Published by Bancroft Press on December 17, 2012
The Listeners is a new addition to the ever-expanding clutter of post-apocalyptic novels. The set-up is common: a plague leads to the quarantine of a New York City borough; within that borough, plague sufferers are behaving strangely. They get boils, the boils erupt, and they become creepy killers. It's not exactly a zombie apocalypse, but close enough.
Does the world need another zombie apocalypse novel? Probably not, but this one has some merit. After Daniel Raymond's mother disappears, he becomes one of many kids inside the quarantined area adopted by the Listeners, a group of one-eared men who consider themselves soldiers of destiny. They are led by a two-eared prophet who is aptly named Adam. The police have branded the Listeners as criminals, but Adam convinces Daniel that they are helpers, that the police are the real criminals. Either way, the Listeners are a cult. Daniel seems an unlikely candidate for cult membership, but Harrison Demchick seems to be making the point that cults thrive in extreme circumstances by preying on the lost and confused. In any event, the police and the Listeners are soon at war, and Daniel (whose close friend Katie is the daughter of a cop) is caught in the middle.
Various interludes and asides fill out the story. An advertising copywriter outside the quarantined zone, sensing that the end of the world is nigh, takes it into his head to start an ad campaign urging sinners to repent. He becomes, in short, God's ad man. A barfly named Roy blames a more successful barfly with Middle Eastern ancestry for the plague based solely on Roy's certainty that people from that part of the world are troublemakers. Tyrone, with his brother Anton, finds sanctuary with other survivors in a church, hoping to discover God's plan but instead finding a hidden exit from the borough. Other profiled characters include a nurse who shows up in Daniel's life and a reporter who is trapped inside the borough, forced to trade sex for food that the cops provide. Some of the interludes are more effective than others (the nurse's story of cowardice and greed is particularly strong); some are so disconnected from the main story that they act as unnecessary drags on the plot's momentum.
The misuse of power is the novel's central theme. The police declare martial law within the quarantined area (which, of course, they have no authority to do) and coerce citizens into surrendering their firearms at exactly the time they are most needed. The media report only what the police tell them, and the police are interested only in making themselves look good (while doing a bit of looting in their spare time).
While I enjoyed much of The Listeners and admired the immediacy of Demchick's prose, I found it difficult to understand what motivated the primary characters. We learn very little about Adam or about the origin of the Listeners. What we do learn comes as a plot twist late in the novel, but the explanation is incomplete and unsatisfying. Too many of the novel's events, in fact, are unaccompanied by a sensible explanation. Why, for instance, do plague sufferers have an aversion to babies? The concept of one-eared listeners makes little sense, but cults rarely make sense so I was willing to let that slide. Insofar as it involves Daniel, even the ending (for reasons I can't discuss without spoiling it) didn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe Demchick has a sequel in mind that will answer these questions, but as a stand-alone novel, I found the lack of information to be frustrating.
Daniel and his friend Katie are likable, but by making Daniel obsessed about his feelings for Katie, Demchick strives for a poignancy the novel never quite attains. The reader is meant to empathize with Daniel and to feel sorrow at the losses he experiences, but I was never able to convince myself of the story's reality and, for that reason, could never invest in Daniel's plight. I nonetheless give Demchick credit for making a valiant attempt at creating a zombie apocalypse novel with heart. He's a skillful writer, and I would love to see him focusing his talent on something meatier than a retread of a well-worn plot.
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