It is every person’s worst nightmare—nuclear war—and it’s happened. Whole cities have been completely wiped off the map. Those that are left standing are quickly becoming graveyards. What’s left of the government has instituted martial law. Corpse wagons make regular pick-ups of the dead. Radiation sickness and diseases like cholera and typhus are running rampant through what’s left of the population. Rick Nash’s wife Shelly has just died of cholera. He wants to bury her properly but that’s illegal. After weeks of barely surviving, Nash is in despair and decides to commit suicide. He is stopped by a presence that he refers to as The Shape. Nash is unceremoniously drafted by the Army to help in the disposal of diseased bodies. He meets a young man called Specs, and after multiple disagreements with the group’s leader, they revolt and head to Cleveland. There they meet Sean, a former hit man for a biker gang out of New Jersey. Sean has been hunting Trogs, people affected by radiation sickness who live in the bombed out cellars and sewers of the city and have resorted to cannibalism. In Cleveland Rick and Specs also learn about the Hatchet Clans and the Children, and have a harrowing run-in with mutated rats. They soon meet another survivor, a young woman named Janie. Rick tells Specs, Sean, and Janie about The Shape and its need for a sacrifice. After attempting to satisfy it unsuccessfully, Specs gets sick and asks to be given over to The Shape. When it finally makes an appearance they are horrified by what they see. The Shape is a living nuclear reactor that destroys its living sacrifices on a cellular level. Rick realizes The Shape is guiding them and on some level protecting them. The group must make regular sacrifices on the night of the full moon to keep The Shape from turning on them. Along their travels west, for that is where The Shape is guiding them, they are attacked by the Children. The same radiation that killed the adults somehow turned children under the age of ten into walking nuclear waste- if they touch you, you’re dead. The group survives two different attacks by the Hatchet Clans, large groups of people believed to be infected by a fungus who kill everything in their path. During these months on the road Rick has begun having nightmares of a Medusa-like creature bent on the survivors’ destruction. He comes to the realization that all of the places they have been to and the friends they have lost have served a purpose, although he’s not completely sure what that purpose is…..until they stop in Des Moines and meet Price. Price is a microbiologist who worked for the U.S. Army in a biological lab with Level 4 microbes—the deadliest on the planet. Price explains that not only have people and animals been mutated in some way by the radiological fallout, but germs have too. Price himself witnessed the “birth” of Ebola-X, a deadly super-virus with a 99% infection rate and a 100% mortality rate, which turns its victims into a liquefying mass of toxic waste. This terrifies Rick, and he thinks this is the connection with his nightmares and possibly The Shape, especially after Price tells him about a bioweapons lab in Nebraska. Is this what The Shape has been driving him to? And for what purpose? Tim Curran has managed to scare the hell out of me with Biohazard and there isn’t a zombie in sight. When I was fourteen years old I watched the TV movie The Day After and that scarred me for life. I feared nuclear war because it was a real possibility. Tim Curran has brought all of those fears right back and punched me in the gut with them. The words he uses to describe all that the survivors encounter along their drive west paint an extremely frightening picture from the collapse of civilization as we know it to its final destruction at the hands of a superbug. The end is terrifying and explosive and left me reeling. Biohazard is a very dark look at the aftermath of nuclear war and there is no silver lining. It’s raw and visceral and not for the faint of heart. It will reach into your gut and squeeze as hard as it can, and even when it’s over you will be left feeling queasy. Highly recommended.Contains: violence and gore, adult language, and disturbing sexual imagesReviewed by: Colleen Wanglund
Tim Curran hatte mich schon mit seinem ersten in Deutschland veröffentlichten Thriller ZERFLEISCHT begeistern können, sodass ich auf VERSEUCHT sehr gespannt war. Endzeit und Co. gehören zu meinen Lieblingsgenre im Thrillerbereich und in seinem ersten Werk bewies er mir schon, dass er ein Kenner dessen ist. Kühl, brutal und direkt, so empfand ich seine grausige Welt damals und freute mich demnach sehr auf neues Lesewerk von ihm.Auch VERSEUCHT steht dem in fast nichts nach. Die Story ist klar, einsam und erschreckend. Currans Vorstellungen einer untergehenden Welt sind realistisch und berauschend, sie saugen den Leser in eine vollkommen andere Welt und machen vor Brutalität und Schrecken keinen Halt. Ich was direkt gefesselt und in der Story drin, lebte und erlebte alles hautnah, denn Currans Stil ist sehr bildlich und nachvollziehbar. Ein Actionfilm, der einen beim Lesen vor dem inneren Auge abgespielt wird, so würde ich es am besten beschreiben.So ist Rick, unser Protagonist in dieser Story, mit all dem Horror um sich herum live konfrontiert. Menschen, die infiziert, ja wahrhaftig verseucht werden, qualvoll sterben, verrecken und wie Vieh auf Wägen eingesammelt und davon transportiert werden – der Autor macht dem Leser hier das Übel sehr deutlich. Man muss stark sein und dies abkönnen. Menschenwürde ist hier Fehlanzeige. Das verkraftet sicherlich nicht jeder. Aber wer auf Horror und Thriller steht, muss sich darauf gefasst machen und wird daran seinen Lesespaß haben. Die Charaktere sind liebenswert und handeln absolut nachvollziehbar. Natürlich ist niemand gerne mit dem Thema Tod beschäftigt, aber der Autor schafft es hier, dem Leser die Augen offen zu halten, denn man muss da einfach durch, ob man will oder nicht. Keine Chance zum Wegschauen und so erlebt man wahrlich mit, wie die Menschen leiden, entweder, weil sie selbst verseucht sind und tatsächlich verrecken im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes, oder aber, weil sie mit ansehen müssen, wie Freunde und Familie dahinvegetiert oder gar getötet werden. Das war ziemlich erschreckend für mich zu lesen, aber genau so habe ich mir seinen 2. Thriller vorgestellt.Einziger Kritikpunkt den ich im Gegensatz zu ZERFLEISCHT habe ist der, dass sich die Story ziemlich hingezogen hat. Es passiert einiges auf den 450 Seiten, allerdings wiederholt sich etwas auch mehrmals und dadurch wirkte die Geschichte etwas eintönig. Mir war zwar bewusst, dass in einer sterbenden Welt die Einöde herrscht, allerdings hätte Curran die Story dann vielleicht etwas kürzen können oder aber sich noch etwas mehr ausdenken können. Zum Beispiel bleibt die Frage, was genau da die Menschheit zerstört, relativ unbeantwortet. Was auch den Vorteil hat, dass jeder Leser selbst nachdenken kann und muss.Das Ende ist grandios, besser als in ZERFLEISCHT. Damit hat Curran es wirklich auf den Punkt gebracht.Für mich ne klare Empfehlung an Hardcore- und Endzeitleser.
What do You think about Biohazard (2010)?
and a post-apocalyptic, biohazardous America will be filled with EXTREME GORE and a man will travel across the land, guided by a voice in his head that he will inexplicably name "The Shape" and he will be pursued by a rapacious squirming telepathic living virus known as "Medusa" and he will encounter a lot of EXTREME GORE and he will make friends of psychopaths and other annoying people as well as two women who are of course totally hot and he will fuck both of them even though I would think they would be turned off by all of the EXTREME GORE and so this merry band will meet all sorts of horrible things like the savage marauders The Hatchet Clan and insane mutated crazies called Scabs and giant flesh worms and giant mutated insects and mutated birds and mutated rats and things that live in sewers called Trogsand other assorted monsters and of course the radioactive tykes known as The Children, all of which dole out oodles of EXTREME GORE and the descriptions are really vivid and full ofwords like "xanthic" and "scabrid" because Curran is surely a very descriptive writer and he particularly enjoys writing about all the horrific things a virus can do to the body, on and on with those descriptions, Curran certainly has his schtick down, he just loves to describe his EXTREME GORE and of course you gotta wonder why I even read these sorts ofnovels filled with EXTREME GORE and well I do love horror and I love reading about post-apocalyptic horrorlands where you have to fight to survive, so I suppose that's the reason why, I'm not ashamed of my tastes, not at all, and so I read page after page after page of EXTREME GORE and after a while I do have to admit... it can all grow a bit tiring.
—mark monday
This is my third book in a row by Tim Curran and I have to admit that this one surprised me. No I wasn't shocked by the blood and the gore and the horrible mutations caused by nuclear war, as I have a pretty high shock threshold. Okay there was one giant, mutated beastie in the sewer that did kinda gross even me out. I was kinda shocked by the notion that some sentient ball of nefarious evoyl (something that makes that little green ball in Heavy Metal look like a soap bubble) known as The Shape, demands that the protagonist make full moon sacrifices of friend and foe. But as Mr. Curran certainly painted the portrait of a dangerous, unforgiving state of the world, I got the message that the main character, Nash had to do what he had to in order to survive. Charged with a calling and under danger from mutated, diseased freaks and monsters all the way, his is not an easy task, despite his band of supportive followers. The Shape is a cruel and vicious god of cosmic nuclear devastation, but chasing Nash and his band of survivors across a nuclear-devastated land is something just as nasty, a living mutation of disease on a titanic scale, annihilating everything in its path...as it, the Medusa comes. Honestly, the amount of gore and death in this book is not for the light-hearted but the ending is absolutely brilliant in its final pages. The only thing I can even liken it to is sitting in the dark while watching the flame on a candle die out. Brilliantly terrifying!
—Mya
Biohazard by Tim Curran is a nice post nuclear war novel. I will say first off that it doesn't match the standards of Tim Curran's dead Sea (doesn't even come close) but it is still a very fun read that tries and succedes at dripping some originality into the very bland and unoriginal stew of apocalyptic horror. It is a strange read and has more depth than most novels like it. I found it to be very emotional through the entire book with difficult choices having to be made by Nash, our protagonist, to stay alive. Day after day Nash and his companions must defend themselves against Scabs, Hatchet Clans, giant radiated rats and insects and so on. Like Dead Sea, Tim Curran's imagination gives this book some hellish monsters that should stick with the reader long after the last line "it was death" is read. It also contains some of the most disgusting scenes I've ever read concerning dead and rotting corpses, a lot of them. Also, as most readers of apocalyptic fiction should guess, this novel involves encounters with diseases that kill swiftly and brutally and this danger mixed with all the others is only kept from prematurely ending the main character's life (and the novel's) by a god-like being known only as The Shape. Two characters, Texas and Carl, are a bit annoying at times and seem to be recycled slightly from Dead Sea, but I like characters that annoy the reader, to a certain point. Brian Keene is an author who surpasses that point a lot more these days and tends to overdo it, but Curran toes the line of agrivation without actually crossing it.All in all, Biohazard is another great effort from Tim Curran and most fans of horror should love it, if the odd ending doesn't agrivate them. Again, I am most impressed at Curran's ability to take this unoriginal plot and add some new things to it and that is why I think people should check it out.
—Adam Wilson
