There is a lot of Zombie fiction, and a lot of it rather bad, but Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry is excellent piece of zombie fiction. The book takes place about 14 years after the zombie apocalypse, and is in a third-person narrative that follows Benjamin "Benny" Imura. He lives in a small town together with his brother and has just turned 15, and has to get a job or his rations will be halved. His brother is a bounty hunter, and wants Benny to go into the family business, but Benny is reluctant to join him. He eventually gives up finding another job, and goes into the family business into the rot and ruin which is the zombie no-mans land.

The book covers the post-apocalyptic time after the first night of zombies, but it is not about rebuilding society or some great adventure into the rot and ruin, but rather is a interesting story that has the zombie element more in the background of the action, instead of focusing on it. It is not a book that follows the characters endless struggling against the zombies, but rather uses them as a framing device to build up the a world in which the story can take place. There are other books that does this as well such as the newsflesh trilogy, but not as well as this book.

A common thing in zombie fiction is the moment that the protagonist has to kill a zombie that the person is close too such as close family, friends or a spouse. I have never found those moments in other books to have the effect they likely were intended to have by the author, but Jonathan Maberry manages to do this moment in a way that actually made me feel sad for the character. This was done on more than one occasion in the book, and never have I been sadder when a zombie died than in this book. It is defiantly worth a read, the book is not long and most people should be able to finish it in less than 10 hours. The book is a first in the series, and I can only hope that the others will be as enjoyable as this one.