Entombed: only one way out

Brian Keene is a writer that I picked up on a friends suggestion, what was presented as another pulpy end of the world zombie apocalypse, quickly gave away to believable, flawed characters and a raw writing style. He is a writer that has taken a tired premise and rejuvenated it into a lurching literary frankenstein.

“Entombed” brings us the story of a small group of survivors of the zombie apocalypse, that have locked themselves in a bomb shelter turned museum. The survivors are a motley mix of blue collar workers from the museum and hotel guests. Without any food and with no visible escape as the exits are swarmed with the undead.

The survivors begin to consider cannibalism as the only viable alternative to a slow death by starvation. The main course is our embattled protagonist who is given advance warning by his friend and seeks to escape the shelter. What develops is a spectacularly grim game of cat and mouse with the protagonists grasp of sanity fraying with each encounter of survivors. It’s different from his previous works as he seems less concerned with setting the atmosphere, so a lot of the novella is action.  It’s also a fun read because the zombies are only a backdrop to the horror of the story, they are rarely mentioned and never seen inside of the shelter.