Purification(2004)

David Moody

A bastard hybrid of War of the Worlds and Night of the Living Dead, the Autumn series chronicles the struggle survivors are forced to contend with in a world torn apart by a deadly disease. 99% of the population of the planet has been killed in less than 24 hours. Animated by "phase two" of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, the bodies soon regain their most basic senses and abilities—sight, hearing, locomotion—as well as the instinct toward aggression and violence. Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead seem to have only one single goal—to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1...

In Autumn: Purification, the heroes from the original Autumn novel and Autumn: The City work together to survive in this horrifying new world.

Without ever using the ‘Z' word, the Autumn series offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of a George Romero film with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days Later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.