Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocolypse by Lost Zombies

If you’ve always been fascinated with the messages left on the walls in the videogame Left 4 Dead, then Notes from the Zombie Apocolypse will be a good fix. This novel is made up of notes gathered around the US during the Campion viral outbreak. Notes were written, put in a backpack, and carried until the survivor…well, stopped surviving. The bag was important enough to the next survivor that they picked it up and carried it around with them. Until they died, that is, and the cycle was repeated. Some of the language used to describe the zombies in this novel were familiar to me. “Runner!” “Suiciders!” “Sh*t!” and various other things I’ve yelled playing the game Dead Island often came up within the notes.

Throughout the book you're given bits of information about experiments done on civilians in a facility survivors thought was a safe haven. As in most horror films and novels, there was talk of a vaccine that never gets made. At first, the facility for the infected who couldn't afford healthcare sounded like a godsend. However, as the book progresses, the facility begins to sound more like the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The novel doesn’t really explain the goings on in this facility, so you’re left with a lot of unanswered questions. While the book lacks content, the notes give great imagery. Most of them made my jaw drop and had me think nothing other than the words 'Holy sh*t.' 

Even though the notes have shock value and instill emotions, it’s not all serious. There was one note that stuck with me, and I feel it's necessary to include it here:

'I made it through the fires in San Francisco. I crossed the golden gate bridge while being chased by these undead f*cks. I made it through the winter. Grew my own garden. I was a survivor. Now I’m gonna die from stepping on a rusty f*cking nail!'

I find the irony of the person's situation to be both fantastic and hilarious...and the odd thing is, I can see this happening to me. Strange? Delightfully. Notes like these were scattered throughout the novel, so when I got to read them, I giggled quite a bit.

While I enjoyed reading the bits and pieces scattered within the book bag, I kind of craved a longer scene: one with dialogue and more action, and less of the sadness some of the notes evoked while reading. If you read this and feel the sense of longing I’m talking about, then I recommend World War Z,  by Max Brooks, another zombie novel, but more story-like. There are less letters left behind, but this book has what Notes lacks—twice the action and more accounts from various likeable and named survivors. A definite upside to Notes is that at the end I learned that these notes were compiled from various people from all over the world [our world] who created these letters and mailed them in. If I wanted to [or, if you wanted to..], I could write a few to contribute and see if they actually get published. Maybe someone can come up with a defined plot that will make the next Notes even more fulfilling.