Apocalyptic Short Stories

How can you sneak past a horde of the dead with a screaming baby? The day Charlie Macomber is born is the first day of the zombie apocalypse. When the hospital in Harrington, Indiana is overrun by reanimated corpses, Charlie's dad must carry his son through the walking dead to safety. But when zombies roam the earth, can anyplace be safe?

When the æristocracy decides to withdraw their blimps from the Venusian economy and head back to an abandoned Earth, the surf-turned-æristocrat Sir Thomas begins tearing down their entire economy in order to save millions of lives. A dystopian sci-fi about class warfare, The Blimps of Venus shows us the true motives behind eugenics and other evils.

Monkeypox zombies infect the world with their deadly capability to eat brains and turn other humans into zombies. Johnny, the main character, must survive as he tries to get out of his high-rise office building filled with zombies. Later, Johnny is in a homeless hideout under the bridge and deals with the homeless political groups while barely surviving. Finally, he takes shelter with his ex-wife, Jennifer, her house stashed with guns and supplies. Herds of zombies break through into their home and they blast their way out by using grenades and guns.

After Claudia and Ben stumble upon Dorian's secret, they are taken prisoner. Food and supplies are running low, and Dorian's ultimate goal is survival of the race - and the fittest.

Book Three of the Preppers Perspective series finds the survivors of a Nuclear EMP watching the world around them spin out of control. The grocery store shelves are empty with no resupply in sight. Societal breakdown and food riots are inevitable. The preppers have to now rely upon all their wisdom and supplies alone in order to survive possibly a few more days or meager months.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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....

One year after the Shattering and the great collapse, survivors in Columbus, Ohio, are barely holding things together. Then, on December 24, when all seemed lost, a new hero appears, and he is determined to protect all the children of the Earth.

Some said the world would end in the cold. Some said the world would end in a fire. Some said when there was no more room in hell the dead would rise up to devour the living. Nobody thought it would be because of the corn.

Existence Augmented is a dystopian sci-fi novelette and psychological thriller. The world outside is cold, hostile, and virtually lifeless. Human existence depends on sophisticated, technological living compounds. The people who don’t have them, once driven to theft and murder, are believed to be long since dead. Alden, a genius of physical and computer engineering, spends his time tending his hydroponics garden, maintaining and improving the complex systems critical to survival, and, in turn, continually refining the pleasant life he’s created with his wife, Laurel. Everything is following Alden’s plans until the power begins to fail....

It was well after dark when Matt Matthews got back down to the headquarters camp, and saw the city stranger sitting there before the fire. He knew he was a city man after a single glance at the shiny, low-topped shoes and the reminiscence of a crease in the dusty trousers. Matt tossed the gophers and the two small coyotes off his broad shoulders to old Moe Arhelger, across the campfire, staring in suspicious silence from the stranger to Moe and back again. "Who's he?" he asked finally.

In the System Apocalypse, a single title can make or break a build. And in the entire Galactic System, there are Title Seekers, those who make it their life quest to acquire the most unusual and rare titles possible. Earth, a new Dungeon World offers multiple possibilities. Not least among them, the one from a familiar set of golden arches. For the Kyaz, it’s a chance in a million to get a rare title. If he can manage to evade the machinations of a fellow Title Seeker and trust his human sidekick, Xi Ping.

Safety lights are out, oxygen production has halted, and her partner is out of reach on the nearby moon. Shannon is stuck on this frozen, lifeless rock 4.2 light-years from home, on a planet known simply as Proxima g. She’s racing against time to repair the broken life-support system so her wife, son, and all the other refugees from Earth don’t arrive to a useless habitat that’s succumbed to the harshness of space. But there’s more to this situation than meets the eye, and with each step she takes the mystery only deepens.

Blackwater is a collection of two tales of horror and dark fantasy. In "Mercury Rain", a soldier fighting a new enemy learns the importance of holding on to his memories. "Blackwater", the title story of the collection, is an homage to Stephen King's short story, "Graveyard Shift", and it tells the tale of Paul Hawkins, a mine worker who disturbs something terrifying in the Blackwater Hills of Durham, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976.

She's a hacker with a disabled son, living in a martial state. The future looks dark, with no promise of relief from the tyranny, and when her son's life is threatened, the mother must fight back using whatever means necessary.

A small group of survivors battle a post-apocalyptic landscape that is void of plant life. Hunger plagues the few remaining human survivors. The world has been pillaged and scavenging for food has become the lifeblood of survival, but starvation is now on the horizon for these fellow travelers. Many have taken to cannibalism, but this group has managed to survive without going quite so far. While scavenging, they first come across a woman, and shortly after, her child. They capture them and debate their options. In order to satisfy their burning hunger, they must first lose their humanity. Some will win, all will lose.