There is no such thing as half an apocalypse.
But what if, as South by Frank Owen (a pseudonym for two authors, Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer) postulates, you lived in a USA divided between a prosperous, healthy North with all the mod cons of life and an impoverished, ecologically-ruined South, near-depopulated from successive waves of genetically-engineered viruses (sent by a vengeful North) from which there is no immunity?
In certain horrific ways then it is half an apocalypse; for the people left alive in the South and enduring the nightly wind-driven cycles of sickness, however, the annihilation of nearly everyone and everything they knew is the end of the world for them, with no real escape thanks to a massive Berlin Wall-esque concrete barrier than runs the entire length of the once-united country.
It is, of course, history repeating itself but this time with the horrific arsenal granted by modern technology, a furious dictatorial President – “Fuck Renard!” is the catchcry of all Southerners, a pejorative without peer spat out at every available opportunity – and a winner who has long since won the Second Civil War but who continues to bludgeon his opponent, long after any real fight has gone out of them.
“And if he could see, actually see Vida beside him, then when she woke up she could tell him where Garrett was gone. It seemed like days now since he’d heard anyone say, I’ve made waffles! It filled Dyce with a dread that he realised was loneliness. He had never been without his brother before, his comfort and his torment. The real legacy of the diseases was that they snipped the bonds of friends and family; you were left untethered to float across the earth.” (P. 174)
That is probably the real tragedy of the one-sided apocalypse evocatively brought to undead life by Owen – that it is borne of human folly and could so easily have been prevented if cooler heads had prevailed.
But with national pride at stake, and in the case of President Renard all too personal reason for annihilatory revenge, there was any question of the second, far more devastating part of the war happening, nor of it ever really ending until the South is a barren wasteland, fit for neither man, woman, nor beast.
Not so surprisingly though the human spirit refuses to lie down and die even in this most dire of circumstances, and as we meet up and journey with brothers Garrett and Allerdyce (Dyce) Jackson and later Vida Washington, the daughter of South African immigrant Ruth, we come to understand just how tenacious the human will to survive can be.
So tenacious in fact that even though they are battling the constant threat of life-ending disease, pursuits by the murderously-thuggish Callahan clan, and a remorseless imperative to find a home, any home that can be theirs for longer than a few days, they remain determined to stay alive, to beat the odds and to emerge triumphant at the end, if in fact there ever is an end which seems doubtful.
As entries in the rather crowded apocalyptic genre go, South is, as promised on the cover by Sarah Lotz, “a game changer”, redefining what a book of this type can be.
That’s because even in the midst of a world gone to hell, where precious little beauty remains beyond the occasional glimpsed sunset – glimpsed because staying out after dark when the virus-laden winds arrive is effectively a death sentence and robust shelter a premium – there are moments of beauty.
For instance the bonds between Garrett and Dyce.
Granted there is a big brother/little brother dynamic very much in play, with Garrett the one who calls the shots but even through all this, it’s very clear that they need and depend on each other, and that in a world that has robbed them of a great deal, that they need to hang onto each other or lose everything that matters.
Vida too has strong bonds with her mother Ruth, with the two women coming close to creating a cure through their shared expertise; and later with Dyce, when the two form the kind of deep romantic bond that their current situation, defined by need and survival, not want and indulgence, says shouldn’t exist.
“… and Vida saw Dyce coming up the hill. He looked healthy and quick, purposeful, swaggering. Give a man a pair of dry pants and he thinks he owns the world, though Vida. Ma was right that he wouldn’t stay. And Vida knew, just watching him walk to her, smiling and dirty, that she would go with him.” (P. 220)
And this is where the beauty that defines South comes from – these tight, unassailable links that only death can thwart but that transcends the horror taking place around them.
Owen renders these bonds in the most authentic, real terms possible, and test them and tests them again, but they endure, a touching reminder that even in an apocalypse that the better angels of human nature aren’t completely vanquished.
There are also small happy endings there and there; not a sense of everything being wrapped up with a neat, tidy bow because that simply can’t happen in a world brought into being by revenge and intransigence, but of the small victories that come from staring annihilation in the face and refusing to let it take everything from you.
In a war with no real winners, the only victor is the ability of the human spirit to endure, which is admirably and movingly does, and without a twee sensibility to be seen than god, in the face of opposition so unceasing that it would be all to easy to give up.
South does a brilliant job of balancing horror and hope, of being unflinchingly brutal and honest but also tender, moving and hopeful, the sort of novel that understands the darkness and light of human condition, but convincingly present a case for both having their place at the apocalyptic table.