Alternate Reality Division

Knox County, Ohio—A peculiar pallor has fallen over the campus of one "Kenton" College. There is scrabbling in the graveyard. And philosophy professor Peter Mellor hasn't been feeling quite like himself since he took that swan dive through his car's windshield.

Scott Kenemore '00 reports from some oddly familiar locales in Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead (Skyhorse Publishing)—locales that have been overtaken by unfamiliar denizens. Kenemore, author of The Zen of Zombie (reviewed in the Bulletin, Fall 2007) and Z.E.O. Zombie, has a yen for the shambling specters. His debut novel approaches zombies in an unexpectedly brainy way. Kenemore's main character eats people, sure, but he's also literate, funny, and, yes, humane. He may not have a heartbeat, but you want to know what makes him tick.

For Kenyon alumni, of course, part of the zest of Zombie, Ohio will be the scenery. Mellor wanders Knox County but ends up back at Kenton, a distinguished campus featuring "[a]ncient structures with frowning, unperturbed gargoyles who had seen it all (a civil war, two world wars, and now a zombie uprising)." As the world closes in, Mellor takes refuge in the place where he was once somebody, and not just a body. In the end, he finds that, even as a zombie, he is far from heartless.