Walkers by Gary Brandner

JetBlackDragonfly

1 day ago

2 min read

Updated: 18 hours ago

Brandner's no-frills plotting hits all the right notes with a distinctly '70s feel to it. An enjoyable romp that never lags and includes all the tropes you are looking for.

Joana is enjoying a party at her Marina Village complex with Gary, a nice guy but not the best dancer. Not like suave Peter, a failed actor turned bogus astrologer who puts to good use his $300 disco lessons, boogieing over with the line "Hey, foxy lady." Joana would rather swim in the pool, but when a cramp pulls her under, her life flashes before her eyes and a tunnel of spirits appears. Panicking, she retreats from the light, enraging the entities who say she will not survive four attacks and must return before the approaching St. John's Eve. "There is no going back! You are one of us!"

Dr. Hovde is called from his nearby condo and with Gary's CPR, she is revived. Her spiritual tale is disbelieved as a hallucination from temporary lack of oxygen to the brain, but the next day a car nearly runs her down—the driver identified as being dead for over 24 hours. The next attack is from a man who choked to death the day before. These undead 'walkers' are bent on killing Joana. Dr. Hovde follows the cases through the morgue and brings in Detective Sergeant Olivares, while Gary and Joana consult an old Cuban Bruja witch who warns she has walked through the land of the dead, and they have come to claim her.

I read this when it was published forty-six years ago, and I was thirteen. No backstories to delay the action, just a fun read that is better written than you might think. Joanna is a liberated woman who enjoys drinking Carlo Rossi and owns a Datsun; Gary wears English Leather and listens to Linda Ronstadt in his bucket seat Camaro; and the two have a laugh when she pays for dinner on her Master Charge.

The zombie-style attacks are as violent as a made-for-TV movie—which is fitting as it was filmed as From the Dead of Night starring Lindsay Wagner and Bruce Boxleitner in 1989.

Gary Brandner wrote the novel on which the classic horror film The Howling was based, as well as several sequels to it.

1980 / Paperback / 222 pages