The Rising Book

As the 21st Century dawned, zombies--if you'll excuse the expression--were dead. Independently and through the use of three different media, that was about to change. Almost simultaneously Brian Keene published The Rising, an English film called 28 Days Later was released, and Robert Kirkman started planning a comic book called The Walking Dead. There's a story that Kirkman had to tell his publishers that aliens were secretly behind the zombie plague to get the comic approved. If true, this news comes with a certain irony attached. That's close to the approach Keene took in The Rising. The dead were being animated by formless entities escaping an endless void through a dimensional rift. The results were not the usual lumbering husks on a mindless search for living food. Instead the human race was faced with a near unstoppable force, ever-growing in numbers, who were intelligent.

Keene chose not to begin with his particular twist on the concept. Instead, well in to the plague, he opens with Jim Thurmond deciding to leave the safety of a West Virginia bomb shelter when he hears on a dying cell phone a message from his young son, who is hiding in the attic of his ex-wife's house--in New Jersey. As Jim prepares to makes his break, only then does Keene switch to Dr William Baker, the lone remaining scientist in the underground facility responsible for the tear between dimensions. It is through his backstory that we meet the leader of the beings that are animating the corpses and learn of their intelligence and intentions. With the stage set Keene introduces several more characters, and in alternating chapters he follows their various struggles with survival. This will eventually include a militia, once a Pennsylvania National Guard Infantry unit, now a merciless and savage military dictatorship that engulfs all that they meet. In one form or another this militia will draw all the surviving characters to the same point and time.

This is very much a first novel. Transitions are not always smooth and there are entire stretches with an astonishing lack of detail, particularly surprising for a work of horror. Also there's a character who is supposed to have gone through a drastic change after an especially devastating event, but the change doesn't resonate through to the reader. Other characters tell us he's different but we just don't feel it. And yet there is no doubt that from the beginning Keene had a firm grasp of what makes horror stories work. The characters at their core ring true and the situations are both visual and visceral. Only the execution needed refinement. That Keene has had a long and successful career indicates that repetition has allowed him to acquire those skills as well.

Oh . . . about the ending. Within the horror community, the ending to The Rising is infamous. Aware of the controversy but not knowing the details, I went into the novel thinking, In a world filled with zombies, there can ultimately be only one ending. Having now come out the other side, I think now it is more a question of clarity. The climactic confrontation takes place offstage. In fact, it reminded me a bit of Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty Is Five," another story where the actions that close the piece take place elsewhere. In an introduction to "Jeffty," Ellison wrote in part: "It's all there. Very clearly. It's done with what I hope is some subtlety, and you may have to read the last page or so with some careful attention to detail . . . but it's all there." I'll amend these words slightly. As The Rising winds down, listen carefully. It's all there.