The First Crusade Against the Dead

In the eleventh century, medieval Europe more closely resembled a post-apocalyptic hellscape than almost any other time in the history of western civilization. In the absence of centralized authority and the rule of law, self-sufficient local populations survived on their ability to exert violence on other local populations, typically at the behest of a warlord who called himself count, duke, or king.What if the Dead walked among this population? What if zombies, as we understand them in our post-Night of the Living Dead culture, had existed as long as anyone in the eleventh century could remember? What if the First Crusade (1096-1099) was a call to arms against, not only the Muslim inhabitants of the Levant, but also the Dead that walked among them?In this work, Justin Barber, an independent scholar and member of the Zombie Research Society, answers these and other questions by rewriting August Krey's classic translation of the historical accounts of the First Crusade. By transforming this authentic historical narrative of the West into one that includes the revenant Dead, Barber challenges readers to confront the fanaticism, brutality, and heroism of the Crusaders in a fashion typically reserved for stories regarding how our own civilization will end-not with a bang but a bite.