The Gateway — Gilbert Reid

Volume 4 in the Adventures of V seriesA fearless sheriff, a pregnant art historian, a mad scientist, a shackled prisoner, a zombie reporter, an orphaned boy, a zombie film star, a gung-ho colonel, an ancient goddess, a reptilian secret service agent, a gorgeous Synthetic Individual, a stubborn ship's captain, an adoring zombie, are all caught up - with V - in a tsunami of chaos when the zombie virus overwhelms Miami, and spreads, like wildfire, through Florida and beyond. The great luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas, steered by zombies - directed by an invisible central mind, the Puppet Master - has crashed into the Miami seafront, unleashing the zombie pandemic which now rages out of control on the mainland, overwhelming Miami, Fort Lauderdale, much of Florida, and heading for New York City and Houston, Texas. Leaping from the Eden before it crashed, V had kidnapped the US president, Katherine du Bois Hughes, and had gotten her to safety on the research ship, Andromeda II. On Andromeda II, Andromeda Corp CEO Sabrina Jacobs and V arrange to get the president back to Washington so Katherine can reverse a coup d état, carried out by the fundamentalist vice president, Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson, and seize back control of the government. While the president heads for Washington, V plunges deep into the Florida Everglades to rescue from lobotomy by a mad scientist a kidnapped young woman, Monica Fabritz, who, manacled down in a secret government installation, is about to give birth to a human-alien hybrid, perhaps the prophesized zombie anti-Christ.Just as V arrives, US Marines storm into the installation with instructions to kill everybody, a horde of zombies converges on the site, and Freddy, the lethal hybrid that kidnapped and raped Monica smashes his way into the building to kidnap his alien-hybrid son. Returning to Andromeda II with Monica and her baby, V, accompanied by a beautiful Marine sergeant and a handsome Navy captain, sets off to meet the Puppet Master. On the terrorist yacht, A Flight of Fancy, she travels through a shimmering space-time gateway into an alternative universe. There V and her fellow castaways - and their guide, a teenage goddess, Isis - find themselves on a lush, primitive, paradise-like island. Here, in this strange alternate world, the natives worship V as a long-absent goddess who has returned to them. V must perform endless ceremonies, accepting one human sacrifice after another, emptying her victims of their blood. Getting spoiled, the worshippers clamor for more spectacular performances.Finally, one day, V, helped by young Isis, travels deep underground, into the bowels of the earth, under a volcano, and confronts the source of the pandemic, the Puppet Master. He is none other than a grotesque reincarnation of the handsome sadistic Russian oligarch, Dmitry Pavlov, himself an emanation of the eternal Evil Force, V's constant foe and nemesis.Meanwhile, other refugees from the virus, Alex Wolf, chief scientist of Andromeda Corporation, Marie-José, the beautiful French SIN, the two Chinese acrobats, Fei and Fang, actress Virginia Lily - who has become a charming zombie - and Virginia's sidekick, 11-year-old Jake, struggle to survive, to contain the virus, and to discover an antidote and a vaccine, while holed up in a laboratory just outside Miami, besieged by rampaging zombies and by murderous anti-science militias inspired by the fundamentalist anti-science vice president.In the alternative universe, under the volcano, V faces the ultimate test, risking her soul - and her body - to save the world from eternal enslavement to the Puppet Master.