The Infects - Sean Beaudoin

Nick works for Rebozzo AviraCulture, a chicken factory that supplies Fresh Bukket.  When he comes into work one night the boss wants a talk with him.  Nick thinks he is getting fired, but it turns out he is getting offered a promotion.  He is to be the head butcher of the Blue Room, which processes a new breed of chicken they have been testing.  The work days begin to take their toll on Nick, and one day he cuts himself with a knife.  Nick isn't able to stop the conveyor belt before he passes out.  The chickens plop off the conveyor belts covered in his blood.  When Nick comes to he is fired and then arrested.  At his trial he is charged with gross negligence, vandalism, destruction of fifty thousand dollars of poultry, and possible collusion with animal rights activists.  Since Nick can't pay the fifty thousand dollars, he's sentenced to three months in juvie camp.  Everyone heading to the juvie camp is given a new name and Nick's is Nero.  On their way to the camp they come in contact with a group of girls going to the same juvie camp.  Nero is shocked to see Petal, who used to work with him, among the girls.  He thinks it is his fault for her being there.  As they arrive at the trail they are to walk to the camp the boys go one way and the girls go another.  They camp for the night and most everyone chows down on Fresh Bukket food.  In the middle of the night Nero wakes up and sees one of the counselors eating another counselor.  Nero, War Pig, and Yeltsin make a run for it and encounter a few others who haven't turned to zombies.  They head for the girls camp, and when they get there no one is in sight.  They find two kids in a port-a-potty who are zombies.  They attack one of the counselors and turn him into a zombie.  With a hoard closing in on them they find refuge in a lodge where one of the girls, Joanjet, is in charge.  As they get settled, or as settled as your going to be with a group of zombies wanting to eat your flesh, Joanjet reveals that she has taken prisoners.  They are hunters who already turned into zombies.  When one of the other survivors says that they aren't zombies, the chicken they ate was poisoned, everything starts to make sense.  Everyone who has eaten the chicken from Fresh Bukket has turned into zombies.  After the connection between the chicken and the zombies Joanjet says she has one more thing to show them.  The third person who she's captured is Petal, and she is infected. 

I liked the book.  It was a different take on the zombie apocalypse by having the chicken infected with the zombie virus. In most of the zombie books I have read it is a virus that causes the zombie apocalypse, not chicken. I really liked the ending.  I'm not going to spoil anything, but it gave the feeling that maybe the zombie apocalypse isn't as bad as all the other stories make it out to be. 

T.B.
11/4/13