PRAISE FOR GEORGE A. ROMERO AND DANIEL KRAUS’S THE LIVING DEAD

“A horror landmark and a work of gory genius marked by all of Romero’s trademark wit, humanity, and merciless social observations. How lucky are we to have this final act of grand guignol from the man who made the dead walk?”

—Joe Hill

“Will play out on the inside of your skull long after you’ve finished it.”

—Clive Barker

“Panoramic and sweeping, a smorgasbord of the undead, a book that will give even the most ardent zombie lovers their fix.”

—New York Times

“The definitive account of the zombie apocalypse. It expands, clarifies, and concludes a tale more than fifty years in the telling, and does so with wit, style, and a deep sense of commitment.”

—Washington Post

“A zombie tale for the ages. This is a rare gem of a story, one that pays homage to its varied source material, while also standing on its own merits. A true gift to horror fans.”

—Library Journal (Starred review, a Top 10 Horror Novel of 2020)

“The last testament of the legendary filmmaker is a sprawling novel about the zombie apocalypse that dwarfs even his classic movie cycle.… A spectacular horror epic laden with Romero’s signature shocks and censures of societal ills.”

—Kirkus

“Every zombie movie lives in the shadow of Romero, but he never got the budget to work at the scale he deserved. Fortunately, Daniel Kraus delivers the epic book of the dead that Romero began. That shadow just got a whole lot bigger.”

—Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires

“If Night of the Living Dead was the first word in the dead rising field, The Living Dead is the last word. A monumental achievement.”

—Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual

“A posthumous zombie novel as urgent as Romero’s ’60s classics.… There are so many sympathetic protagonists that it’s impossible to predict who will survive and who will be eaten.”

—Los Angeles Times

ALSO BY DANIEL KRAUS

NOVELS

Whalefall

The Ghost That Ate Us

Bent Heavens

Blood Sugar

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch: Volume Two: Empire Decayed

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch: Volume One: At the Edge of Empire

Scowler

Rotters

The Monster Variations

The Teddies Saga

They Threw Us Away

They Stole Our Hearts

They Set the Fire

WITH GEORGE A. ROMERO

The Living Dead

WITH SHÄRON MOALEM

Wrath

WITH GUILLERMO DEL TORO

Trollhunters

The Shape of Water

WITH LISI HARRISON

Graveyard Girls

1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War

Scream for the Camera

Season’s Eatings

GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Cemeterians

Trojan

Year Zero: Volume 0

The Autumnal

ALSO BY GEORGE A. ROMERO

WITH DANIEL KRAUS

The Living Dead

EDITED BY JONATHAN

MAYBERRY AND ROMERO

Nights of the Living Dead: An Anthology

WITH SUSANNA SPARROW

Dawn of the Dead

Martin

FOR CHILDREN:

The Little World of Humongo Bongo

UNION SQUARE & CO. and the distinctive Union Square & Co. logo are trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Union Square & Co., LLC, is a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Text © 2024 New Romero Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners, are used for editorial purposes only, and the publisher makes no claim of ownership and shall acquire no right, title, or interest in such trademarks by virtue of this publication.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-4549-5089-9

ISBN 978-1-4549-5090-5 (e-book)

For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium purchases, please contact specialsales@unionsquareandco.com.

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Cover design by Patrick Sullivan and Igor Satanovsky

Cover art: illustration by Evangeline Gallagher © 2024 Union Square & Co., LLC; MaxyM/Sutterstock.com (paper)

Interior design by Rich Hazelton

Interior illustration (eye): bogadeva1983/Shutterstock.com: 1, 169

For Suzanne Descrocher-Romero

COAUTHOR NOTE

For this novel’s portrayal of Cajun speech, I have taken my cue from Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast, in which he writes:

Clearly, to write all of the Cajun dialogue in this book … would exhaust the reader and prove, in the end, disrespectful to Cajuns. The true color and dignity of their speech would inevitably be lost in translation. Therefore I’ve chosen a more limited portrayal, faithfully omitting the th sound and including some of the altered grammar without laying things on too thick. This approach serves to consistently remind the reader that Cajuns do, in fact, sound different from most Americans without loading the pages down with an impenetrable soup of dialogue.

—Daniel Kraus

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Coauthor Note

Hog Guzzle ~ or ~ Keeping Track of Nasty-Sugar

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

Queen Cottonmouth ~ or ~ Red Witch Triumphant

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Authors