Zombies: Why World War Z was a Terrible Mistake

I meet Thomas Quinn near his home in the west end. "Our flat is being renovated," he tells me over a steaming cup of coffee. "It feels like my whole life is under reconstruction, to be honest. But I guess that is the way everyone feels -- since the war."



He looks away. His hair has recently gone grey -- I know this because the photographs I'd seen of him taken just before the events of January showed him with long luscious dark hair down to his shoulders. I'd expected a male model type -- mature but strikingly handsome. The man in front of me is a husk. Hollowed out. Tired.



But then, isn't everyone?

"No one had any idea what was going to happen," he tells me. "We thought it would be straightforward. The kind of book you read in a few hours, days at the most. Entertaining and fun. The whole zombie thing..."

He looks out of the window. I have to throw water in his face to get his attention back.

"...the zombies took everyone by surprise. No one had any idea just how...."

What?

"...just how bloody boring they are!"

He gulped his coffee down and gestured to the waiter. Three Portuguese tarts arrived at our table, oozing custard.

"The problem is, zombies don't realy do anything. They stagger about. They want to kill you, sure. But anyone able to get up to a brisk jog is able to run away from them. you have to be pretty dim or extremly unlucky to be caught by a zombie. So where is the dramatic tension? The book is just page after page of shootemup gun fetishism. I swear there were times I didn't know whether I was reading a novel or playing an XBox 360 game."

The Portuguese tarts are gone. Mere crumbs are left on the plate. And a little custard round Thomas's mouth.

"Look, don't take my word for it. Talk to Walbank. You know, the magician? He knows more about zombies than any of us. Some say he has special power over them, that that is why he wanted us to read World War Z because it is like his bible or something. I don't believe that though. i think he was just like the rest of us: sucked in by the terrible Hollywood hype into buying a dull book simply because Brad Pitt had turned it into a mildly entertaining film partly shot in Glasgow."



I ask him where I can find "Walbank", but Thomas claims he doesn't know. Then he gets angry.

"Look., why don't you just leave it? None of us are proud of reading that book. Those of us who got away with just dipping in and reading a few pages -- and the synopsis on Amazon -- well they are the lucky ones. Damn it. You've got to see it from our perspective. We were just trying to survive...."

He all but throws me out of the cafe. As I run down the street to get away from him he throws a brick after me. Wrapped around it is a sheet of paper, secured with string. I take off the paper and read the message that is written on it.

"Max Brooks is crap," it says. I can only shake my head and walk off.