Horror Book Review: Autumn: Aftermath (David Moody)

One day 99% of the world just died…choking to death on their own blood. An airborne virus, no-one could see it & no-one could fight it. In an instant humanity was almost wiped out completely, those that weren’t affected hid away frightened & lost.

Then the dead got back up…

At first they wandered lost, not seeing & not knowing oblivious to those that had survived the virus but soon they began to change.

Suddenly survivors were under attack from the masses of the dead. With no clear motivation they gravitated to where our remnants hid, the slightest noise creating a chain reaction that saw hundreds & thousands all moving towards the same place. As the days passed, the threat increased & the dead began to learn…

The final book in the Autumn series’ main theme is about life carrying on afterwards. The dead are still plentiful but decomposition has made the risks far less for those that survived the virus. With winter in full flow the cold is freezing the still-moving dead in their tracks. The survivor’s just need to wait…a little longer & there will be no threat from the walking dead anymore.

Aftermath focuses on many of the survivors we’ve met in previous books while adding a few new to spice things up. Characters that didn’t have much to do or say before are thrust into leading roles here while others are turned from heroes to villains. This might seem a bit drastic but the loss of hope & the months of isolation have had a serious effect on those that have tried to carry on.

For the first time talk about the future & what can be done to make it a better place is brought up. The light at the end of the tunnel might be faint but it is there for some.

Rather then just tread old ground regarding the dead Moody chooses to evolve them one final time. I won’t go into details here but it gives the survivors that understand it even more hope. The decomposition and the effect that has the landscape is as descriptive as always. Every squelch is felt & it’s so believable you can almost smell the rotting corpses.

We’ve dealt with the breakdown of order within groups before but Aftermath does an incredible job of showcasing that from a more archaic way of thinking. The woman are to cook & be used to make the next generation while the men drink & ‘protect’ them. It’s a horrific & uncomfortable read especially as it comes from a character that had been incredibly admirable in a previous book.

Aftermath finishes the Autumn story well, many have died along the way but those that have survived have at last some kind of hope for a future even if it’s going to be an uphill struggle.