalyptic world (The Road, The Book of Eli), and it seems a pretty plausible phenomena. However, safely consuming flesh of the reanimated dead seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Lastly, crazy town is officially reached when paths intersect with some bible-thumping hillbillies who've taken to extracting and injecting themselves with brain fluid from the undead, which is subsequently mutating them into some sort of bone covered giants. Holy hell. Yes I am a big fan of the Resident Evil stories, but it is mostly for the zombie and evil corporation aspects. Not the rather ludicrous genetic monstrosities that emerge.

Regardless, this was another example of the author exploring his alternate take on a zombie apocalypse. Crazy-ville or not, it was an entertaining turn in the story that made for some great reading.

As always, there is a great deal more that could be commented upon and discussed, but I think I've rambled long enough. To summarize, I found the story to be a much more artful, thoughtful, and poignant tale than most. The scenario itself was interesting, but it was the portrait of a "warrior princess of the wastes" that was damn fascinating and moving. Fans of undead literature should definitely check this story out.