Not additionally, and no other reference to the sheep is made, simply the cows. Not a moment later, she claims to see dead cows. Just for an example, there’s one point where the party is walking past an abandoned farm, and Alex claims to see dead sheep. The thing that I had trouble with were her multiple grammatical typos and continuity errors. Honestly, the prose of Bick’s story was great. What follows is one wild ride as Ellie, Alex, and a whole other cast of characters attempt to survive not only the elements, but the walking dead. What’s wrong with that? These kids have turned into bona fide zombies quite literally “these kids weren’t munching sandwiches…with a grunt, the boy plunged a fist into the woman’s abdomen and rooted around before coming back up with a drippy fistful of something liverish and soft…” (73). Well, one would think that such misfortune could not grow, right? I mean, sure Ellie and Alex are now stranded in the middle of the woods, with no way to contact anyone, and with only meager rations of food and water, but things couldn’t get worse, could they? Unfortunately (third time’s the charm!) things can, and the duo find that out the hard way when they run into a couple of other high school kids out in the woods. In the process, Ellie’s grandfather is killed, due to the parallel death of the pacemaker that kept his heartbeat steady. This “thing” (or Zap, as Alex comes to call it) not only makes the forest animals go crazy, not only kills all of the campers’ electronic devices, but also makes all the people keel over in pain. Not a physical, tangible thing, but more of a sound or light wave of some sort. Unfortunately (I know, twice in two paragraphs), some kind “thing” hits the clearing. While the old man seems polite enough, Ellie is portrayed as the stereotypical bratty little kid, and even goes as far as screaming at the others and marching off while Alex and the girl’s grandfather talk.

While out camping in the woods Alex meets an elderly man, and his granddaughter Ellie.

Unfortunately for her, the trip lasts much longer.

As she sits at a Michigan gas station, arguing with her Aunt, Alex says that she will be back in twelve days. What Alex claims instead, is that she is merely taking her parents ashes to the far north (though to scatter them or just have them with her, it is never truly revealed). As they converse, Aunt Hannah profoundly denounces what Alex is doing, which is to say, seemingly running away. The book begins with a phone call from a girl, Alex, to her Aunt Hannah.

However, its frequent grammatical and continuity errors were, in my opinion, too much for even the most talented of writers to overcome. Bick, contains a strong and compelling narrative, and partly because of this, separates itself from other zombie/horror books of the modern day. What can I say about this book? What is there to say? Ashes by Ilsa J.

Ilsa j bick