Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection: Field Notes by Dr. Robert Twombly

By Chris Lane and Don Roff

Experience the zombie apocalypse with this illustrated survivor’s journal full of chilling tales of terror.

The year is 2012, and what starts as a pervasive and inexplicable illness ends up as a zombie infestation that devastates the world’s population. Taking the form of a biologist’s illustrated journal found in the aftermath of the attack, this pulse-pounding, suspenseful tale of zombie apocalypse follows the narrator as he flees from city to countryside and heads north to Canada, where he hopes the undead will be slowed by the colder climate. Encountering scattered humans and scores of the infected along the way, he fills his notebook with graphic drawings of the zombies and careful observations of their behavior, along with terrifying tales of survival that will keep readers on the edge of their seats right up to the very end.

Praise for Zombies

“Influenced by Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, Zombies is a genuinely chilling and logical look at a zombie invasion. The matter-of-fact descriptions of the symptoms and effects, coupled with the detailed drawings of both victims and scenarios make it a creepy read . . . . A tremendous addition to any zombie book collection.” —Sfcrowsnest

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780811877459

Book preview

January 5, 2012

Saw a flock of Black-billed magpies, 6 or 7 adults in the trees by the lake today. Very strange to see them this far west!

January 12, 2012

For the record, my name is Dr. Robert Twombly, age 32, Specialist in hematology-oncology at the Northwest Blood Treatment Center in Seattle, Washington. The NBTC lab occupies the top floor of a seven-story building adjacent to Lake Union. These are facts, and I record them because everything else right now is impossible to believe, and we need to start with the facts. I have my birding journal here, ink, etc. Here is I’ve barricaded myself in one of the lab rooms. Outside there’s some sort of infection. It happened fast. I’m hoping that if I record as much as I can, and others are doing the same, we can I don’t know, cure it? I don’t know what IT is. No one seems to know what’s happening. It feels like the end of the world.

Some of the headlines from the news, before the internet went down

Sudden Illness Fells Thousands

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Global Pandemic Freezes Commerce

Airport, Shipping, Border Lockdown

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Terrorists Lay Claim to Bio Weapon

Experts Deny Capability

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CDC Emergency Summit

Conflicting Theories, Few Answers

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Is It In the Air?

Contamination of Water, Food also Questioned

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Attacks Reported Among Infected

Guard Mobilized to Secure Hospitals

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On January 7, the first signs were the breaking news reports that people all over the world were getting sick. According to news reports, major cities have been hit hardest. Military units were mobilized to help, but of course there’s no reason why soldiers would be any more immune to illness than civilians. Breathing filtration systems have not been helping. There is no help. When casualties vastly outweigh medical personnel— when treatments are, so far, ineffective—fear spreads even faster than disease. At first the reports of attacks weren’t clearly it wasn’t clear that people weren’t just killing each other in a panic of some sort, and the details were, I mean they had to have been censored or restricted, at least at first when that was still possible.

Estimates of the infection rate kept going higher before the news shut down, and it’s difficult to figure by our remaining staff—though here where we might be able to help, more than anywhere else, people kept coming in rather than bunkering down at home—but it looks like downtown Seattle has a 90% infection rate. If the rest of the world is affected at anywhere near that. . . I don’t know that a 90% infection rate is survivable, in terms of overall population. For the other 10%, is it just a matter of time until symptoms manifest?

I have no idea why I’ve been one of the fortunate ones, or if I’ll remain that way.

Here’s where the infection stood on January 10.

I have to assume it’s worse now.

Hospitals have been at maximum capacity since day one, with patients spilling out into the streets. Same here in Seattle. What caused this? Doctors like myself have been working around the clock to find out. Blood samples from infected patients from Harborview were rushed over here and we’ve been running all known tests, but the results are coming back negative for everything—no identifiable bacteria, virus, or parasite. Yet people are stricken with severe aches and pains all over their bodies—like knives sticking into every muscle. And then things got worse.

My lab is down to a skeleton crew as many of my team have been hospitalized, or are in line waiting to be. I feel helpless. At this point we’re doing such research as we can, but I’ve also just been making up tests out of thin air, figuring if I get a result I’ll backtrack to the scientific method later. Like

Reviews for Zombies

[tohno-481779 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is all about the art. Fantastic art. The words add story to the art, but it wouldn't be worth reading only for the sake of reading.

[familiar_diversions · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Robert Twombly is a biologist who attempts to deal with the sudden zombie apocalypse by keeping a record of his experiences, in the hope that it might help others. The audiobook is set up like it's his field recording (we're told that he has several boxes of batteries - somehow he manages to lug these around with him wherever he goes). Although Twombly's account is the primary focus, he occasionally finds traveling companions whose stories he also records. This came across more like an audio drama, with occasional background sounds, than an audiobook (based on its Goodreads page, the print version may be a graphic novel?).We're told at the beginning that the plague did eventually end after a year, but based on Twombly's recordings, whatever was left of humanity probably had a rough time of it. Things got pretty bleak at times.That said, some of the things I feared would happen didn't. Due to the way the story was being told, there wasn't much "on-page" gore (although there definitely was some). Named characters died, but I never got attached enough to any of them to get all that upset, and all the named characters were adults. Child zombies made a brief appearance, but none had to be killed that I can recall. And I don't recall any pet dogs being killed, although one did have to be abandoned when it refused to leave the area. There were no zombie animals.The revelations about what caused the zombie apocalypse were somewhat annoying and basically boiled down to "processed food is bad." And as far as I could tell, no efforts were made to take into account international differences in food additive regulation.Dr. Twombly encountered a lot of different people during his journey, but even the ones he interviewed were pretty bland. This wasn't a bad audiobook, and the acting was generally pretty good, but it's not one I'll want to listen to again.(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[a_reader_of_fictions · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Okay, so I actually had never heard of this before and picked it up at random, because, hey, I love zombie stories. Anyway, turns out that this is actually an audiobook of a graphic novel. If your first reaction to that is "lol whut" then we're totally on the same page. I really never would have thought that a graphic novel would convert so well to a picture-less format, but they did a wonderful job with this, considering that I didn't figure that out until later.

There is so much zombie stuff out there, it's true. While I don't know that there's anything especially original about Zombies, at least in the audio version, I did very much enjoy it. If you like to read zombie tales, there's really no excuse to not read this, since even on audio it takes less than two hours. Oh, short audiobook, I finished you in a day and I feel so accomplished.

I'm really not going to go into the plot much, because it's the pretty basic zombie outbreak business, following one guy in his efforts to survive. What I want to talk about specifically is why I loved the audio. Stephen R. Thorne, the narrator, sounds exactly like Chris Traeger, Rob Lowe's character on the show Parks and Recreation. Seriously, even his intonation and the way he pronounces certain words are Chris all the way. So, naturally, I pictured Robert Twombly as Chris Traeger. Here are some gifs to illustrate what this would be like.

Zombies attack:


Reaction to the zombie apocalypse:



Excuse my silliness, but, seriously, I had a lot of fun with Zombies. I'd actually really love to check out the graphic novel version too, because I love graphic novels and it could be rather different.