Dead Weight

An almost absurd premise sets up Casamassina’s gritty, cinematic postapocalyptic thriller. Seventeen-year-old Zephyr returns home from a camping trip to discover that most of the world’s population has vanished, leaving only piles of clothing behind. As he tries to understand this new reality, he meets a seemingly friendly older man, Ross, but it soon becomes clear that Ross is dangerous, and Zephyr decides to flee the city in search of more people. As the tense journey progresses through scenes of horrifying lawlessness, Zephyr allies himself with fellow wanderers, including a shy but endearing young girl, much-too-chill twins, and an aimless slacker. The group liberates two sex slaves, teen Aurora and 30-something Sarah, after a gruesome struggle in Las Cruces, N.M. Zephyr and the other survivors, who are a bit too unbothered by their victimization and sudden capacity for violence, limp toward California to join a collective called Alpha that intends to rebuild society. Once they reach Alpha, Zephyr and Aurora’s love blooms, but they are soon forced out again into the harsh, uncertain world. Despite some loose threads, the work will appeal broadly to fans of breathless end-of-the-world action sequences. (BookLife)