This is one of many novellas that Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire) has written to flesh out her Newsflesh trilogy – or her version of a zombie apocalypse. As a result, I would definitely not recommend this as the entry point even though this is chronologically first and goes back to the very beginning, explaining the circumstances that led to the beginning of The Rising. She had already introduced these ideas in the main trilogy but here goes into the details, introduces the men history holds responsible when it was much more complicated and shows us the Masons before The Rising (the couple that made their name as bloggers during the apocalypse and adopted the main characters of the trilogy).
Seanan McGuire is such a fascinating author to me – she has 4 running series under that name plus other collaborations and then writes horror under the Grant name. And for all of them, she also writes these great short stories and novellas that flesh out the characters and explore a random thing mentioned once. If you are looking for an author with an extensive catalog to dive into, she will keep you busy for a while. I enjoyed this novella but it wasn’t my favorite of the Newsflesh novellas – that one is probably still the absolutely heartbreaking “The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell.” She also has one that takes place at San Diego Comic Con, focusing on a group of Firefly fans (written way before all the Whedon stuff came to light).