'In 2020, while sifting through University of Pittsburgh Library’s System’s George A. Romero Archival Collection, novelist Daniel Kraus turned up a a half-finished novel called Pay the Piper, a project few had ever heard of. In the years since, Kraus has worked with Romero’s estate to bring this unfinished masterwork to light.
'Alligator Point, Louisiana, population 141: Young Renée Pontiac has heard stories of “the Piper”—a murderous swamp entity haunting the bayou—her entire life. But now the legend feels horrifically real: children are being taken and gruesomely slain. To resist, Pontiac and the town’s desperate denizens will need to acknowledge the sins of their ancestors—the infamous slave traders, the Pirates Lafitte. If they don’t... it’s time to pay the piper.'
George A. Romero is without a doubt the father of the modern zombie genre, with his Night of the Living Dead and it's subsequent sequels setting the framework for what people expect of the genre. From changing the way zombies work, to incorporating social commentary, and quirky groups of survivors that end up being as big a threat to each other and the monsters, he created many of the things that we all take for granted now. When Romero died it was thought that he'd had his final word on the zombie genre, but in 2020 writer Daniel Kraus released The Living Dead, Romero's final zombie story. Using hundreds of pages of notes and drafts, Kraus delivered Romero's final statement on the genre he pioneered. But it turns out that this would not be the final work from Romero. Now a new story, Pay the Piper offers readers a chance to see Romero take a stab at a very different kind of horror story.
Pay The Piper takes readers to the tiny town of Alligator Point, a settlement of 141 people deep in the Louisiana swamp. The town has long been home to stories of The Piper, a mysterious entity that lives out in the swamp and lures children away to their death. Most people think that it's nothing but a folk tale, a story passed down through the generations, but when children in Alligator Point begin to go missing, only to turn up dead in horrific ways, the 'sheriff' Pete Roosevelt, begins to think that perhaps there's some truth in the old tales.
One of the things that will immediately jump out to those who pick up Pay the Piper is that the book is absolutely packed with colourful and quirky characters. The town might be small, but it seems like Romero and Klaus went out of their way to give everyone in it something unique, some kind of character trait that makes them distinct. The already mentioned Pete quotes John Wayne all the time, Miss Ward the schoolteacher who sings at her students, the grouchy town doctor, and Gerald, the young boy with the obsession with marbles. It often feels like you could pluck any character out of the crowd in Alligator Point and make them the focus of their own story.
One of the main focuses for us, however, is Renée Pontiac, a nine-year-old girl with a sharp mind and a head full of knowledge. She's young, but comes across as much older, one of those kids who can argue down a fair few adults. Renée is an incredibly caring young girl, something we see in how she deals with her father's alcoholism, but it's when she loses her best friend to the monster in the swamp that we really see the depth to her care and love. Having a child being one of the central characters in a story and them not being a McGuffin in need of rescue and just having them be a regular protagonist is a difficult line to walk, and whilst there are times where Pay the Piper does stumble a little it manages to pull it off well for the most part.
'But where are the zombies?' I hear you ask. This is Romero after all. Well, that's where the book stands on its own from the rest of Romero's work. There's not a single zombie to be found within the pages of Pay the Pipe. Instead we get ancient octopus monster able to take on different forms to lure in it's victims. To that point it's a little like Stephen King's IT in places, but only in the vaguest sense. Romero and Klaus are able to make the Piper feel different enough from Pennywise that you don't really think about it beyond the most basic comparison. It also helps that the book tries to incorporate some interesting history and themes. The book touches upon piracy, the slave trade, colonialism, and racism, both in history and in its impact on the modern day.
Pay the Piper is an interesting book, and whilst there are times when you can kind of feel the two authors, where it feels that perhaps Klaus had to go a little bit alone, or maybe Romero's idea needed a bit more work, the book is overall an interesting and engaging read. With some very dark moments, and buckets of gore, it's a book that will likely surprise you until you remember its the product of the man who put people being ripped apart whilst still alive in most of his films.
