Gruesome Zombies Combine with Poignant Story of Love, Loss and Faith

An End by Brandon Pawlicki

Society isn’t the only thing that breaks down in a zombie apocalypse. For survivors, such an event throws deeply held personal beliefs into crisis.

In An End, book one of the Where We Stand Now series, author Brandon Pawlicki tackles the aftermath of a world-decimating zombie outbreak with an emotional and intellectual depth that makes this novel more than just another zombie apocalypse story.

Grappling Trauma at the End of the World

Three close-knit 20-somethings Vallerie Sabell, her brother Allan, and her best friend Trisha have been left behind in a mass evacuation — Allan and Trisha by choice, and Vallerie by circumstance: she has slept through the zombie apocalypse. Well, to be more precise, she was in a coma, the result of a brutal attack some months prior. Allan and Vallerie refused to leave her behind during the evacuation, so now the three must fend for themselves amid the ransacked debris of civilization.

Vallerie has already faced trauma in her life; she survived a school massacre in which her boyfriend was killed in front of her eyes. She has been the victim of a violent hate crime for her beliefs as a Wiccan. And now, waking up to a world so unexpectedly changed, she’ll need to deal with the traumas of her past while going through hell in the present.

Zombies, Cultists and Militias

An End follows the trio as they scrape together the supplies and shelter they need to survive on their own. But zombies aren’t the only danger lurking around every corner. First, there’s the Hell Spawn, a cult that may have been responsible for the zombie outbreak and who continues to wreak havoc on survivors. And then there is the Bastion.

When the military retreated, remaining locals banded together to form a militia to continue the fight. But what started as desperate self-defense soon turned into an organized tool to control the dwindling population, and the newly formed Bastion imposed conscription on all able-bodied survivors. Allan, for one, refused to join the fight — Vallerie, still unconscious, needed him more.

This decision will come back to bite him — he is now a wanted man and the Bastion will stop at nothing to hunt down and execute all draft dodgers for their role (or lack thereof) in a war that, as any rational person can see, the Bastion would have lost anyway.

Poignant Tale of Love and Loss

An individual’s actions and lack of actions, one’s intent and unintended consequences — these are all central to the themes tackled by Pawlicki in An End.  What do you do when the greater good and your loyalty to your loved ones come into conflict? Is it worse to stand by and let something bad happen or is it worse to inflict such harm yourself? Can your spiritual faith survive in an unfamiliar world where the usual rules no longer apply? Is there a place for redemption in the karmic laws of the universe, or is revenge a necessary justice?

For Pawlicki, these aspects of the story are more important to explore than exactly how the zombie outbreak occurred, where everyone fled to, why Allan is considered enemy number one to the Bastion, and the link (if any) between certain events in the novel that tease a bigger picture. Vallerie, as our protagonist, is missing a lot of time and information about the recent past, which is a useful literary device that leaves a lot of open questions for the sequel(s) to answer. I’m eager to see how it all comes together in the series story arc.

An End combines the gruesome, scary zombie fight scenes you would expect of the genre with a heart-wrenching tale of love and loss underscored by themes that force you to examine your own sense of right and wrong. It is a great beginning to a zombie apocalypse series with lots of “brains.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)