So Now You’re a Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead

Being undead can be disorienting. Your arms and other appendages tend to rot and fall off. It’s difficult to communicate with a vocabulary limited to moans and gurgles. And that smell! (Yes, it’s .) But most of all, you must constantly find and ingest human brains. Braaaains!!! What’s a zombie to do? Thankfully, zombiologist John Austin details everything you need to know, as a newly undead soul, to hunt, fight, and feed on the living. As the first handbook written specifically for the undead, explains how you ended up in this predicament, the stages of zombification, and what you need to survive in this zombiphobic world. Dozens of helpful diagrams outline attack strategies, such as the Ghoul Reach, the Flanking Zack, the Bite Hold, and the Aerial Fall, to secure your human prey. You’ll even learn how to successfully extract the living from boarded up farmhouses and broken down vehicles. This handbook also explores the upside of being a zombie. Gone are the burdens of employment, taxes, social networks, even basic hygiene, allowing you to focus on simple necessities in “life”: the juicy gray matter found in the skulls of the living. There is more to undeath than shambling around in search of brains to eat, but not much more, according to this short but detailed look at the new zombie, or “zed,” lifestyle. Filled with deadpan tips on how to succeed in the coming zombie apocalypse, it covers the basics of caring for decomposing flesh (“If you experience an extreme freeze… your extremities should continue to function until they fall off”), practical suggestions for overcoming obstacles, and instructions for attacking the living (“The only thing more lethal than you is you on fire!”). The blood-splattered pages contain copious diagrams, such as a zombie food pyramid, pie charts of infection methods, and instructions for operating doorknobs. The illustrations are as grossly explicit as the text is employee-handbook underplayed, making this an excellent choice for the zombie completist. From Publishers Weekly