Apocalyptic Short Stories

It’s only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond. Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection. As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.

You can't kill the dead! Like any good monster, the zombie has proven to be ever-evolving, monumentally mutable, and open to seemingly endless imaginative interpretations: the thralls of voodoo sorcerers, George Romero's living dead, societal symbols, dancing thrillers, viral victims, reanimated ramblers, video-gaming targets, post-apocalyptic permutations, shuffling sidekicks, literary mash-ups, the comedic, and, yes, even the romantic.

Civilizations ravaged by a virus. Desperate survivors fight for scraps as unlikely heroes rise from the ashes. Z Horizon features four full-length, post-apocalypse novels. Get 40 plus hours of pulse-pounding action and gripping apocalyptic characters in this bargain collection. Four deadly outbreaks, four collapsed worlds, and the heroes who battle monsters both dead and alive.

It's 2017, and a raging virus has drastically reduced the world's population of men, transforming all but a fraction into a race of putrid, brain-dead zombies. So what's single, ambitious 23-year-old Hattie Cross to do for fun, not to mention romance? In this hilarious marriage of post-apocalyptic fiction and super smart chick-lit with a wry twist, novelist Lynn Messina spoofs dating manuals, monsters, and the superficial media world, all the while creating a feisty, funny heroine with heart.

A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.

When her lover succumbs to the virus plaguing the remains of the civilized world, Lindsay is left alone on a sailboat she can't operate. With nuclear bombs deployed to destroy the infected and the storm season just beginning, she must find a way to survive - without losing her mind in the process. Get ready to dive into the first book in the In Caves & Catacombs series.

The news that humanity had been dreading for ages had come true. Zombies are real. Worst of all, we created them. The apocalypse was upon us, and every man, woman and child had to answer a simple question of themselves: "What do we do now?"

This collection from grand master Robert A. Heinlein includes five short stories sure to please science fiction fans everywhere. The title story tells the tale of a young man who meets a time-traveling bartender whose origins - and relation to the young man - are more complex and stranger than the Ouroboros ring on the barkeep's finger.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

With more than 10 stories from exciting new voices and a few veterans of the universe, the second anthology highlights the lives and struggles of humanity's best and worst years after system advent.

Return to the world of Mortal Engines in this new book of short stories about the rebellious young aviatrix, Anna Fang. In a dangerous future world where gigantic, motorized cities attack and devour each other, London hunts where no other predator dares. But Anna Fang - pilot, adventurer, spy - isn't afraid. The three stories show gripping, moving, exciting moments in Anna Fang's life: her childhood as a slave aboard the moving city Arkangel, a showdown against a robotic Stalker that is terrifyingly out of control, and her free life as an intelligence agent for the Anti-Traction league....

If it wasn’t for bad luck, some of us wouldn’t have any luck at all. Old saying, sure, but boy is it true when it comes to Adrian Ring’s zombie apocalypse. Welcome to Dead Lucky; an anthology of 12 tales set in the world of Adrian’s Undead Diary.

Return to the zombie apocalypse wasteland that is the Rot & Ruin in this short story collection from Jonathan Maberry. Benny Imura's zombie-infested adventures are well-chronicled in the gripping novels Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Flesh & Bone, and Fire & Ash. But what else was happening while he was on his quest? Who were the others navigating the ravaged landscape full of zombies? Bits & Pieces fills in the gaps about what we know about First Night, surviving the plague, and traveling the land of Rot & Ruin.

The best-selling Extinction Cycle series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith first introduced listeners to a world ravaged by an engineered virus that turned men into monsters. Now, for the first time ever, comes a collection of Extinction Cycle short stories that explore the human spirit and the fight for survival in the face of overwhelming odds from some of the leading voices in the post-apocalyptic genre.

The new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre's most popular and critically-acclaimed authors. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm. But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. "The Apocalypse Triptych" will tell their stories.

How will the world end? With aliens or angels? Or a groundhog? Bleak despair? Martial fervor? Or a belly laugh? Whatever the apocalypse, it will be borne by people and their families and their dogs and most of all, it will challenge their notions of themselves. This anthology includes international award-winning writers, poets, and thinkers that give you their version of the apocalypse.

Imagine you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of who you are, how you got there, or where you were before. All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you - physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?

When the Blackout arrives, Dax Harper finds himself alone and fighting for survival on the chaotic streets of New Orleans. He is on the run, desperately searching for his estranged sister as the riots intensify. An unexpected encounter with his ex-girlfriend thrusts Dax into a leadership position—one he's not sure he can accept. As the hours pass, the city floods, pitting Dax in an epic battle against time and a mysterious new enemy threatening the future of humankind.

A fresh post-apocalyptic anthology: the end of the world seen through the salvage and ruins, featuring Emily St. John Mandel, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.