Carrot Juice Zombie Infection

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr. Nick), sorry a bit of Simpsons humor, couldn't help myself.  How is everybody on this fine snowy morning?  Everybody got a big cup of hot coffee?  Everybody got there big fluffy blankies? Everybody got their ax in case of a snowy zombie attack? Oh...I'm being told it wasn't actually a zombie attack this morning, just a bunch of idiots who can't drive in the snow...well zombies are way more fun so lets talk about those instead.  Undead by Kirsty McKay is a YA book about zombies read because it was handed to me by my Hubbin who said "this looks cool, you should read it and tell me what happens", so I did.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Bobby has it rough, she is a British native who was moved to the US because of her mothers job and then back to the UK for the same reason, this gives her a weird American/British combo slang accent that apparently is the basis for her having no friends.  Her concerned mother has sent her on a school skiing trip in Scotland to try and help her make some friends. This backfires and Bobby spends most of the trip being teased or ignored.  They are finally on their way back and have stopped at some little cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch.  Bobby decides she has had enough of the teasing and stays on the bus while the others go in and eat.  Smitty a rebel without a cause is also staying on the bus as his bad boy attitude has gotten him in trouble. Their teacher goes into the cafe to get Smitty some food.  Bobby meanwhile needs to pee...bad, which we all know is one of the worst feelings in the world, she does not want to face her fellow students so she attempts to use the bus bathroom, but is informed by the bus driver that it is not usable when the bus is turned off. Bobby notes a poor guy in a giant carrot suit passing out samples of some veggie carrot juice to all of the kids and teachers.  All of a sudden the bus is hit from behind and the driver goes out to see what happened.  Meanwhile one of Bobby and Smitty's classmates, the popular Alice comes screaming out of the cafe, yelling that they are all dead and generally being incoherent.  As they look around they see the teacher that went to get Smitty food come out all slathering, hungry, and gross.  The kids barricade themselves in the bus until Smitty realizes that the driver has yet to come back.  Alice stays in the bus while Bobby and Smitty go drag him in, noting what looks like a bite mark on his arm.  Chaos ensues and the trio along with the

unconscious bus driver end up at a near by gas station where Bobby finally gets a chance to pee.  They meet up with the pale and geeky Pete who has been hiding in the bathroom, and the unsavory Gareth who is the local gas attendant.  More chaos and more zombies and the gas station ends up in flames, incinerating a good portion of the undead.  Gareth runs away with the only laptop and the kids discover that their cellphones don't work.  They head back to the cafe where the bus driver turns and more chaos.  They hunker down and do their best to barricade themselves in the cafe.  Bobby passes out from hunger, which while embarrassing is the sign for them to go find food.  being that they are in a cafe it should be pretty easy, the only problem is they don't know what it is that turned all of their classmates, teachers, and cafe workers into zombies.  Eventually they puzzle out that it was the carrot juice samples and tuck into their sandwiches.  They hood up with Lily and her 3 year old brother Cam who lost their mother to the carrot juice zombie infection.  They find a castle and break in, hunkering down for the night.  The next day as they are exploring they find what looks like cells, with a headless body in one of them and a locked tower.  The current occupants of the castle come home turn out to be not very nice, they make prisoners of the kids and continue with their plans. Lily reveals that she found the tower key and they withhold the information from their captors who are desperate to find it.  More chaos (are you sensing a theme yet) and little Cam turns into a toddler zombie who promptly turns his sister.  The rest of the crew make it up to the tower and watch the very convenient destruction of their captors.  They go through all of the papers and realize that the company responsible for this zombie menace is the same one Bobby's mom works for.  We also find out that Bobby's dad has recently died of cancer and that she has never had a good relationship with her mom.  So very conveniently Bobby's phone starts working and her mom calls to tell her where to find the antidote and how to escape and bring it to her.  Bobby and company escape and trudge across the ice, being chased by zombies to a little island.  They make Bobby's mom tell them what the heck is going on.  Apparently the zombie disease has been popping up in isolated instances all over the world and Bobby's mother's company was hired to find a cure.   Unfortunately human greed jumped into the mix and the rest of the team sold the engineered disease to some baddies who want to use it as a weapon.  The company itself was actually using the cafe and the carrot juice as a controlled test and have plans to wipe out the whole area once the test has been completed.  They try to escape, but Smitty goes through the ice and is bitten by underwater ice dwelling zombies.   Luckily Bobby uses the cure (that could save all of humanity) on Smitty and hopefully that cures him.  They flag down a school bus that is also returning from a school trip and hitch a ride.  As she drifts off to sleep, Bobby see's a carton of the zombie carrot juice...and it is empty.  The book ends with her screaming that they all need to get off the bus.

Eh, the book was ok.  It kind of felt like on of those movies on Disney or Lifetime that you don't look for, but since their on and the remote control is on the other side of the couch you may as well finish it.  I think the book was going for a snarky/comic feel, on review compared it to Shaun of the Dead (such an awesome movie), but I don't think it quite made it there.  The characters were all stock characters, slightly exaggerated, I think the author was trying to use them as satire, or parody, but she did not go far enough.  The situations were uneven and were resolved either in a cliche way or by some randomly convenient event.  The story itself was very straight forward zombie apocalypse, which sometimes worked really well, and sometimes just felt boggy.   The ending made it very clear that there was a sequel coming, so of course very little resolution was presented.  On the plus side, the author did a good job addressing things I always

wonder about in these kinds of predicaments...like having to pee, you almost never see or read about our hero's using the bathroom, but seriously when you gotta go, you gotta go.  One of the main things I teach my recruits at the fire station is that if you have to use the bathroom, especially in the middle of the night, don't wait 'cause their is nothing worse then doing CPR with a full bladder.  Things like eating, peeing, clothes getting sweaty and gross, hair and make going to heck, all of these things that we would have to deal with in real life usually get glossed over, but are addressed in this book.  I also loved that the three year old cutie was the requisite person to turn. In these situations somebody in the main group ALWAYS ends up a zombie and I love that she made it the kid. I also love that the disease was handed out as juice samples by a giant carrot.  I understand what the author was going for in this book, I think she was trying to make teenage zombie book in the vein of a parody, but the execution was not effective.  It comes across as mushy, predictable and a wee bit annoying.  Also the blurb and back of the book description are not at all an accurate representation of whats in the book, nor is the front cover.  Overall I think I may have actually liked this better as a cheesy Syfy channel movie and I give it 4 out of 10 zombie infected carrot juices.
What is the best vector for a zombie infection?  How would you feel if you found out your mother was working for a zombie company?  How horrible would it be if they infected the coffee supply?!?