Rise Again: would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs?

Ben Tripp's debut novel, Rise Again, is a flawed, but often brilliant zombie story that brings a new twist to the genre. Rise Again's protagonist, Sheriff Danielle "Danny" Adelman, is a small-town cop who struggles with mental and physical scars from serving with the US Army in Iraq.

One day, a large number of people drop dead and then rise again as zombies (your basic zombie story setup). It's July 4, and Danny's little town is packed with tourists who die in great waves. The survivors panic and try to break free, and the ensuing traffic jam turns into a riot. By the time the dead rise and begin to attack the living, the world has basically ended. Danny gathers up a band of survivors and runs for it, heading for the sparsely populated countryside (and, eventually, for a remote fire ranger station with independent generator-powered electricity, an air-traffic tower with a working radio, and water).

So far, so normal. The first two acts of Rise Again suffer from a first novelist's lack of pacing smarts, dragging in places, lingering too long on thin action scenes and character studies. Tripp's characters at least have the good grace to behave as though they've seen zombie movies and act without making the idiotic errors that watching a couple Romero movies should immunize you against. There's nothing actively bad here, but nothing outstanding either.

But then, in the third act, Tripp introduces something novel to the genre, and the story takes a turn for the better -- much, much better. Danny is seeking her missing sister, and her quest takes her away from her survivor friends to San Francisco, where only a small quarter is free from the undead -- a section of downtown ringed by out-of-control fires and hordes of shambling zombies. The survivors are all crammed together and live under martial law, as enforced by private military contractors from "Hawkstone," a thinly veiled analog for Blackwater and the other private military contractors that Danny struggled with in Iraq.

You see, in Tripp's world, the US government has outsourced its emergency preparedness to the same military contractors who turned New Orleans into a profiteer's haven after Katrina, a nightmare world of shoot-to-kill and cost-plus racketeering that traded compassionate aid from the state for roided-out, heavily armed Rambo-wannabes who revel in their petty authoritarian power.

Here's where Rise Again becomes something more than just another zombie story. By putting his characters in jeopardy from both zombies and private, trigger-happy mercenaries, Tripp raises the stakes so high that the book becomes nearly impossible to put down (I stayed up long past bedtime finishing it, and nearly jumped out of my skin when a floorboard creaked outside the door).

Zombies are such a ready-made symbol for "the other among us" that they will probably always resonate; but Rise Again isn't just a zombie novel, it's an indictment of us-versus-them mentality that chooses authoritarianism and control over cooperation and compassion. As such, it does more than scare -- it both moves and enrages, and transcends mere spookiness for something much more satisfying.

Rise Again (Amazon)

Rise Again (author's site)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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GeekMan

Q: Would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs?

A: Well, can’t it be both?
Anonymous

Not taking anything away from Tripp, who is a good writer, and I haven’t read Rise Again yet. Looking forward to it.

However as for zombies and US paramilitary wing-a-lings, this isn’t new territory. Romero digested the interstices of fascism and zombies twenty-five years ago in Day of the Dead (1985), one of his more ambitious efforts in chomp-chomp land. I’m pleased someone else now has taken up the cudgel.

Blackwater or zombies? You mean there’s a difference?
ZOMBYZ

So has anyone really read this book? I mean like an editor or even the guy who wrote it? Because while the story line is decent the character tracking is terrible. We got one guy, Weaver, in the begining of the apocalypse that is fighting zombies/zeros in three different places at once? Super hero or just a really fast gay tv star? Then we get about three hundred pages in and suddenly the fireman Troy becomes Patrick, the other half of the gay super-hero team, while the real Patrick has been beat into a coma and is trapped by the mercs? Who edited this, cuz ummm I want thier job. I mean really such blatant mistakes and nobody, not even the author caught them before it went to print? Took a good story down to like a half star for me.
spool32

Comment section tl;dr:

1) Evil punching-bag bugaboo corporation is evil.
2) There’s nothing new under the sun.

Yawn!
- Cowicide
  
  Face it, you’re just bitter.
  
  Thanks for your input. We’re all glad you took the time to waste your time to tell everyone you just wasted your time.
  - spool32
    
    Double extra meta is how I roll. ;)
Anonymous

Sounds a bit like 28 days later
Anonymous

Looks like a good read. Brian Keene’s “The Rising” is another survivors vs zombies vs military people with guns novel
- ZOMBYZ
  
  The rising and city of the dead were far better reading. This could have been better than it was had there been an editor present!
  - Anonymous
    
    Jeepers, ZOMBYZ, I had no trouble with this thing called “character tracking”. I knew who was who, when who became what, and when what become really really weird. Your specific complaints about Troy, Weaver, and Patrick – well, they are not my complaints. I tracked them just fine. So you do your half-star, and I will do my four star.
    
    Magatha, who lives near San Francisco, but keeps her distance from the Transamerica Pyramid, on account of the helicopter thing.
    
    Also, my answer is No. Furthermore, Gina Valence: I’d gladly be on your team for the Zombacolypse.
MrJM

Q: would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs?

A: Zombies. At least they’ll appreciate my brains.
brix

ok, i love me some zombie apocalypse, and i’ll probably end up reading this at some point.

and i’m really glad that there’s some zombie genre fiction out there that doesn’t have a total jones for the military industrial complex (cough, max brooks, cough cough). but it really took 25 years to move from “the last remnants of the military hold a few survivors underground in an authoritarian stranglehold and it sucks” to “the last remnants of a privatized defense firm hold a few survivors above ground in an authoritarian stranglehold and it sucks”?

because dang, Day Of The Dead came out before i learned to walk, and even zombies advance faster than that.

so way to go ben tripp. e’erbody else, step your game up!
LukeWhite

“By putting his characters in jeopardy from both zombies and private, trigger-happy mercenaries…”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
- htafari
  
  What LukeWhite said: Sounds like “28 Days Later.” They used a virus that produced zombie-like symptoms and rogue soldiers instead, but otherwise very similar.
- RedShirt77
  
  My immediate thought too. Although it was a good movie and if they are going to remix Karate Kid. why not remix this plot too?
13strong

Haven’t read the book, but have to say my first thought was:

“Like in The Walking Dead?”

In addition, how are trigger-happy private security mercenaries much different from trigger-happy soldiers, in this scenario? Which leads me to think “Like in 28 Days Later?”, “Like in Day of the Dead?” etc…
lasttide

The tagline “The dead shall rise. Again.” implies that this is a book about double zombies: people that die, become zombies, have their heads blown off, and then rise again.

Either that, or it’s just redundant in an effort to… I don’t know. Be chilling? Again?
lasttide

Second option: this book is about the second rise of zombies; the first zombie apocalypse being the part of the alternate history of the novel.
angusm

How about zombie Blackwater mercenaries, the real sum of all fears?

I’m sure there’s a novel to be written about the government paying a company to provide ‘security’ … knowing full well that not only is the company another of Blackwater, sorry, Xe’s endless front companies, but that it’s subcontracting work to zombies in order to save money.

“Frankly, senator, I understand your reservations. But we do find that employing the respiratorily-challenged … we prefer not to use the term ‘undead’ … does allow us to adopt a competitive salary structure that makes our offering compelling in the world of cost-plus contracts.”

“By ‘competitive salary structure’, do you mean that you allow these … these things … to eat the brains of those that they kill?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of our bonus scheme, senator. That’s a contract issue between the company and its employees. But I can confirm that we do operate an incentive program that rewards performance.”
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Resident Evil?
- Tynam
  
  angusm: Please write this novel immediately. You have a customer anxiously awaiting the release.
Anonymous

“By putting his characters in jeopardy from both zombies and private, trigger-happy mercenaries”

That’s Half-life’s plot.
Lobster

Probably Blackwater. There’s at least a possibility they’ll put me down clean and painless.
- Cowicide
  
  You forgot that Blackwater will torture you first. At least Zombies will only try to get to your brains and be done with it. Blackwater might feel like pulling out your fingernails first, waterboarding you and forcing you into false confessions that might also put others at risk of torture and death down the road (including loved ones).
  
  In a nutshell, Blackwater stooges are more evil than brain eating zombies.
  
  I’d rather get killed by zombies than a bunch of evil, corporatist fucks any day.
  
  Now, who would I rather kill??? [cough] I’ll stop here.
MandoSpaz

Q: would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs?

A: No
jackbird

If you want the (freeware, old, Windows-only) video game version, try Survival Crisis Z.
Anonymous

Just for the record, Blackwater and all, were copies of the best PMC ever seen, Executive Outcomes, from Africa.
oldtaku

I’d rather be shot than eaten, but…

Hey video game makers. I’d much rather headshot Blackwater mercs than more freaking zombies. Those are getting a bit old.
Gina Valence

I can’t believe I’m taking the “bait”. I was on duty at a NOLA hospital for the storm. And a first responder. So, let’s call the days – ground zero. A lot of details on the news were not broascasted. The entire Power Grid was destroyed. 1000′s lost life, more were homeless. There were gas fires on many, many streets. The presence of the Coast Guard was needed. What may not be remembered is the evcuation at Baptist/Memorial Hospital was deterred due to civilian snipers. There was mass looting, not by squaters, but by brutal civilians. Oakwood Mall was set on fire by shameless civilians. Marshall Law was not enforced for fun. The endogenous peoples trying to evacuate, needed protecting, from the brutal civilian wave, that no one could forsee. FEMA, Coast Guard, and other agencies, military and cilivilain were needed in this area. Police have been brought to justice when inappopriate action was discovered.

I have no doubt “Rise Again” is a fine piece of fiction.

Blackwater turned New Orleans into a profiteer’s haven after Katrina, a nightmare world of shoot-to-kill? Truth is, contractors with supplies to help rebuild soaked a lot of the money for aid. Just one opinion from a girl that lived in the area, during ground zero. Peace
Gina Valence

My bad. I did not answer the question. Zombies or Blackwater?
Tossed a coin, Blackwater it is. Peace
magneticwheels

the real zombies are the editors & their corporations that seem intent on jumping on every f***ing bandwagon that comes along. vampires, zombies, wizard’s school, superheroes, steampunk! I’m sure every publisher in existence is asking themselves: “where’s our zombie product?” tom sawyer and zombies! the walking dead! ENOUGH ALREADY.
zax

Q: would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs?
A: I’ll have the cake please!