Just as some people think a hundred men could beat up a gorilla, some people also think you can avoid a slow-moving zombie by just walking around them.
It is for those of us who know better that Jacy Morris writes the zombie apocalypse novels in his ongoing series This Rotten World.
In the following email interview, Morris talks about what inspired and influenced this series, and its newest installment, This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels (hardcover, paperback, Kindle)
For people who haven’t read the previous books, what is the This Rotten World series about, and when and where do these stories take place?
The This Rotten World series is my zombie lovechild. At its core, the series is about survival and a diverse cast of characters coming together to stay alive. Most of them don’t.
The story takes place in modern times, showing you the chaos of the start of the zombie apocalypse, and it follows the characters as the world crumbles around them. Many people die, especially people who you thought might make it, but that’s the joy of zombie apocalypse fiction.
The first five books took place in Portland, Oregon, my stomping ground. The first This Rotten World was the second book I wrote, so I wanted something familiar I could use. Books 6-11, and eventually 12, all take place in a more rural setting, starting in Wyoming and then snaking its way westward.
And then, for people who have read them, and can thus ignore me writing SPOILER ALERT in all caps, what is This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels about, and when does it take place in relation to the previous installment, This Rotten World 10: Our Bikes Run On Blood?
Death On Wheels occurs a month or so after the events of Our Bikes Run On Blood. Our biker gang, who has finally seemed to get a handle on the apocalypse, discovers that sometimes survival can be too much of a good thing.
At the start of Death On Wheels, The Locusts (the biker gang for the uninitiated) are traveling in a huge convoy with a thousand people. Needless to say, resources like food and fuel are scarce, and the leader of our biker gang, a ruthless woman named Jaiyama, thinks it might be a good idea to thin the herd. Her opportunity arrives when they reach the town of Idaho Falls, which is mostly dead. Under the guise of making a home for themselves, they attempt to lay siege to the town, and it does not go well.
When in the process of writing Our Bikes Run On Blood did you come up with the idea for This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels, and what inspired this particular book’s plot?
I knew there was going to be a time jump. It would be rather bland to see the Locusts go from house to house, giving people the choice to join up or die and then scavenging their house to the studs, so I needed to get to the next key point in their journey. I had intended to have the events of Death On Wheels play out in Our Bikes Run on Blood, but it would have been a massive book if I went that route. So, two books came out of it.
As you said, This Rotten World is set during a zombie apocalypse. But are the zombies the slow-moving undead like in George Romero’s movies or are they the fast moving infected like in 28 Days Later and those films?
Listen, I visually love the idea of running zombies, but the reality is no one survives if zombies can run. When you look at things like Return Of The Living Dead and the Dawn Of The Dead remake…no one makes it. I think it’s important to have that kernel of hope, that idea that if we just all get our shit together, we can make it through this. While I love all zombie media, in the end, the slow ones are more terrifying to me because you have the time to think and plan, and if you do it right, you can live…but you probably won’t.
One of the things I love about This Rotten World is it allows me to show just how society can fall apart with Romero-style zombies. There’s always those people who are like, “Yo, they’re not even scary. You can just walk around them.” I try to show why that’s foolish thinking.
And then, what kind of story is This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels, as far as genres are concerned? It sounds like it might be post-apocalyptic horror.
Genre-wise, I consider This Rotten World to be a brutal drama with horrific events. It’s definitely horror, but the real joy of the story for readers comes from the fact that they want to see who is going to make it. Who is going to last until the end…if anyone? I’m not above killing everyone. I’ll do it!
That being said, if someone just wants to boil it down to post-apocalyptic horror, I’m totally fine with that. It’s definitely gory, and it’s definitely a dark vision of the future.
This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels is obviously not your first novel. Along with the other This Rotten World books, you’ve also got half a dozen in your One Night Stand At The End Of The World series, as well as a dozen other novels. Are there any writers who’ve had a big influence on the This Rotten World series who did not influence your other books?
I think the biggest influence for me might have been Z.A. Recht. His Morningstar Strain series was perfectly balanced. It had tight action scenes, strong characters, and provided a nice blueprint for managing a large cast. When I read his books, I think they inspired me to get out and do my own, but from the perspective of a more diverse cast of characters than a group of soldiers. I wanted a housewife, a gamer nerd, a homeless man, real people trying to figure out this new horrific world.
I definitely feel I owe a lot to Stephen King’s The Stand as well. The sheer scope and size of that epic, and the juggling of all the separate characters, influenced me at a young age, and I feel like I had always, as a writer, been working to get to the point where I could pull off something as sprawling and epic. Initially, I had planned to just make This Rotten World one long book, but in writing the first part, I discovered there was no way one book could contain all this zombie goodness. If I smashed the first five books into one book, it would have been close to 2,500 pages, which is insane.
In a similar vein, are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels but not on any of the earlier books in the This Rotten World series?
The initial genesis of the biker gang storyline came from my favorite zombie movie, and my favorite movie of all-time, George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead. I was always drawn to the biker gang who shows up to ruin everyone’s dreams in that movie. They’re bad guys, but they’re having fun, and I was attracted to that. Death On Wheels is a continuation of that exploration of what life must have been like on the road for that gang.
But other than that initial inspiration, The Locusts and their exploits are all from my own head, as far as I can tell.
What about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Because having zombies and bikers hanging out together makes me think of the post-apocalyptic biker zombie video game Days Gone.
I’ve played quite a few zombie games and watched a ton of zombie movies and TV shows in my life. I’m sure they’ve all influenced me in one way or another.
The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later made me want to explore the beginning of the zombie apocalypse as opposed to just having people wake up and find the world dead, which I always thought was lazy.
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 definitely inspired the emotions the characters feel as they try and make it from one place to another. I remember playing those games with friends and just getting sweaty and anxious, waiting for one of my friends to mess up and call a horde down on us.
The Last Of Us Part 1 and 2 did a lot to help me visualize a world crumbling. I love the game and the characters, but for me it’s the details of the world, all the hidden stories within that make it feel alive…but dead, if that makes sense. I try and bring that vibe toThis Rotten World.
There was also an old Xbox game called Land Of The Dead: The Road To Fiddler’s Green, which was just about the bleakest zombie game I’ve ever played. It didn’t hold your hand, and if you messed up even once, you were a goner. It had a great atmosphere and didn’t try and throw in things like leaping zombies and acid-spitting zombies, which are fine in video games, but don’t make sense when you actually start looking at it.
Now, I mentioned that you’ve also written novels that are not part of the This Rotten World series. One of which, We Like It Cherry, will be out August 5th. What is We Like It Cherry about, and when and where is it set?
We Like It Cherry is definitely a departure from the zombie-verse or my other series. It tells the tale of an Indigenous documentarian who is stuck in a sort of dead-end job. He basically goes to Indigenous powwows and documents them for some network that sees the show as a tax write-off. But he wants more for his career and his life, and one day, a man offers him the opportunity to document a never-before seen ritual of a remote tribe living in the Arctic Circle. Thinking this is his big break, him and his crew journey to the barren Arctic. Once there, things don’t go as planned, and it gets pretty gory from there…and cold.
Your publisher, Tenebrous Press, calls We Like It Cherry a “Weird Survival Horror” novel…
When people hear survival horror, they might think of the video game genre, but in reality, We Like It Cherry is about people far from home and out of their element. It’s about people trapped in an environment that wants to kill them and being chased by other things that want to kill them. Survival is the goal, as it is in most horror, but it’s the “weird” part that’s key there because this story is doing so much more than just showing you some people trying not to die. It’s got some messages about identity, about dreams, and what it costs to make it, and it has its own unique vibe.
So, did you write We Like It Cherry and This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels at the same time or concurrently? I ask because I’m curious how, if at all, they may have influenced each other, given that they’re both horror stories, but different kinds of horror stories.
I wrote We Like It Cherry back in 2023, near the tale end of it, so it was nice and cold. Whereas This Rotten World sprang from the things I like in media, We Like It Cherry sprang from my head as a dream, literally. Although, the dream was even weirder than the book I came up with. I pride myself on being able to do different things. I love the stuff I do with This Rotten World, but I don’t want to be just a zombie guy. I am capable of so much more. Not that there’s anything wrong with someone who finds a niche and stays there, but writing for me is an exploration of craft and art, and while I get to do some pretty cool stuff in zombie books, I have other themes and ideas I want to explore. And while I never truly try to write a horror story, that’s generally what comes out.
That being said, We Like It Cherry and This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels couldn’t be further apart as far as stories go…well, except for the gore.
Going back to This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels, as you said, the first five books in this series took place in Portland, Oregon, and you then moved the stories to Wyoming with the sixth book, Rally And Rot. Does this mean that if someone wanted to read Wheels, they should go back and start with Rot, but that they don’t need to go all the way to the first book, This Rotten World?
That is totally accurate. 1-5 are a contained storyline. I had intended to be done with zombies by book five, but another unique idea came to me, and I wanted to explore it and see where it went. And it’s gone to some pretty dark places. If you wanted to read Death On Wheels, you would probably want to start at book 6 and work your way through.
That said, what would someone get out of This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels if they’ve read everything since This Rotten World?
Well, you’re gonna get probably the biggest boatload of zombie carnage you’ve ever seen. There’s human carnage as well. There’s also several surprises for people as far as who lives and who dies. It’s just a brutal exercise in excess, but through it all, one cool story, which will set up the final events for this biker gang of mine. It’s entertainment and suffering all in one blood-soaked package, and yeah, that tank on the cover isn’t just there to sell books.
You also hinted there’s a book 12 coming…
I am planning on writing the 12th book. I generally need a break between This Rotten World books. I like to let my ideas marinade for a month or so, so I’ll go off and write something else. I generally write a This Rotten World book, then write a One Night Stand At The End Of The World book, then write something new and original like We Like It Cherry, and then I circle back to This Rotten World and start the cycle over again.
Book 12 will be the same group from books 6-11, but this will be their last ride. After that one is done, I may have some other zombie tricks up my sleeve, but it’ll most likely be a different location, although fans are continually asking me to go visit the characters from the original run of This Rotten World…to which, I always say, “Do you really want me to go back to them? You know what will happen if I do. You’re gonna lose some of those characters you love.” But we’ll see.
Earlier I asked if This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels had been influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip the script, as you kids don’t say anymore, do you think Wheels — and, by extension, the entire This Rotten World series — could work as a movie, show or game?
People are begging for a TV show of this. The diversity, the carnage, the unpredictability of it all sets it up to be a perfect TV show. My fans will sometimes go into casting mode and start picking out who should play which characters, which is a fun exercise. One day, I hope it will be a show. I even started working on a screenplay for a pilot episode, but then got sidetracked by writing more books. Shoot, eleven books, a season per book, and you got yourself a success story…and even better, the storylines have an actual ending, so you don’t get that end-of-run bloat like you find on some shows that just go on too long. Like, did anyone care about the last few seasons of The Walking Dead? Imagine how strong that show would be remembered if they just ended it at some point when all the major characters were around. If anyone wants to get rich and make This Rotten World into a TV series, just send ’em my way.
You said some readers have done their own fancasting, but if someone wanted to make a movie or TV show based on This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels or the entire This Rotten World series, who would you want them to cast as the main characters?
This is tough because there are so many characters. It’s like a Game Of Thrones-sized cast.
Let’s see, from the first book, I could see a Glen Powell [Top Gun: Maverick] as Zeke (the resident tough guy), Mort (a homeless character) could be played by [Black Panther‘s] Daniel Kaluuya, Katie (a dark housewife) could be played by [Fallout‘s] Ella Purnell. There are probably a dozen more characters I could go into, and that’s not even counting the second part of the series with the biker gangs.
But honestly, I wouldn’t want more “names” than that, as I always found a show like this works best when you get newer actors in the roles. Like, the only person I knew on Game Of Thrones was Sean Bean, and those actors became their roles. People don’t even know the name of the kid that played Joffrey, but they probably hate him when they see him on the street. That’s what you want for a show like this.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels or the This Rotten World series?
If you’ve never heard of the series, you’re in for a treat. And there’s more where this came from. Whereas most other zombie books, movies, and shows try and be all, “Guess what? Man is the real monster,” This Rotten World keeps the focus on the dead and survival.
Finally, if someone enjoys This Rotten World 11: Death On Wheels, what zombie novel or novella of someone else’s should they check out next?
I would definitely recommend Z.A. Recht’s The Morningstar Strain. I’ve read a lot of zombie fiction, and most of the zombie books are about some alpha male soldier who can’t get killed, but not The Morningstar Strain. Definitely recommended.
