BELOW

In Cabiling’s horror novel, when a zombie outbreak ravages the slums of Manila, a young Filipino boy must do whatever it takes to survive.

Despite the ubiquity of drug abuse within his community—the crowded slums of Tondo, Manila—Min Arnaiz is determined to finish his education and do more than scavenge trash like the rest of his peers. His days of normalcy are numbered, however; Min is only 12 when he loses his parents, his friends, and his home to a violent zombie outbreak. While the exact origin of the disaster is unknown, some attribute it to teens abusing a new methamphetamine-like drug known colloquially as “shabu.” (“In those shanties, teens who attempted to numb the pain brought by lifetimes of abuse and hardship did drugs and started to look and behave like zombies.”) Desperate to find a safe haven, Min leaves on a motorcycle in search of shelter, hiding in abandoned apartments and dilapidated houses until he’s able to stow away on a boat headed to the United States. There, he ends up in the “Below,” a community that lives predominately underground in the sewers of New York City…until the next wave of the outbreak follows him from the Philippines to American shores. Cabiling’s debut novel moves at a breakneck pace, with violent and grotesque chaos reigning. He effectively breaks up the gore with tense moments that depict times before the first outbreak and in the interregnum before its second wind sweeps across the world. Min is a sympathetic narrator pushed past the brink multiple times who still manages to keep fighting until the very end. Although the cast in the second half has a similar amount of page time, Min’s friends and family in Manila are rendered in more compelling detail, making their fates more gut-wrenching than those that befall the members of the community he builds underground. The commentary on the negative effects of drugs is a little too heavy-handed, but overall, this is a thrilling, action-filled ride.

A bold new voice in Filipino horror.