The Last Alive – H. L. Wampler

The Last Alive by H.L. Wampler
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A young woman’s twin sister is infected with a mysterious and virulent virus from either a needle-stick at her job as a research lab associate or a bug bite while on a family camping trip. She dies in a hospital within 48 hours, in agony, but almost immediately reanimates as a mindless, flesh-eating zombie. She bites her nurse who quickly dies and comes back biting and infecting everyone in the hospital ER setting off an epic a chain-reaction. The healthy twin, a local police detective, along with one of the ER docs escapes the hospital but it is too late to contain the virus.

Jump ahead either four or five years and the world has been devastated by the virus. The few survivors cluster together in fortified cities reachable only by river routes as the land is overrun with the undead and marauding bands of outlaws that kill and destroy those from the cities. Our heroine, Emma, and her doctor friend, Nathan, have gathered up her family and friends and they all get by in the fortified city that once was Pittsburgh. When Nathan suddenly goes missing, Emma, who is now the police chief, figures out he’s returned to the hospital to re-stock his medical supplies. So Emma, her best friend, Meaghan, and the city’s Rescue & Search Team go outside the city fortifications to retrieve his irresponsible self.

What do I say about this book? I really enjoy post-apocalyptic stories, zombie stories in particular, and I did enjoy this one. HOWEVER, this was one of the toughest reading experiences I’ve had in a long time because of a lack of decent editing. It appears the author must have reconsidered the plot between draft and final edition but didn’t get catch all the mentions of the earlier premise and make the change. The book begins with a needle-stick being the cause of the virus but only pages in the origin becomes a bug bite. In one scenario, Emma and her sister, Becca, are 25 years old twins but later in the book they were only 20 years old when Becca dies and becomes a zombie. Chapters alternate between present time and the time of the outbreak, sometimes it is five years earlier, other times only four. Often it is unclear who dialogue is attributed to, and it may have changed which characters were delivering a segment of dialogue over time because there are references to male characters as her or she and female characters as him or he.

Grammar issues abound.

Logic issues pop up often. Yeah, this is a zombie story so you may wonder “What logic? It’s fiction!” But I’m talking about basic issues with the way things actually work that don’t make sense.

In short, this book is a mess BUT it still has a ton of potential as a really fun, exciting read! The author needs to pull it back out and do the grunt work of re-reading and editing. Maybe hire a professional editor or proofreader at the very least. It is all fixable and this story is so worth the effort! But, until it is, I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

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