This is the fourth book in a series called Fresh Flesh from Necro Publications. For
a reading experiment I began all the titles at once ... and the tale holding my attention for the longest duration would be the one to receive the
first appraisal. Lucy Leitner’s Working
Stiffs, a comedic take on the zombie sub-genre, stood out among the rest.
One thing neeing to be said: the cover
illustration doesn’t quite do Lucy’s work justice. Make no mistake, this is an
adult novel. The comedic elements are pertinent – but it still manages to do
the same thing George Romeo attempted when he directed his first film: hold up a
dark mirror to our society with socially relevant commentary.
Pittsburgh, and the zombie uprising has come to
giant corporate entity Pro-Well Pharmaceuticals. Led by the charismatic ex-meth
dealer Marshall Owens, Pro-Well has taken the dregs of society off the streets
to amass assembly line workers that will not question authority and work with
the efficiency of mindless automatons. But soon the plan backfires when the
injected serum becomes an unstoppable virus rendering the employees with an
appetite for human flesh. Pitted against the horde are an eccentric group of
misfits and mavericks: higher echelon employees who will now consider the
normal drudgery of a nine-to-five work day the pinnacle of paradise.
Working
Stiffs is not the kind of work I would usually seek out –
and depending on who you talk to the zombie sub-genre is now becoming a
somewhat jaded niche market in danger of becoming over-saturated.
But I found the lack of familiarity here to refreshing. Not being an expert on
the rules I could casually slip into the story without playing jury or
arbitrator to a dark fiction work seething with clever observations
and biting sarcasm. The diverse characters here are the crowning achievement,
and it was easy to envision each reader who takes the journey finding someone
to identify with. There’s Hank, the jaded misanthropic queer who’s addicted to
the call of happy hour, an enigma that ‘no one really understood but everybody
knew not to fuck with.' There's Janice the anointed Goth who joins Pro-Well to ensure
enough job security to save up for her burial plans. In the mix is also a football-obsessed janitor who forges lifelong bonds with local icons he has
never met - and an ex-army General who slowly leads the ranks of the dead into
an epic showdown with the scarred CEO who started the whole mess ... a chief
executive who still dreams of a future enforcing thousands of hobos to work
under slave conditions in order to make male pattern baldness a thing of the past.
Relevant and sharp, Lucy Leitner has concocted a
humorous but above all engaging allegory of working life – a pleasing romp with
enough extravagant metaphors to keep any zombie aficionado entertained. With
three books in the Fresh Flesh series to come, I look forward to more high calibre outings from Necro Publications.
