DAWN OF THE DEAD

George Romero wrote and produced the 1967 film Night of the Living Dead--about cannibalistic corpses who eat live human flesh and trap the hero and heroine in a farmhouse at night. Well, the corpses are back, by the millions! Philadelphia is ravaged by the walking dead, and news-gal Franny is barricaded into her TV studio, beaming out advice and warnings. All apartments and homes must be evacuated and the living gathered together in the central city. The only way to stop a cannibal corpse is to blow its brain in; no other wound will stop it. At last she and weather-man Steve take off in the station's chopper, accompanied in their flight by two cops, Roger and big black Peter. Roger and Peter have just nearly been killed while cleaning out a black and Spanish apartment building and rekilling about 30 corpses. The quartet sets down at a small airport to refuel (they have no idea where they're bound), are attacked by zombies, but escape. They finally settle onto a department store roof in ""Shoppers Paradise"" outside of Pittsburgh. The mall below is filling with dumbly rambling zombies, but the store itself is locked and the zombies aren't clever enough to get in. The bulk of the book is the quartet's next three months of life on the roof while they ransack the store and luxuriate in a consumer paradise. Hell's Angels looters at last arrive and drive them skyward, but not before Steve and Roger are eaten. . . and become zombies. For like-minded readers--a festival.