Dead Tide by Stephen North

Dead Tide by Stephen North

Dead Tide is set in St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park, two cities on a peninsula of Florida’s west coast. The whole peninsula, known as Pinellas County, is really one metropolis, separated from the larger city of Tampa east of it on the mainland. With the Gulf of Mexico on one side and Tampa Bay on the other the evacuation choices are few even when a proper warning is given. Over-crowded and over-populated, this is no place to be when a major disaster strikes and the power goes out.

When the story begins, the general population receives no warning of the impending doom about to wash over them. The dead are coming back to life, filled with a single-minded urge to devour the living. Gradually, word gets out, and the media begins to highlight the growing problem and what those in charge are doing about it. For lack of a better plan, and perhaps as a smoke screen, a list of safe places is released. The only problem is that these are hurricane shelters, not refuges from the living dead.

While the power is on, some people follow the bigger picture on TV, but the news media is little more than a chronicler of the disaster. Sadly, most people are better at becoming part of the problem than finding a way to solve it.

The most important question becomes: Are there enough resilient, survivor types left to stem this rising dead tide of humanity?