Apocalyptic Short Stories

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.

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.

A quirky collection of flash fiction based in the realm of post-apocolyptic fiction with forward by Daniel Humphreys. From the Pollenocalypse to zombies, you're sure to feel right at home with the end of the world.