Okay, okay, I know, you’ve heard of this guy before. He’s not perfect, though, and I’ve heard people say different periods of his writing were better than others. In fact, I think he says so himself in his book, On Writing. Anyway, this is one of his many superb stories, and it’s found in The Living Dead anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. I’ve got a long reading list, as you saw in my post “Drooling Over My To Read Pile,” and it was a time drain the past two weeks reading short stories that didn’t meet my requirements of excellence for this series. It’s good to explore new writers, and this series has found quite a few that I’m excited to follow, but sometimes it feels good to pick up a story by a trusted author. A few months back, I spotlighted a story by Dan Simmons, “This Year’s Class Picture,” which is also in this anthology.
I read a couple more stories that were good, but not the five-star quality
The first thing that stood out about this story was the way Mr. King uses dialogue to take you from reading a story to feeling like you can see and hear what they’re saying. Even though there is action and horror, there is still an emotional investment in the main character, who loves her husband and wants their baby to have some peace in a world turned upside down. Her husband supported her by wanting her to feel she deserved the best kind of life. I liked this line on page 240:
“More than a lobsterman is what I mean to be, and more than a lobsterman’s wife is what I intend for you to be. You’re going to have a house on the mainland.”
‘Yes, Jack.’
“And I’m not going to have any friggin Chevrolet.’ He drew in a deep breath and took her hands in his. ‘I’m going to have an Oldsmobile.’”
Another way that Mr. King made this story come alive was in his description of the zombies. As a writer, I’m constantly trying to grasp at straws to come up with descriptions that are not cliche, and which powerfully show what I imagine to be terrifying about zombies. He has a lot of such descriptions, but one in particular was on page 244:
“…women with their hair teased into dirt-clogged beehives where worms and beetles still squirmed and crawled, their faces alternately vacuous and informed with a kind of calculating, idiotic intelligence.”
Notice the movement in his description, of the beetles and worms squirming inside the women’s hair, and how he aptly creates a living picture of them looking around–you know the look–like they’re hungry, but they’ll only know what for when they see it.
Mr. King has also collaborated with his son, Joe Hill, to write a book 
Have you read any of these books or stories? What did you think? Do you have a favorite story by these authors?