The Remaining

Anxiety and building desperation fuel this debut zombie thriller, the first in a series that already has a significant online fan base. Army Capt. Lee Harden is alone in an underground bunker, preparing to return to a world where the FURY virus has turned most of the population into homicidal cannibals. Sharply targeted sentences depict an acutely human action hero who wrestles his anxiety by packing and unpacking his gear, trying to find online porn in a post-Internet world, and playing with his dog. Amply trained and armed, Lee is nonetheless a nauseated shaking mess as he emerges with little understanding of what he’s up against. With a handful of survivors, he embarks on a sweaty, frantic, bloody scramble across the surreally placid North Carolina countryside. Though this first installment is less a story than an establishment of scene and players, Molles’s precise construction gives readers ample reason to return, as does the agonizing companion novella, which provides an unnerving view of what occurred while Lee was waiting to begin his mission. (May)