I’m a sucker for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. End-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios have always fascinated me—from a narrative perspective, nothing is quite as compelling or existentially poignant as a character or group of characters fighting for their very survival amidst a backdrop of complete and utter devastation, be it ecological collapse, nuclear warfare, alien invasion, etc. Some of my all-time favorite reads are classified as post-apocalyptic fiction: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, The Passage by Justin Cronin, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Stand by Stephen King, Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Colony by Ben Bova, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., to name a few.
I don’t watch very many movies more than once but, for some reason, I can watch post-apocalyptic movies like Damnation Alley, The Matrix, Mad Max, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Death Race 2000, and The Omega Man dozens of times without getting bored.
I have a wealth of survivalist items, including a variety of low-tech weapons, outdoor gear, boxes of duct tape, and enough Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew to choke a horse.
That’s why I had to read Terry DeHart’s debut novel, entitled The Unit, which explores the nuclear family dynamic in times of crisis and revolves around a northern California family who, after a terrorist attack sparks WWIII, are forced to rely on one another to survive a never-ending barrage of potentially deadly challenges—from murderous gangs to radioactive fallout to exhaustion, hypothermia, and starvation.
Like a crowbar to the skull, the lethal narrative intensity of this novel comes from its brutal realism and all-too plausible story line—it comes as no surprise to learn that DeHart is a former U.S. Marine, and has worked as a NASA security analyst and a disaster preparedness consultant.
“The first terrorist bombs were detonated two weeks before in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York… The government claimed its investigation had uncovered all the answers. Al Qaeda terrorists had manufactured the bombs with enriched uranium from North Korea. The bombs were thermonuclear devices of Pakistani design. They were smuggled into the country in the holds of oil tankers. They were loaded onto trucks and detonated at ground level. All the facts were so quickly and clearly laid out that nobody believed them. But we believed the government reports about its overwhelming counterstrikes overseas, because the clouds steadily grew thicker and swollen with death.”
Jerry Sharpe, an ex-Marine, his wife Susan, and their children Scott and Melanie are desperately trying to get back to their home in Sacramento. But with no cars running, all technology essentially useless, the world a possible radioactive wasteland, and every stranger a potential psychotic killer, the four family members are forced to rely on one another to simply stay alive. Thus far, Jerry’s training as a Marine has proved invaluable and the family has managed to survive when other bands of displaced people have been targeted and slaughtered by opportunistic criminals. But their luck runs out when they cross paths with a group of escaped juvenile delinquents who have turned the nightmarish circumstances into their own twisted playground…
The political and social commentary in The Unit is far from subtle: “What have we done? We were supposed to be better than the Baby Boomers, more grounded and levelheaded and respectful and less selfish. We managed to survive long enough to inherit the world, but just look what we’ve made of it. It wasn’t us who nuked our cities, but we allowed it to happen. We didn’t mistrust terrorists and dictators as much as we mistrusted each other. We forgot about Pearl Harbor and 9/11. We pulled out of the Middle East, finally, and threw money at it. The money was supposed to work like fire retardant, but it didn’t. All those billions and trillions to Israel and Egypt and Jordan. AIDS relief. Poverty relief. We gave and gave and gave, and what do we have to show for it? Somebody nuked us and who’s helping us, now?”
In a recent interview, DeHart talked about the current fascination with post-apocalyptic entertainment, especially in the United States: “Well, we have good reasons to be gloomy these days, but the post-apocalyptic genre can also be uplifting in a dark way, because it reminds us that things could be much worse. When I was writing about people without shelter, exposed to radiation and barbarism and starvation, I began to pay closer attention to the things I’d taken for granted, soft puffs of warmth from heater vents on cool days, the textures and flavors of a nice meal, walking in public with my family and feeling a sense of community rather than threat.”
Dehart’s exactly right: it’s all about perspective. I suppose that’s what The Unit was for me—a literary bitch slap, a not-so-understated reminder to cherish what we have—and to be prepared to protect it if and when the defecation hits the rotating oscillator. Roll of duct tape and can of Dinty Moore not included…
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
