Dread Nation by Justina Ireland is a Zombie Western Novel.
At the Battle of Gettysburg, the dead first rose to devour the living. The living... did alright for themselves, being heavily armed and well-organized, and Union and Rebel quickly allied against the shamblers. It was also the day our protagonist was born, a Black daughter to a respectable planter family in Tennessee.
Now the undead are a global scourge, the children of Blacks and Native Americans are sent to harsh residential schools to learn to fight the undead and die for their betters. Slavery was technically outlawed when the Confederacy capitulated for Northern military aid, but this technicality was even less felt in daily living than in our timeline.
Jane McKeene has studied for years in combat and etiquette to be an Attendant, a bodyguard/chaperone/maid-in-waiting for a wealthy white girl, when some mysterious disappearances lead her to be disappeared to a hidden model society in Kansas, one where things are more backward than ever before...
This novel provides examples of:
- Action Girl: All Attendants, but particularly Jane. Molly Harcroft is mentioned to have destroyed an entire horde solo and got a type of short sword (usually wielded in pairs and taught in Miss Preston's to girls of sufficient skill) named after her.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: When people get bitten, they turn fast.note At a demonstration of a vaccine gone horribly wrong, the bitten are running around attacking people moments later.
- Alien Space Bats: The rise of the dead qualifies, if anything does, as a radical point of departure for this alt-history.
- Boarding School of Horrors: Miss Preston's School of Combat seems decent for a residential school until we learn of the disappearances.
- The Dragon: The Sheriff to the Reverend. They are also father and son.
- Enemy Mine: The one thing that could make Jane almost respect the Sheriff is when shamblers breached the wall and he immediately organizes a defense. In general, the white people firing wildly from horseback were not helpful.
- Fallen States of America: In progress. Cities are deathtraps; whatever walls you erect, if one shambler gets in because someone did something stupid or the sewers or something, the walls will just keep people in. Large portions of the South (the "Lost States") have been all abandoned partly because, due to the climate being too warm for winter hibernation, "it's always shambler season in Dixie". It is speculated drearily by one point that the future of society may be fortified farms and plantations - old evils in a new guise of necessity. In the sequel, Deathless Divide, Jane brings up the US, its constitution and civil rights, only to be asked what makes her think any of those terms still apply.
- Fed to the Beast: A bunch of inconvenient people just happen to wind up outside the fence/wire and get eaten by shamblers.
- Hiding Your Heritage: Katherine is able to pass as white. Turn's out Jane's mother was passing too and impersonated her mistress when she died on the way to her husband-to-be's plantation.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Attendant attire is a downplayed example, with shorter skirts and modesty breeches/pants for mobility, and though expected to keep up with newest fashions, Attendants always being warned to not tight-lace and to not wear proper, whalebone/metal reinforced corsets for ease of breathing and mobility, preferring only a looser undergarment no more restrictive than a modern sports bra. In a Running Gag, this comes up several times between Jane and Kate (who does tight-lace).
- Loophole Abuse: There is a widespread myth that Black people are immune or resistant to the turning effect of a shambler bite. The moment someone is bitten, they no longer qualify as human. So a number of people are returned to a de facto state of slavery, as long as one reputable (read: white) witness attests they saw them get bitten.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Jane's lucky penny, worn on a string around her neck, goes cold when she's in danger. This may be because an old woman worked some 'hoodoo' on it as she was told before leaving for boarding school, or it could be all in her head.
- Mystical Plague: Nobody quite knows what caused the plague of undeath, but religious theories abound, including some claiming it was God's punishment for emancipation and Abolitionism. Early on, Jane gets laughed at for linking them to the new germ theory, but serious scientists are working on a vaccine based on this assumption.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Shamblers is the preferred term, also undead.
- Our Z Ombies Are Different: Shamblers are fast and vicious when first turned, slowing down as they decay. They have an incredible sense of smell that lets them stalk people from miles away, and hibernate in cold temperatures.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The Sheriff and his father the Reverend, who seem to sincerely believe the undead are God's punishment for the sin of Abolitionism.
- Red Baron: Jane's picked up the nickname 'the Angel of the Crossroads' for her nocturnal shambler hunting around Baltimore.
- Red Herring: The reader is led to believe that Jane was the result of an affair between a plantation worker and the owner's wife. Jane's mother was really a black woman who could pass as white and just impersonated her mistress who died on the way to the plantation.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Katherine is gorgeous—which isn't an asset for an Attendant, because no rich white girl wants a bodyguard who's prettier than she is. Later her beauty also makes her intensely aware of how much danger she would be in if the Sheriff and his men should find out she's actually a biracial girl passing for white.
- Steampunk: The "iron pony" a steam-powered armored car for driving through shambler swarms, complete with firing slits.
