If this had been survival of the fittest in the beginning, the characters would have been the first to die, because some of the stuff they did was so stupid it was utterly jaw dropping. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero's classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Without ever using the 'Z' word, Autumn offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. 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 those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1.

As well as the instinct toward aggression and violence.

At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities. Animated by 'phase two' of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. A bastard hybrid of War of the Worlds and Night of the Living Dead, Autumn chronicles the struggle of a small group of survivors forced to contend with a world torn apart by a deadly disease.

Autumn by david moody