Middle school boys see if you could keep up with Jack Sullivan if your world turned upside down with roaming monsters and zombies!

Jack has not had the easiest of lives being an orphan and shifting from one bad foster home to the next, but then the monsters and zombies take over. “But one thing I’ve learned about life after the Monster Apocalypse: nothing’s quick and nothing’s easy.” (p. 4) Now, Jack lives in a tree house which he has fortified.  On one of his trips to the CVS to get replacement parts for is walkie talkie, Jack runs into BLARG, a monster who will make several appearances for revenge on Jack. Jack spends his days calling out on the walkie talkie trying to make contact with his one friend Quint. [Foster kids don’t make or keep real friends easily.] Jack new life philosophy “Ever since the Robinsons peaced out– that’s forty-two days ago, now–I’ve been forced to survive alone in a world of monsters. That’s pretty much the plot of a video game, right?! So I said, y’know what, I’ll treat life like a video game.” (p. 23)

In video game fashion, Jack finds his best friend Quint. Jack helps move Quint and all of his science stuff in Quint’s mother’s suped up pickup truck, they call BIG MAMA, back to the tree house. They have a fine life eating Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, drinking Mountain Dew, along with other junk foods. All the while, Jack is looking for June Del Toro, a girl from his former middle school, whom he wants to save as a damsel in distress. This is one of Jack’s Feats of Apocalyptic Success! video game style. While looking for gas to keep Big Mama running, Jack meets up with a humungous  pet monster (perhaps a dog- soon to be called Rover). On another trip out looking for June, Jack runs into the former middle school’s bully – Dirk. Dirk is not having any trouble fending off the monsters, but Jack talks him into coming and living with him in the tree house. BLARG makes an appearance, but between Dirk and Jack they are able to escape in Big Mama.

Quint makes a saddle for Jack to use to ride Rover. While riding Rover, the monster pet, Jack spies June’s sweat shirt stuck in the grating of a middle school window. Jack, Dirk, and Quint go to rescue June. As it turns out, June ends up rescuing them inside the abandoned middle school when BLARG makes yet another appearance. June does not want to be rescued. She’s trying to make contact with her parents. She saw them evacuating the city when the Monster Apocalypse began, but she was not able to reach them at that time.  Once again, Jack is able to talk another person into joining Quint and him back at the tree house fortress. Quint, Dirk, Jack, and now June deck themselves out in the school’s protective sports gear before going out to face the zombies and BLARG so they can return to the tree house. They are almost to Big Mama when Jack starts running away to lead BLARG away from the group. The rest of the group make it back to the ree house, but Jack is cornered by BLARG. Rover bounds in, in the nick of time. Back at the tree house,  Jack and friend use all of the fortress’s defenses to defend the tree house. Jack Slays BLARG. “I completed the ULTIMATE Feat of Apocalyptic Success! and now? Well, now, I think it’s time we all relaxed. At least for a little while…[until] the next giant monster comes around the corner….   THE END! (for now…)  (page 255)

Douglas Holgate’s graphic novel style illustrations are generously spread throughout the book making this a middle school boy favorite.