I was tempted to skip this one, as I feel zombies have been played out, but I'm somewhat of a completist; it wouldn't sit well with me not to read the complete series.
At the beginning of Zombie, we meet Danny, Laura, and their three-year-old daughter, Rose. They're on their way home from Laura's parents' house, and Danny really shouldn't be driving because he's been drinking. There's an accident involving a van, and the van's cargo is... You guessed it. A zombie. What follows is a comedy of errors as, despite being told repeatedly to get away, Danny ignores the warning as he tries to help the driver. Zombie escapes van, Danny fights zombie while trying to continue to help the driver, Danny gets bit and is now infected. The happy, little dysfunctional family ends up back in the car. In the meantime, another zombie escapes from the van, and the zombie chow van driver has joined their ranks. Why don't they just drive away? It's not because it's wrong to leave the scene of an accident, which drunk Danny would probably do in a heartbeat. No. When the van collided with the car, it forced the car off the road and into a ditch. So, why don't they call for help? I'll get to that.
This particular entry of the Cursed Manuscript series suffers credibility issues from the very beginning. I can hear you thinking, we're dealing with zombies; how can we have credibility issues when we're dealing with zombies, because zombies don't really exist. Some would see a walking corpse as the biggest credibility issue of the book, but certain allowances have to be made. In horror fiction, zombies exist, vampires exist, werewolves exist. End of story. But even in the most incredible situations, the characters must have some credibility. We also know we wouldn't have horror if it weren't for stupid people making stupid decisions at the most inappropriate times. With this established, we can now commence with the eyeball gymnastics. SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT: In the beginning, God created... Oh, uh... wrong story. In the beginning, Laura and Drunk Danny are arguing. It seems what was supposed to be a weekend with the grandparents, whom they haven't seen in over a year thanks to the COVID lockdown (so their already strained relationship has been strained that much more because they were stuck inside with each other for over a year), has been cut short by a text from Danny's boss. There's an emergency. All hands on deck. Expect to report to work first thing in the morning. On a Sunday. Naturally, Laura doesn't buy it. All Danny had to do was show her the text. Does he? NOOOOO. He bullies his way through, gets them in the car, and they leave. In the car, the argument continues. Laura is going to text her parents and apologize. Danny says she's not apologizing for him, grabs her phone, and throws it out the window. Responsible Laura, who always puts her daughter first, grabs Danny's phone and throws it out the window. They decide to stop, get out, and look for their phones, leaving their daughter in the car --- without hazard lights. Can you say accident waiting to happen? I had to stop at this point. My eyes needed a break from all the rolling they were doing.
There are some timing issues regarding how quickly the virus kicks in that I can make allowances for. They're the same I would make for any zombie piece: living host vs dead host, recently dead vs older dead, etc. And we know that these aren't your typical zombies, as damage to the brain doesn't stop them in their tracks. I can overlook that. Thankfully, all the zombies here were shamblers. Had there been sprinters and marathon-running zombies, I would've closed the book, never to return. Zombies don't run (I will die on this hill). The BIG issue I had was with the regenerating zombie. Drunk Danny, now Zombie Danny, is shot in the face. The description literally says the lower half of his face disintegrated. From the nose down, there's nothing. But somewhere between getting his face blown off and attacking his wife upstairs, his face regenerated. That's the only way I can explain his mouth moving as he tried to bite her.
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