Apocalyptic Short Stories

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.

RIZEN is a chilling collection of stories that will have you on the edge of your seat! A plague has caused the dead to rise and stalk the living.... "The Chosen": Ten years after the zombie apocalypse, Dan and his family try to stake out a new life for themselves in rural Wyoming. When he encounters a mysterious group of survivors who call themselves The Chosen, Dan is unsure whether he can trust them. "The White Fist": Five years after the first of the infected reach Texas, pockets of survivors are reminded that the living can be even more dangerous than the dead.

Don used to believe climate change - global warming repacked - would be the end of us. Give man enough time on the planet and we'll make it inhabitable for all creatures. Trying to force mankind into action, eco-terrorist altered the course of history by activating dozens of volcanoes around the world. Don survived the eruptions, but can he survive the fallout? If not, can he secure mankind's future?

Jennifer Benton has made it through the zombie apocalypse and has fallen in love with Mark, the charismatic leader of a group of fellow survivors. He's brought them from Illinois to hoped-for shelter at his family's Texas ranch, only to discover it destroyed. The survivors have one more chance when Mark befriends Todd in a nearby refugee camp; he invites the group to fly with him to his wealthy family's home in Oklahoma. But what's inside Todd's house may be worse than the zombies outside. And now Jennifer has more than Mark and herself to worry about....

In the winter of 1872, Captain William Trace and his men were ordered to investigate a series of unexplained attacks on local citizens in the remote villages of the wild and untamed Washington Territory. What Captain Trace found was pure nightmare fuel, and what had started as a simple reconnaissance mission had become something far, far more. For Captain Trace, the winter of 1872 was about survival, not just of the body, but of the mind.

The quirky mind of famous science fiction writer Lester del Ray gives us three wonderful tales ranging from zombies ("Dead Ringer"), time travel - how do you convince your earlier self it is safe to get into the time machine, eh? ("And It Comes Out Here") and eternal life ("The Dwindling Years"). Listen and enjoy.

Major Davis fully intended to return home and raise his daughter. But when the Avars rebel on the desolate, post-apocalyptic planet, he’ll have no choice but to face his own mortality—sooner than he ever expected.

Edward Stentz est un mutant sans pouvoir, et pourtant la survie de l'humanité dépend de lui. Des portes dimensionnelles apparaissent partout à la surface de la terre, offrant un aller sans retour vers... Quoi ? Un généticien est sur le point de faire une découverte terrifiante, qui changera complétement la perspective de l'humanité. Yoan Keller traque les Autres dans une ville dévastée... Une expédition de scientifiques en confinement dans des grottes est abandonnée loin de la surface, coupée de toute communication avec l'extérieur.

A military VR trainer, wanting to keep her relationship with a fellow scientist hidden, must pass a security inspection in her lab by the vicious Atlas Crusade that has swept to power. When the leader of the security team demands an unusual VR request in her lab, Prof. Meliss must decide between keeping her lover safe or secretly undertaking a consciousness swap that could end the Crusade’s five-year long relentless rule.

To some this is may seem like a symbolic story of the karmic stagnation of the Human Collective, which is saved by the wisdom and guidance of an over soul, by using the primordial elements of pure creation and the loving union of the Divine Female and Male Principles. Actually, this is just another story of astral space sex, twin flames, tuxedo tee shirts, and one more apocalypse diverted by multidimensional intergalactic sperm.

Notions of the undead have fascinated and terrified humanity for centuries, and none more so than those tales revolving around zombies. From the very root of the zombie myth back in the Haitian slave days to a saturation through popular culture, zombies have crawled their way up out of their graves, refusing to stay interred. Now, as their hordes increase and their hungers grow, the undead plagues cannot be stopped. It isn't just a case of no room left on Earth. The apocalypse is here. 

The story of The Scarlet Plague takes place in 2073 in the San Francisco area, 60 years after an apocalyptic pandemic called the Red Death or Scarlet Plague has depopulated the Earth. James Smith, one of the survivors, lives with his grandsons who are hunter-gatherers in a tribal world. He relates the horror of the plague to them, and tells them of the time when he was a professor of English, and of the start of the pandemic. His grandsons, who are of limited cognitive ability, refuse to believe him; they cannot believe that the disease was spread by germs.

If you love dystopian stories, you came to the right place. This is an anthology of the short story series, Dystopian Health Collection - stories about human health in dystopian societies. In each story, we explore a new topic around health and how modern developments can turn into a dystopian society. Four dark stories around health with a bonus story available only in the audiobook version.