Flu- Wayne Simmons

Following my recent spout of Zombie book reviews, Flu by Wayne Simmons is a modern- Zombie Apocalypse story set in present day Belfast, following different individuals as they try to make the best of a bad situation and survive.

The story begins with two police officers carrying out one of the governments "quarantines" on a family that has begun showing signs of the mysterious flu virus sweeping the country. People show signs of a sniffle, and normal cold symptoms that gradually get more severe until the disease proves fatal, and it's highly contagious.

Oh, and once you die? You start walking around again.

The book follows model-like ex-lawyer Geri, who comes across squatters McFall and Lark, as well as Karen, a young church-goer who has found herself under the protection of ex-terrorist Pat. Also presented to us, are George and Norman, the two policemen who have seen the quarantines first-hand and are haunted by more than just the walking dead. Then there's the ex army-man Jackson, who has left his family behind to work with sadistic researcher Gallagher in an attempt to attempt to stop the outbreak.

The story is told from everybody's points of view respectively, and it works really well. You're constantly trying to guess the connections between the characters and as the book reaches it's conclusion I found myself getting quite emotionally involved. Some of the characters were really well developed and interesting, although some were slightly flat, and I found the overall plot to be pretty good, it takes an interesting view on the normal Zombie story and gets rather scary in places, with the constant threat of getting sick looming over all of the characters.

I'd recommend this to anyone with an interest in Zombie stories,and any fans of horror :P