The New Zeitgeist: A Tale From The Zombie Apocalypse

By Eric Kiefer

With the official release of The New Zeitgeist, author/musician Eric Kiefer hopes that he’ll provide his fellow horror fans with something they’ve never seen before... the first “multi-media” zombie concept album.

“It’s a rock opera and a pulp fiction novella for all of the deadheads out there,” said Kiefer. “As far as I know, nothing like this has ever been done in the zombie apocalypse genre. The combination is the first of its kind.”

It’s clear that Kiefer is a writer influenced by the classics of zombie lore – George Romero, Max Brooks, Robert Kirkman. While it contains its fair share of gore and action, The New Zeitgeist series focuses more on the day-to-day realities of life during the zombie apocalypse... what people do when they’re not being chased around by zombies.

Paired with the companion music album, The New Zeitgeist: Songs from the Zombie Apocalypse, the book paints a terrifyingly three-dimensional picture of the end of the world and the life that comes afterwards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Kiefer
• Release date: Jul 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301125852

Eric Kiefer

Eric Kiefer is an award-winning wordsmith, a modern-day troubadour and a 20-year factotum.Apparently, the dude has a way with words. His debut novel “The Soft Exile” was named as one of the “Books We Loved in 2012” by the East Bay Express, and his journalism has earned awards from the New Jersey Press Association and the NJ Society of Professional Journalists. He is the writer behind “Your Seed For The Moon: A Graphic Novella.”Kiefer is also a unique one-man-band and singer-songwriter. His discography includes his funk-folk-tinged debut album, “The Spectre and the Dozer,” his poetry/music mashup, “Spoken Word For The Doomed,” and the tongue-in-cheek collection of oddities, “Life is Soup. I'm a Fork.”His work also includes the concept album, “The New Zeitgeist: Songs From The Zombie Apocalypse” and its accompanying e-book, “The New Zeitgeist: A Tale From The Zombie Apocalypse.”The wordsmith and troubadour is equally as proud of more than a decade of blue-collar work experience, which includes jobs at almost a dozen local gas stations, fast food joints and supermarkets, as well as gigs as a mall Christmas elf, a highway road flagger, a kennel attendant and a pancake-house waiter.Learn more about the artist and download awesome stuff at www.TheKiefer.com

Book preview

THE NEW ZEITGEIST:

A TALE FROM THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

ERIC KIEFER

Copyright 2013 - Eric Kiefer

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, or stored/transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author.

For Sarah… the world is ours.

The following transcript was originally broadcast as a serial for KZMB Radio

San Francisco, CA – April 29, 2024

He outlasted a 180-day zombie siege alone in a New York City recording studio. He self-recorded a CD that somehow made it coast-to-coast in post-apocalypse America. And he may be mixed up with revolutionaries who are planning to overthrow the government.

This is Ray Bukowski… Zombie-Slaying Troubadour.

And it’s only by accident that I met the man at all.

My name is Quilla Russell. I’m a senior correspondent for KZMB, the last free speech radio station in America. And – pardon my French here – I’ve seen a lot of shit since the Ragnarok Virus starting turning our world into a living abattoir. But there’s one interview that still gets to me, even after all these years…

Bukowski.

At the time we met, I was a rookie KZMB reporter covering the U.S.-Canada border riots in upstate New York. The zombie apocalypse was only a few months old at that point, but to most of us survivors, it felt like it had been going on for years.

On my journey back to San Francisco, I stopped to spend a few days at one of our safe locations… a repurposed community theater in Zanesville, Ohio. Life in Zanesville was a world apart from the chaos that I had seen in New York and California. With a small-town population (and a Bronsonesque gun-to-citizen ratio), Zanesville had been spared the worst of the Ragnarok outbreak. Behind the town’s perimeter guard posts there was a friendly, Midwestern fatalism in the air, as if the zombie plague was just another twister that would eventually pass through.

There weren’t that many towns that welcomed travelers in those days, and the Zanesville Community Theater was a much-needed sanctuary. In exchange for a safe place to sleep and fill our canteens, we kept Zanesville supplied with news. In the evenings, two hours before sundown, everyone in town was invited gather around the theater’s stage and listen to the outsiders share their stories. These were gatherings that drew hundreds of people… men… women… children.

And that’s where I first met Ray Bukowski.

When I first laid my eyes on the man, I didn’t recognize who he was. He was a small guy – Napoleon height – with an average build and the banal but slightly-pleasant looks of the boy next-to-the-boy-next-door. His hair was cut in a close-cropped, military-style ‘do - hard to grab hold of and easy to keep clean on the road – which made him almost indistinguishable from anyone else from behind. And really, he looked like every other drifting musician that I’d ever run into… a militarized busker… a guitar-wielding Indiana Jones Jr.

It was only when I overheard that unmistakable voice that I realized he was the man behind The New Zeitgeist.

Amateurish - but with incredible heart - Bukowski’s only known recording was first discovered at the Sound Fox recording studio, shortly after New York City was declared clear of infestation. It’s still unknown who found The New Zeitgeist and started spreading it around, but within a year, copies of the album had made it all the way to California. His songs painted a harrowing story about survival during the zombie outbreak… 180 days alone, trapped in a recording studio with only his music and a million stenchers to keep him company. It was exactly what people needed… a symbol of the perseverance of art in the face of the apocalypse. After all, if art could survive, so could we.

But none of that matters to Ray Bukowski.

After all, being famous doesn’t have the same benefits that it once did. Bukowski has never given an interview. He’s never appeared on television. He’s never received a single dollar from The New Zeitgeist. In fact, until very recently, he was unaware that anybody had found his CD in the first place.

For the past year Bukowski has been earning his daily bread as a traveling musician, quite literally singing for his dinner. Such is the life of an artist these days. The music industry as we knew it was wiped out during the Week of Sorrow, and although some vestiges of American free enterprise are finally beginning to creep back into