Review of Rebecca Besser’s “Undead Drive-Thru”

Undead Drive-Thru is a novella that tells the tale of Betty Jones, whose husband Sam comes stumbling home one night after having apparently been abducted and experimented on, or so it seems.  Before she can even help him, he is dead on the floor.  Moments later, he is back on his feet, lunging at her, possessed by the desire to feed on her flesh.  Betty understands immediately what must be done…and no, it’s not what you think.

A year later and Betty, now known as Aunt-B, is opening up an old diner with the help of her nephew, John, two hired teenage girls, Ky and Colleen, and Jose, another young man.   At the same time, Aunt-B and John are trying to keep a dark little secret from the hired help and the rest of the world.  Because you see, Aunt-B couldn’t imagine being without Sam, even though he is dead, and she has plans of moving him from the basement of her house over to the basement of the diner before it’s up and running, so she can keep an eye on him during working hours.  The problem is that Sam occasionally gets out of his prison, and his yearning for flesh tends to become a serious issue.

This was a fun little zombie story that I was able to read in a little over an hour.  While brief, we get enough background on the characters that none of them felt wooden or artificial and the author even manages to give Sam a bit of a personality; a zombie that looks like it is smiling at you, which is a pretty disturbing proposition.  I enjoyed this one, though I think John rubbed me the wrong way in more than one instance.  While I get that he is trying to stay out of jail (he is on probation for theft, I believe) and as such blindly obeys his Aunt to keep in her good graces, I felt he was perhaps a bit spineless, which made it hard for me to feel any sympathy or empathy for him.  But he, like the teenage girls and especially Aunt-B were quite vivid characters for such a short amount of “screen time” as it were.  Overall, a creepy, entertaining tale that I could imagine translating into a movie or even an episode from Tales from the Crypt.

Undead Drive-Thru can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Drive-Thru-Rebecca-Besser/dp/1611990092/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324756066&sr=1-1