Alice in Zombieland

By Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook

They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank—the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. All of them were covered in Alice's now cold and congealed blood, which made them even tastier looking to poor hungry Alice.

When little Alice follows the Black Rat down into the gaping darkness of an open grave, she falls and falls. And soon finds herself in an undead nightmare of rotting flesh and insanity. Venturing further into this land of zombies and monsters, she encounters characters both creepy and madcap along the way. But there's something else troubling poor Alice: her skin is rotting and her hair is falling out. She's cold. And she has the haunting feeling that if she remains in Zombieland any longer, she might never leave.

Can Alice escape Zombieland before the Dead Red Queen catches up to her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Mar 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781402256226

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) was an English children’s writer. Born in Cheshire to a family of prominent Anglican clergymen, Carroll—the pen name of Charles Dodgson—suffered from a stammer and pulmonary issues from a young age. Confined to his home frequently as a boy, he wrote poems and stories to pass the time, finding publication in local and national magazines by the time he was in his early twenties. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 1854, he took a position as a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, which he would hold for the next three decades. In 1865, he published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, masterpiece of children’s literature that earned him a reputation as a leading fantasist of the Victorian era. Followed by Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Carroll’s creation has influenced generations of readers, both children and adults alike, and has been adapted countless times for theater, film, and television. Carroll is also known for his nonsense poetry, including The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and “Jabberwocky.”

Book preview

Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook

Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover design by Will Riley/Sourcebooks

Cover and internal illustrations by Sir John Tenniel and Brent Cardillo

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was originally published in book form in 1865.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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Originally published in Winnipeg in 2009 by Coscom Entertainment.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cook, Nickolas

Alice in Zombieland / Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook ; illustrations by Sir John Tenniel and Brent Cardillo.

p. cm.

Originally published: Winnipeg : Coscom Entertainment, 2009.

1. Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. 2. Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898—Parodies, imitations, etc. 3. Zombies—Fiction. I. Tenniel, John, Sir, 1820-1914. II. Cardillo, Brent. III. Title.

PS3603.O57442A45 2011

813’.6—dc22

2010046785

Intestines

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter I: Down the Dead-Hole

Chapter II: The Pool of Blood

Chapter III: A Zombie-Race and a Long Tale

Chapter IV: The Black Rat Sends in the Undead

Chapter V: Advice from the Conqueror Wurm

Chapter VI: The Tiny Corpse and Pepper

Chapter VII: An Undead Tea-Party

Chapter VIII: The Queen’s Graveyard Croquet-Ground

Chapter IX: The Corpse Turtle’s Story

Chapter X: The Zombie Lobster Quadrille

Chapter XI: Who Stole the Meat Pies?

Chapter XII: Alice’s Resurrection

About the Authors

About the Illustrators

Back Cover

Chapter I

Down the Dead-Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Her sister had seemed very displeased about having to accompany her against her will down to the graveyard that sprawled adjacent to their home. The graveyard, her favorite place to play, was all tangled gray vines and tilting ancient tombstones, bearing names she’d never heard before, though she supposed they must be family, in some distant past before she had been born. Alice loved to stroll through the graveyard, to pick the funereal flowers from old grassy knolls where someone dead most certainly must lie beneath. For her, there was always adventure in a graveyard.

Despite her sister’s nasty disposition, it would have been a perfectly cloudy, chilly day in her favorite play place had she not been so hungry, for her sister had refused to have tea before angrily bringing Alice outside. Tea and a sandwich would be nice. Perhaps a nice meat pie, if the cook could be bothered to bake one up. For their cook made the best meat pies in the world and Alice could think of no better meal than a delicious hot meat pie.

As if being ravenous wasn’t enough, now her sister was also refusing her the joy of perusing the ancient stones, and had hold of her arm while she read such dull material. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book, thought Alice without pictures or conversation?

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the chill of the bleak day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a sleek Black Rat with shining dark eyes ran straight from a nearby tomb and quite close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Black Rat say to itself, Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late! (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but, when the Black Rat actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice broke from her sister’s grip and started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rat with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the graveyard after it, despite her sister’s angry yells for her to come straight back to her this instant, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down into a gaping open grave. Clods of gray dirt sat all around its edge and a displeasing smell seemed to waft up from it.

For a moment, Alice stood beside the grave, her sister’s voice far away and still frightening for all the distance, deciding whether she’d dare jump in after the strange Black Rat. In another moment, down went Alice after it, hardly considering how in the world she was to get out again.

Then she was tumbling forward into the stinking, black grave which went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down and down. On the way down, she hit her head upon the leaning tombstone, and tears filled her eyes for a moment as she tumbled forward.

Either the grave was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she checked the smarting place on her head and pulled back a small hand coated with bright red blood. Her head hurt quite a bit, but as there was nothing to do but cry or get along with her adventure, she chose to stifle her tears and smile through the pain bravely. Then she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the deep, deep grave, and noticed that they were filled with strange and frightening things. In some places, she could see rotting bones poking from the dark soil; in others skulls leered at her as she fell by them, missing teeth giving silent voice perhaps to warn her back from what lie at the bottom of the grave. It made her feel quite out of sorts to see such emblems of death sitting so close next to her.

Well! thought Alice to herself, after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house! (Which was very likely true.)

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time? she said aloud. I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think— (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) —yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to? (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Presently she began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think— (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all the right word) — but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?" (And she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy curtseying as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.

Down, down, down. The pain in her head had turned into a deep throb, but she continued to ignore it and held in her tears some more. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. Dinah’ll miss me very much tonight, I should think! (Dinah was the cat.) I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that’s very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder? And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? and sometimes, Do bats eat cats? for, you see, as she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat? when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of cold sodden earth that smelled of dead things. Nasty, pale worms writhed throughout the small

Reviews for Alice in Zombieland

[arkrayder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies you might then enjoy this.If you've ever read Alice in Wonderland you'll already know how wonderfully strange it all is. So why add Zombies? Where will the Zombie adaptation franchises end?! The last chapter feels a little rushed but all the rest of the book is brimming with gory subversions.

[wonderlandgrrl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not one of my favorite classic lit/horror crossovers - only reason I gave it 3 stars is that I love AiW so much

[susangeiss · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fun, fun, fun!!!

[aelizabethj · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The illustrations were intriguing, but the story as a whole was disappointing.

[sensitivemuse · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The book certainly had its’ fun moments! Zombieland was well written and well thought out. It certainly put a funny twist on Wonderland (even though Wonderland is quirky to begin with anyway). It’s definitely not for the squeamish, as body parts are flying everywhere and Alice gets a craving for a bite of flesh once very so often. The characters are all there, they’re just zombified. The only difference I have seen is instead of a White Rabbit, you have a Black Rat instead. (If I am wrong, forgive me, it’s been a while since I’ve read the original Alice in Wonderland). The zombie element does not really get in the way of the plot, so nothing much has really changed. My favorite moment was the croquet game between the Queen and Alice - it’s more of a croquet game with body parts which was laughable and was fun to read through. Even though it was a fun idea, I felt like there just could have been more to this story. There just wasn’t enough to it that I could fully enjoy the book. To me, it felt as if they just copied and pasted the zombie bits of the story and added it to Alice in Wonderland, and just changed the title appropriately. It just felt like a very haphazard read. Perhaps what I wanted to see was, a twist to the plot to enhance the zombie aspect of the novel. Not just zombies added. It did feel like all you got was a simple add on to the story (something similar to an expansion pack for a game). More could be done with the combination but sad to say, there really wasn’t anything to it. It was a clever idea, and it had potential, but a lot more could have been done with this book. Instead, what you got was a few cut and paste moments of zombie goodness. Some parts were good and fun to read, but it just seemed to be lacking in something big to make this book exceptionally good and read worthy.

[jcmontgomery · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had a lot of fun reading this. You may not. It depends on your sensibilities and expectations.First of all, this is a humor book. The reader is asked to lighten up and go along for the ride. To have fun and not to dwell too heavily on the fact that there is little originality to the story except for the characterizations and some of the settings.As some reviewers have noted, and criticized Cook for, is the sense that he did not make this work his own as much as Seth Grahame-Smith did with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.It’s obvious from the beginning that he took Carroll’s work and merely altered it.Either he did not feel the need to reinvent, or this is a slapped out, bandwagon jumping effort to take advantage of the success of the types of books I listed above.Even the publisher acknowledges this in an offhand way:“A fresh and hilarious new zombie mash-up, bringing the hottest format on the humor shelf to a beloved classic, complete with zombie-fied updates to the renowned illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. Sure to be a major hit with humor, Alice and zombie enthusiasts everywhere!”Uh, I’m not sure about that last part.Yes, people who spend time in the humor section of the bookstore will like this book. Zombie enthusiasts should like the tack Cook takes with the story. But diehard Alice fans? I’m not so sure. From what I’ve seen around the web, not all were thrilled with Cook’s efforts.I made it easy on myself and just read expecting nothing more than to have a giggle at Alice’s adventures through a dark and disturbing world. It was a fun read, but challenging at times.The review copy I received was very raw. The errors in this unfinished product got to me, especially toward the end of the book. This however is the nature of the beast when dealing with an uncorrected proof. So I cannot fault the writer or the story heavily for things that should be fixed by the time this review is published.If you are expecting something along the lines of what Grahame-Smith as done, forget it. Not even close.However, taken for what it is, a humorous take on a classic - albeit a dark one, you may just like it.If you are expecting a light, fun, humorous and horrifying read (especially the last chapter as it gets gory) – you will like this.I do have a problem recommending it, because when it comes to humor, you can’t please all the people all the time. What tickles my funny bone, won’t necessarily do the same to others.It was dark, disturbing, creepy, and humorous and I will be passing it around at work as there are a few who asked to read it once I was finished.