The next morning,
Logan woke feeling drained, but in his mind the plot of Apocalypse Cow was fully pasteurized, and he was ready to raise the
steaks and milk the zombie subgenre for all it was worth. The barn doors of
creativity had been opened, and Logan got to work in writing his parody.
Apocalypse
Now was introduced
to the Horror fiction herd in 2013, by which time the Zombie Renaissance had
already caught the post-9/11 bull by the horns and was riding a rising tide of
postapocalyptic terror.
Authors as
diverse as Stephen King (Cell), Max Brooks (World War Z), Brian
Keene (The Rising), Mira Grant (Feed), Colson Whitehead (Zone
One), M.R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts), S.G. Browne (Breathers),
Tim Lebbon (Coldbrook), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), and Seth
Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) were successfully and
skillfully processing real-world nightmares into phenomenal works of fiction.
Filmmakers
were doing much of the branding, with 28
Days Later (Danny Boyle), Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder), Zombieland
(Rubin Fleischer), I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence), Shaun of the Dead
(Edgar Wright), Land of the Dead (George Romero), Rec (Jaume
Balagueró and Paco Plaz), and Dead Snow (Tommy Wirkola) kicking up plenty
of dust in the arena.[i]
With Apocalypse
Cow, Logan didn’t add very much to the zombie stockyard. Nevertheless, it
is hard to imagine that fans of the zombie subgenre would have much of a beef
with this tongue-in-cheek parody, having already embraced far cheesier works
dedicated to hunting out the narrative possibilities of zombified animals, with
everything from cats to kangaroos … and the occasional beaver.
As a first-time
novelist, Logan did what he cud to have some fun with the zombie trope, getting
in a couple of snorts before the real-world fell apart when the city of Wuhan
started coughing and the postapocalyptic zombie narrative became too “real” to
handle. (The undead icon continues to stumble forth, with the likes of Colony,
The Last of Us, and 28 Years Later gaining traction. But the
zombie narrative is no longer an echo of the larger cultural zeitgeist.)
And while Apocalypse Cow is far from being among the finest works of zombie fiction, Logan’s parody certainly doesn’t deserve any overly harsh criticism. You’ve got to be forgiving of the cookie cutter plot, a concept about a bioweapon created by British scientists for the purpose of destroying an enemy combatant’s food supply with what has come to be understood as a “Rage Virus” (thanks to the 28 Days Later franchise).
When infected
by the bioweapon, mammals eager to share the disease turn violent toward other
mammalian species, with humans seeming to be the most obvious target. Given
their great numbers, domesticated livestock animals make up the most obvious
part of the anti-human contingent, but the waves of infected sewer rats coming
up from the drains appear overwhelming, as well.
The virus
escapes the laboratory and finds its way into a slaughterhouse.
Cows and
sheep may not have canine teeth, but like horses they have weight and size on
their side. And then there are pigs, whose sharp tusks enable them to sow a lot
more than seeds of discontent into any gathering of barnyard workers.
By the
novel’s midpoint, the virus has expanded from field mice to city rats, from
cats to dogs, from harts to hares. Those pesky raiders of backyard bird feeders
now turn straight to the human homeowners, and end up going straight for the
nuts.
This new
mad cow disease is spread through bodily fluids and aerosolized particles in
the most unpleasant way. Biting ensures infection through saliva, as does
coughing or sneezing. But carriers also break out in nasty skin sores that ooze
viral-laden pus.
Don’t let
Puss near your boots.
The
fictional scientists of Apocalypse Cow
have also gone for yet another avenue of transmission by engineering a
behavioral modification into infected creatures, leaving them hyper-sexualized.
With bulls and goats feeling especially “horny,” human victims find themselves
on the horns of a dilemma as the spread of irony goes into narrative overdrive.
Their
commitment to biting, spitting, sneezing, urinating, and shagging makes these
zombie beasts especially contagious.
Bad dog!
This rage
virus doesn’t actually reanimate, but it kicks an infected animal’s hormones
into overdrive, leaving them so full of furry — sorry, fury — that they
don’t notice they’re injured until their hearts give out. That makes them hard
to kill.
Like most
works of pop fiction, Apocalypse Cow
sticks with story over meaning. That’s just fine. Sometimes you
need a sugar hit, right? And so, it feels unfair of me to tally up the novel’s
flat characterizations as literary deficits, but eventually a reader must grow
tired of the stereotypical figures: the journalist with daddy issues, the
slaughterhouse worker spiritually slaughtered by his work, the vegan parents too
focused on saving the world that they fail to care for their own son, the
meat-obsessed couch potato whose carnal appetites put him on the warpath with
everything botanical. And, of course, there are the cardboard kids: the
adolescent twins who seem to carry a genetic trait for bullying, and their
timid math-nerd victim.
Despite
these not-unexpected flat figures, Apocalypse Cow surprises in a good
way by including depictions of protagonists reacting to loss with grief,
withdrawal, and even despair.
That might
not seem like much, but far too many zombie novels seem to have been authored
by adolescents. In those immature imaginings, parents disappear or friends are
killed in front of them, and the survivor protagonists barely seem to notice as
they ready their guns for another raid on a warehouse retail outlet. (Many of
the titles that once vomited from the stomach of a
publisher-who-shall-not-be-named were of this ignorant and immature fold of
fiction. Just sayin’.)
In Logan’s
narrative, the infection spreads islandwide throughout Great Britain. Human
survivors are forced into camps by the military, or remain barricaded within
their homes. At this point, any discussion of “a future” for the United Kingdom
includes a consideration of how the island’s entire mammalian animal population
can be exterminated.
The idea
feels ridiculous for its impossibility, even to the protagonists themselves.
For
contemporary readers, however, the “goal” of survivability being based upon the
total elimination of all non-human life feels even more terrifying than the
notion of all animals becoming predatory. Intelligent readers understand that
ecosystems are intricate webs of connection, and the disappearance of one
species would likely lead to a collapse of the entire environment.
When Apocalypse Cow was published in 2013,
institutional “climate change denial” efforts were already firmly established, with think tanks like The
Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and the Institute of
Economic Affairs receiving money from the oil industry and incredibly wealthy
conservative advocates such as the Koch brothers. These rich donors used their
money to shape the larger discussion toward challenging rational science,
intelligence, environmentalism, and any form of “green” energy that wasn’t
nuclear.
Running
alongside this anti-life parade float was the killer clown car of the
anti-vaccination movement, the “anti-vaxxers.”
Then came
the year 2016, when climate deniers and anti-vaxxers started attaining new
heights of political power, placing clowns into the White House and Number 10. A
decade later, rational folk who respected education, compassion, and life, were
waking up with the realization that their worst nightmares were starting to
become real. All the money spent by conservative millionaires paid off, and
countless lives in the United States and around the world were lost.
As of this
writing, the U.S. federal bureaucracy has been sent to the abattoir run by a
fictional department calling itself DOGE, and mannequins have been placed into
positions of power from which they continue to devastate life-enhancing systems
of healthcare, medical research, emergency response efforts, and educational
institutions. Even the U.S. economy and the military have been weakened, while
China expands its martial power and Russia revs up the engine of its war
machine.
Reading
Logan’s novel in this current climate gives readers entirely different
emotional and intellectual responses than it likely would have had upon those
who dove into it at the time of its release.
Reading
the characters’ discuss exterminating all animal life in Apocalypse Cow comes across like a horrifyingly prescient reveal of
the near future, of our modernity in which ultra-conservative fanatics in seats
of power are de-regulating and removing environmental protections that were
meant to keep air and water clean.
This shit
is really happening.
Adding
fuel to the fire is the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, a dangerous
technology that seems only more likely to lead to the creation of a bioweapon
such as the one depicted in Logan’s novel.
By the end
of Apocalypse Cow, the virus has mutated into a form that can infect and be
directly transmitted among humans. At this point, the relatively light-hearted
parody takes a step closer to Horror. (There remains chuckle-worthy comedy in
the final chapters, especially the exchange between the British survivors and
the French defenders within the Chunnel, but by this point this witty banter is
more of a welcome relief than the main flow of storytelling that it was
throughout much of the narrative.)
As a
Horror author, Logan is effective in displaying minds given over to sexual and
physical violation. His infected human protagonists are capable of using
dialogue and a thin veneer of near-persuasive rationality to mask the deeper
insanity of their microbe-driven desires for violence.
Terrifying!
By the
novel’s closing chapters, Great Britain is blockaded by NATO so that the
infection might not spread to Ireland or the European continent. Leaders in the
EU and NATO debate whether or not to carpet bomb the island’s entire population
(human and non-human alike) out of existence.
Apocalypse
Cow ends with a
contemplation of how easily the flow of insanity could pour forth from the
isolated British island into nearby Ireland and the European continent.
The final
chapter relates a television interview between a Paris-based English journalist
and a former Labour Party politician named Tony Campbell who had proclaimed himself
the new Prime Minister of Infected Britain.
Campbell
speaks on behalf of a “new” British civilization — one with a noticeably
smaller population — as he appeals for the island nation’s European neighbors
to maintain their quarantine “for the moment” and recognize the infected
population’s right to exist unmolested while European scientists work to create
a cure.
This
closing scene establishes both the novel’s credibility as a piece of political
commentary and its role as a jumping off point for what would become a sequel
titled World War Moo.
The
sociopolitical aspect is a playful, yet relevant jab at the Western historical
project of liberal humanism.
Among the
most important principles of liberal humanism are a respect for individual
rights, and the belief that humanity is a rational species capable of making
decisions that are morally correct and capable of advancing the ethical
principles upon which legal structures are established. It is the beating heart
of our contemporary democratic structures of governance, each of which assumes
that citizens are educated and mature enough to make rational choices.[ii]
The notion
of human reason is at the forefront of the book’s final conflict, when Prime
Minster Campbell tries to persuade EU leaders away from demands for the
extermination of all life from the English isle. “As you can see,” Prime
Minister Campbell tells the television audience, “I am completely rational.”
Spreading
his arms in a gesture of reasonableness, Campbell pleas for “time” until a cure
for the virus can be achieved: “We are all aware of the debate about what
should be done with the infected, as we have been dubbed. I think it is
scandalous that governments are countenancing doomsday solutions. We are still
people. People with a horrendous illness, but people nonetheless, who need your
help, not your hatred!”
When
challenged with the claim that if they were allowed to, the infected citizens
of the English homeland would want to “rape and eat the rest of humanity,” the
Prime Minister counters with a seemingly philosophical idea: “The virus wants
to do that, not us. You can’t blame the sufferer for his illness. We are
victims….”
Campbell again
appeals for “the right to live peacefully, here in Britain, until a cure is
found. And I want to stress Britain is now peaceful. Everyone is infected, so
there is no more unpleasantness.” Now that Britain is united in the commonality
of contamination, they as one wish for no more than to be left alone while they
learn to control their new “appetites.”
The
journalist challenges Campbell’s claim by pointing out that the politician is
glossing over “the full horror of this virus,” and accuses his call for
“acceptance” as a ploy meant to buy time until someone from the island can
break quarantine and spread the disease globally.
“Can I
point out that boats of sex-crazed infected constantly attempt to cross the
English Channel and Irish Sea? That NATO jets have had to shoot down airlines,
once again full of infected, heading to the US? … If we don’t develop a cure
soon, I don’t see any other option than fire-bombing Britain and taking out all
of these zombies,” she says.
The Prime
Minister erupts in anger at the “Z-word,” finding it “offensive.”
“We are
sick, that’s all.”
With a bit
of taunting, the journalist manages to push the Prime Minister over the edge,
whereupon he snarls. His smile reveals the virus has physically changed his
teeth into jagged, shark-like projections. He ends the conversation with the
warning that no matter what the European Union nations and NATO might do: “It’s too late. … It’s
already in the house.”
Rude,
Brittannia!
This
three-page exchange effectively parodies both sides of our modern liberal
humanist assumptions, cleverly poking at the sensitivities of both liberals and
conservatives.
For the
liberal reader, the Prime Minister’s appeal for greater linguistic sensitivity challenges
our contemporary experience of “politically correct” speech acts and execute regulations
that aim to impose egalitarianism — the same sort of programs that the U.S.
Supreme Court ended with its rulings against anti-discriminatory hiring
practices and Affirmative Action, and which the second Trump Administration
(with tech trillionaire Elon Musk in the lead) purged as part of its anti-DEI
obsession.
For the
conservative reader, the Prime Minister’s claim to peace being achieved through
universal infection challenges a variety of arguments that express a longing
for “the good old days” when “diversity” and “multiculturalism” were not
guiding social or legal principles — the postwar era when the United States was
proud to call itself a socioeconomic smelting pot.
For both
camps, the hypocrisy of the shark-toothed Prime Minister and his calls for
peace must feel especially horrific. His smile reveals the truth of aggression
hiding behind his words of peace. This is especially powerful in today’s global
geopolitical environment, in which colonization is once again fashionable — so much
so that even postcolonial nations support it through hypocritical policies of
“neutrality.”
Talk about
being thick as a bric.
Making our
modern nightmare even worse, the “America First” president enacts economic
policies that reward the aggressor nation, kidnaps and murders leaders of other
nation states, and starts unnecessary wars that end up weakening his own
nation’s military readiness.
The
outlandishness of our present-day scenario guarantees that anyone reading Apocalypse
Cow today will feel the pointed tusk of Horror a bit more sharply than they
would have experienced 13 years ago when Logan’s parody was first published.[iii]
Now, its
time to change the mood and find another book.
[i] My personal list of
most-loved cinematic toros de terror must also include Pontypool (Bruce
McDonald) and The Crazies (Breck Eisner), though these did not do well
at either the box office or the video rental store.
[ii] As the philosophical pinnacle of
classical Greco-Roman thinking, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, liberal
humanism firmly believes in “progress.”
[iii] Apparently, the World War Moo sequel takes the terror to atmospheric levels, with an “intelligent” infected British military threatening to use nuclear weapons and missiles loaded with viral payloads should NATO choose to wipe out Britain’s population.