Kody Boye - Sunrise

First and foremost, I want to say that the idea of the ‘zombie apocalypse’ isn’t something new. Since Night of the Living Dead and its subsequent sequels rolled around in the late 1960s, it seems like everyone and their dog has been writing about the end of the world. Rhiannon Frater and her As the World Dies trilogy; David Moody with his Autumn novels; Max Brooks and his Zombie Survival Guide; Wayne Simmons and his novel Drop Dead Gorgeous; Travis Adkins with his Twilight of the Dead series and the late Z.A. Recht with his Morningstar Strain —look up the word ‘zombie’ on Amazon to see just how widespread this phenomena is. How many results does it return? About 42,000. To say that the zombie apocalypse is popular would be an understatement.

As a child of the late nineties and early two-thousands, I got to experience the maiden voyage of the twenty-first century’s zombie craze. Dawn of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s remake, came out in 2004. The first time I saw it I was in shock and awe, and it was the very thing that made me write a zombie trilogy that has since (and gladly) been retired. But it wasn’t in 2004 that the idea for Sunrise came around. No. It was later, in 2009, when I first read Brian Keene’s Dead Sea , that the idea for Sunrise popped into my head.

What idea was that, you asked? It was a zombie story told from a gay man’s point of view.

Keene had successfully created what I believe is a realistic scenario in which the zombie apocalypse would happen. The events were traumatic, the writing fluid, the story gripping—he’d done everything I believe any good zombie novelist would do: create a non-stop zombie apocalypse story. However—while his main protagonist was gay, I felt as though we weren’t ‘in’ a gay man’s head. This frustration, combined with my teenage desire to read more about young men (or just men) who had my problems and my desires, was what spurred me on to write Sunrise.

I pulled this novel from circulation after Horror Realm 2009 because I believed it needed work, and by God it did. Since then, there’s been a bit of reconstruction regarding everything about this novel. Certain plot elements have changed, Characters have been renamed. Scenes have been added or taken out depending on their need. All of this, however, was to give you the novel you hold in your hands now— Sunrise: The Revised and Expanded Edition —and while other zombie novels with gay leads have since been released (Asylum by my friend Mark Allan Gunnells for instance,) I still believe Sunrise was one of the genre’s first.

The horror community, though often eager to accept new aspects of the genre, has sometimes been not so accepting of gay leads in novels, especially zombie novels. This isn’t to say that this community is not going to accept this novel. It does, however, mean that choice people may not be keen to read this. And to tell you the truth, I’m fine with that. Sunrise was written primarily for myself, but also for the gay community. The last thing I intended to write Sunrise as was the traditional ‘zombie’ novel. That isn’t to say this novel is without its scares, no, but it’s not a constant run-and-gun-‘em book. This novel is first, and foremost, about the characters—the people whom, through choice circumstances, have been united under one banner.

To the horror fans: thank you for at least giving this book a try.

To the gay community: thank you for your continued support.

And for the one person I wrote this book most explicitly for (me): Thank you for sticking with this. You’ve come a long ways since 2009 and this novel is better for it.

Enough rambling—now: on to the story!

There comes a point in everyone’s life in which they change. Be it their age, their person, their family, their friends or their world, things come about and, eventually, things go awry. It doesn’t necessarily matter who you are. You can be anyone you want to be in whichever frame of mind you exist. All that matters is that regardless of what happens or who it happens to, you stay true to yourself and be thankful for the things you have.

Sometimes, if you’re not thankful for the things you have, they can disappear completely.

That happened to Dakota Travis the day his neighbor, Steve Earnest, burst into the adoption center and pulled him toward his apartment.

What’re you doing! Dakota had cried.

They’re here! Steve had replied.

Who’s here?

The zombies from New York.

Little more than a month later, not a whole lot had changed.

Seated inside a nearly-abandoned apartment building in a heavily-fortified, one-bedroom flat, Dakota looked up just in time to see Steve saunter out of the bedroom, shirt stretched forward to hold the contents of the medicine cabinet. Pills, ointments, toothpastes, razors and other necessities—there wasn’t a whole lot they could use unless they wanted to shave or brush their teeth.

“Is this it?” Dakota asked.

“This is it,” Steve nodded, a sigh escaping his lips.

Dakota closed his eyes.

Great. Just great.

It wouldn’t be long before they would have to run into town—on foot, no less.

“Hey,” Steve said, clapping Dakota’s shoulder, “we’ll be fine for a few more days. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“We still have cans,” Dakota said, pushing himself off the couch.

“And we still have all that bagged shit.”

“You always did eat too much junk food.”

Steve laughed and brushed a hand through his hair. “I did.”

Old habits didn’t necessarily matter anymore. They ate any and everything they could get their hands on, regardless of fat content or nutritional value. Distinguishing one thing from another based solely on a label was useless nowadays, especially when everything needed to be rationed to the point where it was nearly obsolete. They’d both slimmed down, based solely on what they’d been eating—cold canned beans, chips, pretzels and the occasional vegetable.

Not sure what else to say or do, Dakota made his way toward the window. There, he sighed, took a deep breath, then looked back at Steve before parting the curtain.

Outside, a lone figure shambled on.

The zombie had not a care in the world.

“I don’t like how there’s been so few of them,” Dakota whispered, shivering as Steve brushed up alongside him.

“Neither do I,” Steve said.

“Where do you think the rest of them went?”

“I don’t know. I hate to say it, but I hope some sorry bastard lured them off. At least that’ll save us the trouble of having to dodge around them.”

“I guess.” Dakota turned his head down, letting his long, stringy bangs shield his eyes from the waning light of the midafternoon sun. He traced the whispers of dust on the windowsill and tried not to think about how, were they not in their current situation, the window would be clean. Steve had always been a good home keeper, regardless of what some might’ve thought based on his scruffy, unkempt appearance.