Apocalyptic Fantasy

X is trapped living in the slums of the last remaining city on Earth. He can only venture out beyond the towering walls to scavenge relics of the old world when the sun is up. At night, like everybody else, he hides inside from the monsters of the shadows...until an unexpected death occurs a little too close to home. With the blame on his shoulders, and trigger-happy guards on his trail, X has no choice but to run. But the city was never a safe place to begin with, not really, and his only slim chance of survival lies outside the walls, in a landscape empty of humanity.

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Could we be living in a time of which there is more prophetic writings than of any period in history? Noah Parker, like many in the United States, has been asleep at the wheel. During his complacency, the founding precepts of America have been slowly, systematically destroyed by a conspiracy that dates back hundreds of years. The signs can no longer be ignored and Noah is forced to pull his head out of the sand and see things for what they really are.

In Zombies, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display as the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze - electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant - this story represents everything listeners have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk.

Dev and Sierra - who have come of age emotionally and as warriors - head down to Payson to spy on the men who have taken over the town. What they find there horrifies them. And Sierra's aggressive streak leads them into a confrontation with these invaders, one that will put everyone's lives at risk.

Jennifer Martin escaped Atlanta by the skin of her teeth. Nevertheless, terror and chaos are not confined by city limits. The unthinkable deeds she committed to get out of Atlanta have followed her back to the small town of Clayton, Georgia. Coming from a relatively comfortable lifestyle, the apocalypse has been a harsh adjustment for Jennifer. She has her faith in Jesus. She has a safe place to lay low in the Appalachian Mountains. She’s surrounded by family and friends. But, she’s up against the most powerful, abusive federal agency in the history of America.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

Accused of domestic terrorism, Emilio Vega was on his way to a Department of Global Security death camp when the mega-quake hit. The streets beneath his transport vehicle buckled, tossing the van in the air like a toy. He survived the crash, but the world is now in ruins. However, for a condemned man, this disaster may be just the lucky break he needed. Emilio has been left behind! Six detainees were in the van prior to the quake. However, only Emilio and one other prisoner were still around when he regained consciousness.

Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands. Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was each other and a friendship that could withstand anything...even an apocalypse. Until one fateful night when the marginal safety they'd come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end, and they find themselves face to face with a much altered, much crueler life.

The struggle to get through the post-apocalyptic wasteland in an effort to find Allie’s dad in Pittsburgh and reunite with Joel’s brother and sister in Maryland tests Ben’s abilities as a former Army Ranger. But the teenagers have trials of their own, namely coming to terms with their lost youth as they are forced to grow up fast and make some tough decisions. As the group passes through one devastated town after another, it becomes apparent that only the strong and prepared will survive in these dangerous days.

After a lifetime of hunting down criminals, Ryan just wants to live out his days in peace and in the shadows of Tokyo to grieve the loss of his wife and son. But his old team - the Nameless, experts in extraction and recon - comes with an urgent request for help. The young daughter of one of his closest friends, a girl he once treated as his own, has been kidnapped.

It's called "the event", an unimaginable cataclysm that shatters 600 million years of the Earth's timeline. Our world is gone, instantly replaced by a new one made of scattered remnants of the past, present, and future, dropped alongside one another in a patchwork of "shards". Monsters from Jurassic prehistory, ancient armies, and high-tech robots all coexist in this deadly post-apocalyptic landscape. A desperate group of survivors sets out to locate the source of the disaster.

Together with Yorkshire terrier Ben-Ben and former archenemy Patches the cat, Riley struggles to keep the zombies at bay while helping her favorite human, Jessie, as they travel cross-country, dodging pepper paint balls and taser blasts from the evil, misogynistic Icely and his band of thugs. Now this motley mishmash of mammals are running for their lives.

Marie and Erik were having a normal day, sitting at the table drinking coffee while Marie worked on her PhD thesis. She had been having strange headaches all her life, though, and the past few days seemed to be worse than normal. Suddenly, her headache spiked - she saw strange words floating in the air and on her computer screen... Some kind of countdown...? At noon, the system arrived with a message... System Initialization Complete. Welcome to the Multiverse! Your planet has now been integrated into the system. Please review your status screen and familiarize yourself. If your health ...

Jason and Sophie are teachers at a rural high school north of Tampa, Florida. When an EMP attack spreads chaos and lawlessness, they are unexpectedly left responsible for a group of their former students. Without electricity, phones, or transportation, civilization collapses, and terror reigns. Jason's background as a decorated Army Ranger former officer and his history as a prepper help them. But can they survive in a world where organized predators prey on the young and innocent?

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know - your standard apocalypse. The Krakau’s first impulse was to turn around and go home. (After all, it’s hard to have diplomatic relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.) Their second impulse was to try to fix us.

Broken...Sold...Enslaved... Alistar trained from birth to fight for humanity, only to receive a unique class that's locked upon entering the dungeon. He has five years of fighting ahead of him with no way to level up and gain new skills. But when humanity falls, he quickly learns to only trust his familiar, Kale. The one perk of his class that he can use is rapid healing. Turns out, that's a curse in disguise when he's sold to the arena to fight to the death. Locked away...broken...defeated. His only dream is to see the sun again, but to do that, he must kill all those in his way and break ...

America is on the verge of a second civil war, and Ava must pull it together if she wants to survive. Violent protest, widespread destruction, and politicians who insist on letting the disassociated vent their rage will bring America to her knees, threatening to decapitate the laws, principles, and values on which the country was founded. Ava refuses to give into fear, but she simply cannot survive on her own. She must deal with her crisis of faith and learn to trust other people, or she’ll never make it through the bloodiest period of America’s history.

The enemies in nearby Payson have attacked. Now they'll suffer retaliation. Sierra's tactical brainstorm leads the neighborhoods into a surprise attack. Sierra, Dev, and the others need to liberate those under the control of the brutal invaders from the valley to guarantee their own safety. The numbers are against them. The stakes are high. And it has to be done now.

When Jonah inherits leadership of the Elk Clan from his father, many in the old man's inner circle question his son's ability to lead the tribe to their winter shelter at the ruins of Eliz. A dark stranger, a journey over hundreds of miles of dangerous highway, and clashes with feral gangs will push Jonah to the edge.