History Literature / TheBoyOnTheBridge

* AssKickingEqualsAuthority: Often subverted and avoided--the potential for violence is always near at hand, but the characters struggle to maintain composure/balance.

* AllTheGoodMenAreGay: Foss’s feelings about Akimwe and Phillips, the only members of the expedition she felt attracted to.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: a lot of the increasingly bitter and ugly conflicts between [=McQueen=] and Carlisle come down to this, although the narrative generally sides with Carlisle.
* ColdSniper: [=McQueen=] and Foss are frighteningly efficient and distant, especially on the job. This is lampshaded by [=McQueen=]'s internal monologue, where he notes that it's easy to feel guilt-free about killing zombies in the purpose of some greater cause.

* DwindlingParty: From that initial crew of twelve apostles....

* FrenchJerk: Dr. Fournier, a DirtyCoward with a case of ItsAllAboutMe who spends far more time spying on Colonel Carlisle for Brigadier Fry than actually working to carry out their mission.

* KilroyWasHere: when [=McQueen=] and Phillips get the atmosphere samples from the last cache, on the Cairngorm Plateau, Phillips pauses to leave his dog tags behind.

* NotUsingTheZWord: They are called "hungries."
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: They [[spoiler:breed]].
* ImperiledInPregnancy: [[spoiler:Dr. Rina Khan]], the pregnant crew member. A zombie apocalypse is generally not a great environment to be pregnant. The mission leaders can't justify giving her extra rations and deprive somebody else just because she got pregnant. [[spoiler:After she is bitten, she gets the shot, but it is only a temporary measure.]]

** The crew of The ''Charles Darwin'' another mobile lab that went out before Stephen and the others, radioed the they were being chased by a group of junkers, broke contact and was never heard from again.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler: While many of the crew are killed, Stephen does manage to ensure that Dr. Khan's (born-infected) baby is placed among this who will care for him, while Carlisle and the other survivors find somewhere where the pathogens can't reach that altitude, and as revealed in the epilogue manage to establish a large colony there, survive Melanie releasing the spores from the first book (also leading to hope there may be others in high altitudes around the world), with the Hungry Children being willing to trade with them to help them survive in order to establish a lasting peace]].
* FrenchJerk: Dr. Fournier, a DirtyCoward, with a case of ItsAllAboutMe who spends far more time spying on Colonel Carlisle for Brigadier Fry than actually working to carry out their mission.
* ICannotSelfTerminate.

* FrontlineGeneral: Zigzagged with Carlisle. He usually stays in Rosie while the others are out collecting hungrier to experiment on, but that’s due to his bad hip, and he is willing to put himself at risk when things are desperate. During the Breakdown he played this straighter, personally going to rescue scientists from a university and then leading them and a convoy of civilians he picked up to Beacon on foot.
* GeneralRipper: Brigadier Fry, who fought the hungries in ineffective ways that caused massive collateral damage and is tryin to cement her hold on Beacon even if it means killing everyone in her way.

* JumpedAtTheCall: After so many months of no progress, most of the soldiers and science team leap at the chance to go out and search when it looks like there might be a kind of Hungry that no ones encountered out there.
* KilroyWasHere: when [=McQueen=] and Phillips get the atsmosphere samples from the last cache, on the Cairngorm Plateau, Phillips pauses to leave his dogtags behind.

* MamaBear: Rina, to Stephen.
* NeverMyFault: Averted, after some quiet reflection, [=McQueen=] accepts that he was wrong to use the flamethrower in when they were in the middle of town, and that he deserved some punishment for that, but when he says as much to Carlisle and Carlisle still refuses to give him access to the turret guns, which he feels no one else can go as good of a job protecting the group with, [=McQueen=] takes it poorly.

* ScientistVsSoldier: The novel has the military leaders caring only about dominance and merely using the scientists efforts to distract people. The common soldiers have more integrity but view the scientists as naive, judgmental, and unlikely to accomplish something, while the scientists see them as too callous towards killing [[NotUsingTheZWord Hungries]], and likely to exploit their discoveries by [[spoiler: [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman breeding the hungries children like cattle and slaughtering them to make a vaccine which will only provide short-term relief]]]].

* StraightGay: Dr. Akimwe and Private Phillips are unstereotypicaj gay men.

* StraightGay: Dr. Akimwe and Private Phillips.

* UncertainDoom: The crew of The ''Charles Darwin'' another mobile lab that went out before Stephen and the others, radioed the they were being chased by a group of junkers, broke contact and was never heard from again. Also [[spoiler: Akimwe]] who goes mad and leaves the group, on a path likely to take him to the crowd of pursuing [[spoiler: Hungry Children]] who would have almost certainly killed him.
* WastelandElder [[spoiler: Carlisle in the epilogue]].

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Stephen. Poor, poor Stephen. He was the SoleSurvivor of a group Carlisle, Dr. Khan and a few others on their way to Beacon witnesses being attacked, after his parents [[GoThroughMe shielded him with their own bodies and were mauled to death for it]], after which he experienced a miserable time in Beacon's makeshift orphanage before going to live with Dr. Khan.
** Also Colonel Carlisle, who killed scores of people with napalm, but ultimately very few hungrier, in a bombing run that he had vehemently protested against, and as punishment been assigned to personally carry out.

* FrontlineGeneral: zigzagged with Carlisle. He usually stays in Rosie while the others are out collecting hungrier to experiment on, but that’s due to his bad hip, and he is willing to put himself at risk when things are desperate. During the Breakdown he played this straighter, personally going to rescue scientists from a university and then leading them and a convoy of civilians he picked up to Beacon on foot.