LONGMEADOW – “Wicked Dead” – the sequel to Longmeadow native Howard Odentz’s young adult horror comedy book “Dead (A Lot)” was recently released on Oct. 15, just in time for Halloween.  

Odentz, a resident of Somers, CT, and a Longmeadow High School graduate of 1981, told Reminder Publications his first book features young adults fighting for survival during a zombie apocalypse in a fictional version of Western Massachusetts.

“It’s about what a bunch of high school kids and grade school kids would do if the zombie apocalypse happened without parental supervision,” he explained. “The Dead (A Lot) book takes place [during] the first week of the apocalypse and ‘Wicked Dead’ is literally the next chapter in the book … It would be the next minute in the book.”

He said the series’ main character is Tripp Light, a 16-year-old boy and the narrator of the series. He has a twin sister Trina, who Odentz considers the tougher of the siblings.

“Tripp is kind of a wisecracking, probably slightly immature 16-year-old, who over that first book is starting to grow and mature and having to come into his own because there aren’t any adults around,” Odentz explained.

In the second book, a handful of adults join the group of survivors and Odentz said he believes it raises the question of who would be better equipped to handle the hardships and horrors of a zombie apocalypse.

“Is it kids and teens or is it adults who are sort of already established in the way they do things?” Odentz said, noting, a line in the book describes adults as kids with money and jobs.

He added, “Now that you have kids and adults mixed together they almost form a slight rivalry or animosity. The adults are actually a little scared of the kids because they really are far less affected by what’s going on than the adults are. The adults are definitely freaking out. There’s zombies everywhere and the kids have already spent the past week fighting through them.”

Odentz said some of the adult characters featured in the novel include an obese woman, a woman who is described as someone who looks like she has tea and crumpets served to her daily, and a more than 80-year-old chain smoking bus driver called Dorkish Duke, who has appeared in most of Odentz’s works of fiction.

A diverse cast of characters is an integral part of Odentz’s series – another character is a freshman attending a fictionalized version of the University of Massachusetts Amherst who is in a wheelchair and another character is an autistic child. Both characters bring great strengths to the group of survivors.

“There’s a theme running through the books about who should survive versus who shouldn’t survive and, frankly, they’re all capable,” he added. “Who has the right to make that sort of decision?”

The zombies featured in the series aren’t the typical zombies popularized by George A. Romero’s 1968 horror classic “Night of the Living Dead,” Odentz noted. His zombies were created by a manmade disease called Necropoxy. The only way to kill an Odentz zombie is to set it on fire.

“They are very slow; they are very stupid, and they aren’t dead because they’re being kept alive because they’re filled up with the Necropoxy parasites,” he explained. “Shooting them in the head doesn’t work. Lighting them on fire makes them burst into flames. All these Necropoxy parasites are producing so much oxygen inside the body … These people aren’t running around with a knife or something to cut off their heads.”

Odentz will be appearing at the Barnes & Noble in Holyoke at 7 Holyoke St. on Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. to celebrate the release of “Wicked Dead.” Anyone who dresses up as a zombie for the event will receive a free copy of an unreleased short story written by Odentz.

Odentz is also set to release a 35 to 40-page novella called, “Snow, Bloody, Snow,”?sometime in the near future.

For more information about Odentz visit www.howardodentz.com.