Evans’ first novel, Ida (2017) used parallel universes as a way of exploring ideas around gender and nonbinary identity. For their second novel, I ask Evans: why zombies? ‘I think it’s a convenient way to dodge a lot of the more awful things about contemporary queer life’, they explain. For the LGBTQI+ teens at the centre of the book, this means they can ‘build their own understanding of things. So with gender especially, no one’s imposing anything on them, which I think is really why I chose zombies – just to get all that out of the way, really.’
Evans’ zombies are particularly scary because they are a mixture of both fast and slow moving. It makes them unpredictable, ‘which I think is scarier if you don’t know what to expect. I don’t know how that would go down with zombie nerds though,’ they add with a laugh.
‘I think [zombies are] a convenient way to dodge a lot of the more awful things about contemporary queer life.’
But despite the horror of the monsters, as with all good zombie fiction, the true threat in Highway Bodies is much more recognisable and everyday. The lumbering undead are scary, yes, but the book’s real villains are a group that the protagonists refer to as ‘preppers’. Led in a militaristic style by an aggressive man, the preppers are a band of apocalypse survivors who rely heavily on strongly enforced gender roles, and the idea that in order to claw their way back to a stable society a certain degree of dictatorship and violence is acceptable.
It’s strange that in a book set amidst an apocalypse, it’s the scenes that take place after the zombies have taken over that show us what a better world might look like. The teens are kind and understanding of one another – they don’t assume gender or sexuality, they apologise when they get things wrong. It’s only in the snippets from the time before the outbreak that things feel really ugly; such as a scene where one of the protagonists is about to wear the one dress she owns outside (‘[Mum] don’ like it when I do. Dunno if it’s cause she wishes I still called meself her son or if she’s worried someone’ll see me an say something. Maybe both’), or when the teens come across a group of adults desperately trying to get the world back to the way it was previously. Our present is the real dystopia.
When two of the teens, nonbinary Jojo and their twin sister Rhea, are taken in by preppers, they are immediately separated based on their outward appearance and the expectations that come along with them. Jojo is forced to join the men on their hunting trips and to patrol the grounds, while Rhea, despite being an adept zombie-killer, is recruited into ‘women’s work’ – cooking and cleaning for the rest of the group.
I ask Evans about the idea behind the preppers. ‘I find it’s kind of an exaggerated version of real life. So the expectation that you will be cis and you will be straight and then you’ll marry someone and you’ll have babies.’ They pause. ‘I guess it’s kind of that, but a bit more extreme’.
‘The expectation that you will be cis and you will be straight and then you’ll marry someone…I guess it’s kind of that, but a bit more extreme’.
It’s this exaggeration of real life that keeps providing fodder to the zombie genre – even as recent years have brought the genre close to saturation point, the fountain of ways that human beings can be awful to each other doesn’t dry up.
While tropes can get tired, zombie stories allow us to shine lights on different aspects of human nature that exist in our current world but are perhaps slightly suppressed due to societal rules and expectation. It’s these factors that keep us, like zombies to brains, hungry for more.
When I ask people what their zombie apocalypse plan is, the conversation almost always ends on a bit of a downer. (‘Ah, I thought we were going to knock about ideas like riding around on a motorcycle with two chainsaws strapped to the handlebars,’ said one friend sadly.) Evans and I are on the same page on this topic. ‘I would probably die immediately,’ they tell me with a laugh. On the plus side however, Evans is a skilled green thumb and adept at growing things, which, we decide, would be a very useful survival skill to have if they made it through the initial swarm. Plus, Evans adds, their apartment is on the second floor, which would make it easier to barricade.
In the end it isn’t really about whether you could protect yourself from rabid monsters however – it’s about whether human nature, without the rules and structure we rely on, would tilt more towards good or bad. So far, the literature suggests, things aren’t looking great.
Alison Evans will be discussing Australian Young Adult Fiction: Gender Diversity and Dystopian Futures with Marlee Jane Ward on 6 April, as part of the Fitzroy Writers Festival.
Alison Evans will also be appearing at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 3 and 4 May.
