Books

A terrible disease is striking everyone over the age of fourteen. Death walks the streets. Nowhere is safe. Maxie, Blue and the rest of the Holloway crew aren’t the only kids trying to escape the ferocious adults who prey on them. Jack and Ed are best friends, but their battle to stay alive tests their friendship to the limit as they go on the run with a mismatched group of other kids – nerds, fighters, misfits. And one adult. Greg, a butcher, who claims he’s immune to the disease. They must work together if they want to make it in this terrifying new world. But as a fresh disaster threatens to overwhelm London, they realize they won’t all survive.

Author Notes

My boys love horror, and my youngest, Sidney, 10, is obsessed by zombies. They fascinate and terrify him at the same time. So I thought, ‘Why not a zombie book for kids?’ I chose a traditional storyline and set-up — a mystery illness has wiped out nearly everyone, those adults who survive are shambling flesh-eaters. They are not technically the living dead. They are more like the infected of 28 Days Later. But Alex Garland nicked the idea off I Am Legend, the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, although his infected were more vampires than zombies (there are many similarities between the two). The book had already spawned two movies, (The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man), before Danny Boyle’s film and the recent rather pathetic Will Smith effort (CGI zombies? I don’t think so).