Similarly, there's not been a book written about zombies that wouldn't be improved by the addition of zombie-hunting sausage dogs—or dachshunds as they're known here in America.
Good news: There is a zom book containing zom-hating sausage dogs. It's called World War Z and it's written by Max Brooks—the same zom-obsessed nutter who wrote The Zombie Survival Guide.
WWZ is a Studs Terkel-style oral history of the inevitable zom-apocalypse that visionary filmmakers like George A. Romero have been prophesying for decades. Ever wonder how we'd fight zombies in the labyrinth of sewers under Paris? Or how the U.S. military would cope with an enemy that didn't just scream "AIIIIIEEEEEEE!" and run around in circles if you dropped napalm on them? Of course you have. Like me, you probably think of little else. The answers are here.
The only bit that doesn't ring true is where the Queen of England locks herself up in Windsor Castle and gets medieval on attacking zombies with attack-corgis, boiling oil and huge battle axes. I reckon the author missed a trick here. I'd have the Queen and the resurrected zombie Princess Diana fight it out in a climactic scene set in the tallest turret of the highest tower of the biggest castle in the kingdom. Can you imagine the movie? Oh my god! Does anybody reading this work in Hollywood? WWZ is the best book ever written about anything, ever. It's even better than that other zombie classic, the Bible—which you might remember has the awesome plot twist of God disguising himself as a cannibalism-and-vampirism-preaching superhippie who's executed but then comes back to life as a sort of invisible and indestructible cannibal/vampire superhippie living god with amazing super-powers, including the ability to take over his enemies' brains with a "holy" ghost. Top stuff—if you haven't read it, you should. But like the Bible, WWZ—in common with every other zom-apocalypse novel featuring zombie-hunting sausage dogs ever written—would be vastly improved by the addition of World War II Nazi superweapons.
My Tank Is Fight! Deranged Inventions of WWII is written by Zack Parsons, a guy so intensely and insanely nerdy that he makes WWZ's author sound like he might once have had a girlfriend. The format of Fight! is both ingenious and deranged. We start with a blitheringly enthusiastic description of some froth-gobbed Hitler-on-drugs Nazi superweapon—like a tank the size of a skyscraper or a submarine with tank tracks. Next comes a short history of why the weapon never got made, also written in gibbering, finger-sniffing, hyperventilating nerdspeak. And if that wasn't enough, Zack rounds things off with a section called "What fight have been," in which he imagines a battle between the Nazi superweapon and lady Russian snipers with, we can safely assume, impossibly large breasts.
I want you to now close your eyes and re-imagine The Sound of Music. The Von Trapp family are being pursued across the Alps by zombie Nazis in massive, forest-crushing supertanks, but are saved by a brave rearguard action fought by zombie-hating sausage dogs—led by the "good" zombie superhero, Jesus—in tank-submarines and James Bond-style rocket-firing gyrocopters.
Because there isn't a movie made that wouldn't be improved by the addition of zombies, SuperJesus, Nazi superweapons and zombie-hating sausage dogs. Except maybe Mary Poppins. Don't mess with the Poppins.