Dark & Twisty

I finished Dan Simmons' The Terror recently.  I liked it alot.  It was a bit long, but I never got slogged down in it.  I happened to be in my very small, very crappy local bookstore a few weeks ago and picked up an anthology called The Living Dead.  The first story in this book was "This Year's Class Picture."  by Dan Simmons.  I sat down in the mall and started reading this story.  My wife was in JC Penney buying shoes or something, which I cared nothing about.  As I studied the story, I found it very interesting.

The premise is that the world has ended for living life, for the most part. It never mentions why which in most zombie stories isn't that important.  The main character is in a school with her dead fourth graders.  She has been teaching her zombie class for a long time which is illustrated by the mention of the class pictures from various years going from professional to polaroid.  She finds a new student (zombie of course) trying to get into her compound.  She makes him part of her class. 

The teachers attempt is to teach the dead students.  She uses some Skinnerian training techinques of positive reinforcement.  However, she is never really successful.  After a terrifying onslaught of zombies that she fights off.  She lets her class go only to realize that they had learned.  She saw several smiling at the camera from the picture.  Then her class returns ready to learn.  She starts to teach again.

This story kept me wondering what was going to happen.  I didn't know if the teacher would be eaten when her class turned on her and that would be part of the picture or what.  I enjoyed the story.  It gave much to think about that zombie stories don't have to be all gory and death to all humans.  It also doesn'thave to be death to all living dead.  This story wasn't The Terror, but it was good and gave me much to ponder. 

Yea, Dan Simmons.