Apocalyptic Short Stories

This is a short story about two people in love at the end of the world and the beginning of another. It was written on the last day of the year 2014.

In Frankenstein, King of the Dead, Book 1, an expedition to the continent of Antarctica started a chain reaction of chaos. Mr. Franklin Victor Castle, formerly known only as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, launches into action, continuing a mission he began more than a century earlier. He never counted on her entering his life. Now, in the besieged city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Frank's best friend and truest love is trapped by the living dead. Frank heads off with only one goal...to save her.

In desperation, mankind constructs a rescue spaceship to escape a doomed planet. But will it save them? Or will they discover a secret that unravels everything they've ever believed to be true? A science fiction short story that will challenge you and have you thinking for days after you listen to it. Originally part of the anthology A Plague of Dreams, and it exists in a forest I call "Dreamwood Tales".

Flesh-eating zombies invade a biker bar! Is it an isolated incident or a ghastly foretaste of a nationwide plague of zombies? Harry Black and his girlfriend, Irena, have to survive the first zombie onslaught in order to find out while society crashes and burns all around them.

Thirteen tales of Darlene Bobich! The prequel to the successful Dying Days zombie novella. Includes a free preview of Dying Days.

Tonia Brown brings you another triple shot of horror, this time with a southern bent. A sheriff of a small town tries to keep the secret of a local bootlegger, but at what cost? A small town sin eater takes on more than he can handle, leaving him sick to the core. While on the run from zombies, Mary stumbles across an old farmhouse. But of course, nothing is as it seems in a post zombie apocalypse world.

Cara Stone is a broken woman: penniless, homeless, and hopeless. When given the chance to appear on television, she jumps at the opportunity to win a minimum of $5,000 for her family.

One afternoon, young Thomas fails to return home for dinner and is soon reported as missing. His disappearance is told from the points of view of all involved, and what unfolds is a tale of ghosts, murder, grief, magic, and necromancy. It is always certain that Thomas will return...but the nature of his reappearance will haunt the minds of all protagonists involved, and each will be changed forever.

Jack made the choice that few make, and now he is left wondering if he has thrown his life away or given himself a chance to make up for the past. But as always, it isn't just Jack that has been affected by his actions.

This is the first in a series of stand-alone, interconnected short stories for preppers. In this particular installment, a prepper survives a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which has devastated the electrical grid. Cars and trucks can still move in most parts of America, but they can't get any gas. The threat of bioterrorism looms as the U.S. and its allies go to war and our technology-dependent society is stopped dead in its tracks. Martial law and global famine have begun. Can the characters survive?

An offshoot species of a parasite, normally only found in amphibians, has evolved to include humans in its bizarre, three-stage life cycle, which causes the host to grow extra limbs and other body parts. Is there a way to break the cycle and stop the decline of the human race, or will phobia, paranoia, and fear blind us and seal our fate?

Perkus and Dardet scout the ruins left behind by nuclear war. Happening on a warehouse with little entry, they see an opportunity for salvage. But things hide in dark places in the wasteland.

Welcome to Mackurd. When the Collapse made the simple things complicated and the complicated things man-eating monsters, most people ran around like sissies and got eaten. This is not the story of those people. This is the story of unlikely heroes kicking undead pelvises and shooting monsters before their names become an issue, all while trying to keep the squad mascot from stealing all the beer. It's a short story of the Collapse, set in the world of the Black Year Series.

When hell claws its way up from the dark depths of the Earth, and the dead begin to walk again, for several people the zombie apocalypse doesn't just mean the end of the world as they know it, it is also the beginning of a brave new life for them. For some it offers freedom, for others a deeper torment and unforgiving life than they ever thought possible. The coward, the street rat, the hero, and the lovers, everyone has their place. What really decides their fate in this new existence, nature, or nurture?

What happens when a small town, rural zombie ends up being sent to Washington DC as a member of Congress?

During the 1700's, Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground at the entrance to Beaufort inlet and wasn't discovered until hundreds of years later. During an expedition of the sunken ship, something went terribly wrong, but the effects of that incident would not be felt until years later when a barrel of an unknown substance was tossed overboard during the expedition. The barrel took several years to erode, but when it did that's when all hell broke loose.

The survivors of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that has devastated the electrical grid are trying to cope in a darkened world as society collapses. It's the morning of day seven in this post-apocalyptic world and from the news on the radio it appears WWIII has already begun. How long until the batteries in the radios and flashlights fail? How long until a light in the night or the sound of a generator running signals not hope and coping but a target for the desperate and unprepared?

Life is but a dream, a construct, an illusion of our minds. Space monkey to earth, over. No response, it's all inside my head. The moment before the moment, when I decided to be someone else, someone better. It's all a lie...Natasha is my witness. My head hurts, where am I? I don't remember how I got here. Perhaps, this is just a dream or something else. Perhaps a nightmare? Wake up, wake up little man. Reality is about to smash you against the wall.

Only Alpha can fix this. Alpha and Kyle have toiled all day to carefully construct the perfect dinner date for Tina, whose crippling depression has bedridden her for months. Why is Tina so miserable, and why does she place so much blame on Alpha, whose dominance of humanity has solved all of the world's problems? Throughout the course of the evening, logic clashes against depression. Rationalizations against uncompromising morality. Love against revenge.

Steven E. Wedel offers four short stories that run the gamut from pure horror to shocking hilarity. First, in "The Zombie Whisperer", a young lady living in a secure compound with a few fellow survivors of the zombie apocalypse invites in a man who says he can communicate with the walking dead.