The Rising: Selected Scenes from the End of the World is a collection of short stories set in the world of The Rising, examining the history of the Siqqusim, the arrival of the first zombie, the fall of mankind, and the terrifying events that occur after City of the Dead's conclusion.

In this sequel to The Rising, cities are overrun with legions of the undead, intent on destroying what's left of the living. Trapped inside a fortified skyscraper, a handful of survivors prepare to make their last stand against an unstoppable, merciless enemy. With every hour their chances diminish and their numbers dwindle, while the ranks of the dead continue to rise. Because sooner or later, everything dies. And then it comes back, ready to kill.

As the last of the mountains sink beneath the waves, the survivors make a desperate final stand. But the worms aren't the only enemy they face. The worldwide ocean is host to a legion of monsters, each more terrifying than the last, and mankind is vastly outnumbered by these new horrors.

The Labyrinth - an interdimensional construct that binds all of reality together. Now, the Labyrinth is threatened. A group of malevolent cosmic entities, known as The Thirteen, have been loosed upon the universe. Ob, Leviathan, Behemoth, Nodens, Meeble, Shtar, Kandara and the rest of their kind have one goal: The complete destruction of all Creation. Seven unlikely warriors from across time and space have been called upon to stop them. If they fail, reality itself will crumble. And the collapse has already begun.

Hell has come to earth as sadistic zombies rampage and massacre the human population. Reverend Thomas Martin has lost his congregation to the chaos but has found two wayward survivors to protect—Becky and John. The three of them have holed up in Martin's church in a desperate attempt for survival. But as supplies run low and civilization crumbles around them, Martin must come to a realization—God has abandoned them. But why?

One day, it starts raining-and never stops. Global super-storms decimate the planet, eradicating most of mankind. Pockets of survivors gather on mountaintops, watching as the waters climb higher and higher. But as the tides rise, something else is rising, too. Now, in the midst of an ecological nightmare, the remnants of humanity face a new menace, in a battle that stretches from the rooftops of submerged cities to the mountaintop islands jutting from the sea. What hope does an already-devastated mankind have against this new supernatural adversary.

In the aftermath of a devastating tsunami and a series of undersea earthquakes, hordes of Clickers swarm onto the California coastline, slaughtering everything in their path. As the attacks spread to other parts of the world, humanity fights back, unaware that a second foe is about to emerge—Ob, the leader of a supernatural race of beings known as the Siqqusim, who have the ability to possess and reanimate the dead. Now, Earth faces an invasion from not one, but two enemies—the mindless and hungry Clickers, and the evil and equally ravenous zombies.

There was no warning. No chance to escape. They came suddenly. Naked. Bloodthirsty. Sadistic. They descended upon the Pine Village Apartment Complex, relentlessly torturing and killing anyone they could find. Fearing for their lives, the residents of the complex must band together. Eleven strangers. The only thing they have in common is the unstoppable horde that wants to kill them. If they are to make it through the night, they must fight back.

Halloween is coming, and a new haunted attraction is open for business in LeHorn's Hollow. Folks will come from miles around to walk down the spooky trail and get scared witless. But there's one thing the owners of the ghost walk haven't counted on. There really is something waiting in the woods - a vast, ancient evil whose hunger threatens to consume all life on Earth. Soon, the unsuspecting customers will pay their money and get in line...to die.

They came to the deserted island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one hoped to be the last to leave. Now they're just hoping to stay alive, because the island isn't deserted after all. Contestants are disappearing, but they aren't being eliminated by the game. They're being taken by the monstrous, half-human creatures that live deep in the jungle. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives. Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so far away....

Something very strange is happening in LeHorn's Hollow. Eerie, piping music is heard late at night, and mysterious fires have been spotted deep in the woods. Women are vanishing without a trace overnight, leaving behind husbands and families. When up-and-coming novelist Adam Senft stumbles upon an unearthly scene, it plunges him and the entire town into an ancient nightmare. Folks say the woods in LeHorn's Hollow are haunted, but what waits there is far worse than any ghost.

Phillipsport, Maine, is a quaint and peaceful seaside village. But when hundreds of creatures pour out of the ocean and attack, its residents must take up arms to drive the beasts back. They are the Clickers, giant, venomous, bloodthirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren't merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear.

With a new sunrise comes a new horror. The world plunges into chaos as populations flee, fight, beg, steal, and kill. Anything to survive. The Stillenger family tries their best to navigate the apocalyptic world and find refuge through the undead apocalypse. Doc, a surgeon, finds himself at an immediate disadvantage when the apocalypse arrives in Denver and is in a race against the dead to save his family.

On a hot July day on the plains of Kansas, a US Army mechanized infantry company from the First Infantry Division gets a very vague warning order, and the young troopers saddle up on their steel beasts to go try to control "civil unrest".

When two teenagers go missing from the small, rural town of Sallow Bend, the residents come together to search for them. Little do they suspect that finding the wayward girls will be the start of their problems. An old evil is rising, and only one man seems to realize that everyone is in danger and this is not the first time it’s happened. With the carnival in town, people want to have a good time, but for many, this will be the worst time of their lives.

Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines. When an airborne "zombie" plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia, and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.

Tucked away in a high-tech Tactical Operations Center, inside an isolated safehouse in the Horn of Africa, sits Agency analyst Zack Altringham. He is Kenyan-born, Princeton-educated, badly burnt-out - and condemned by his language and cultural skills to a lifetime of fighting America's shadow counter-terror wars.

When the end finally occurred, everything about it was cinematic. The dead came back and ate people, civilization collapsed, and no one could do a thing. But Cyrus V. Sinclair couldn’t care less; he’s a sociopath. Amidst the chaos, Cyrus sits back and contemplates the gore stained streets and screams of his fellow man with little more emotion than one of the walking corpses. With his cache of guns and MREs, he rather likes the idea of hunkering down in his Seattle apartment while the world ends outside.

My name is Ethan Drake, and I’m a police detective. And I got plenty darkness to give. So does my partner, who’s a demon, and frankly, a royal pain in my ass. But occult investigators are in short supply in the PD, so what are you going to do? Anyway, we just caught a bodysnatching case that has the stench of occult workings all over it.

When a plague strikes, Anchorage becomes a deadly trap for its citizens. The only two land routes out of the city are cut, forcing people to fight or die as the infection spreads. Danny and Jules, just children, witness the beginning stages of the pestilence. Neil watches helplessly from his office cubicle as Midtown is ravaged. Dr. Caldwell attempts to flee the madness of Providence Hospital, the epicenter of the outbreak. The lives and survival of these few become intertwined in the aftermath of the onslaught.

Across the world, the United States recalls troops to combat civil unrest after the biggest economic meltdown in history. Marine Sergeant Ronaldo Salvatore’s platoon comes home to a powder keg that could ignite a civil war. While some see the coming collapse as the end, others see opportunity. Fleeing Naples after rival crime lords decimated his family, Don Antonio Moretti settles in Los Angeles to rebuild his criminal empire. But he is far from alone in his ambitions.

When the H1N1 "Swine Flu" virus mutates it begins to not only kill those who have received the vaccination, but also bring on the unthinkable: the dead reanimate. Cole Helman and his friends are not only survival experts, they've spent hours discussing and preparing for just this event and quickly head to the hills before the cities become clogged with looting and riots.

Longtime contributor to the Hellboy mythos Christopher Golden brings together a crew of luminaries including Joe R. Lansdale and China Miéville, cross-genre sensation Barbara Hambly, celebrated mystery writer Ken Bruen, best-selling science-fiction and fantasy novelist Tad Williams, and a bevy of other skilled storytellers eager to spin a tale or two about the world's greatest paranormal detective. Some of the biggest names in horror, mystery, and fantasy come together to pay homage to Mike Mignola's Hellboy!

There's over a million people in the city of Waterloo. Today, most of them have died, and now they're hungry. Corporal Dan Williamson is caught in the middle of the outbreak, desperately trying to reach his wife who is somewhere amid the urban decay. There are other souls out there, other tales of survival among the horror. Dan will soon learn that the living may prove to be an even bigger threat than the dead.

Ever since being part of the pot in a high-stakes poker game, elfin outcast Kai Gracen figures he used up his good karma when Dempsey, a human Stalker, won the hand and took him in. Following the violent merge of Earth and Underhill, the human and elfin races are left with a messy, monster-ridden world, and Stalkers are the only cavalry willing to ride to someone's rescue when something shadowy appears.

One morning, the residents of Walden, Virginia, woke up to find the rest of the world gone. Just...gone. Surrounding their town was a wall of inky darkness, plummeting Walden into permanent night. Nothing can get in - not light, not people, not even electricity, radio, TV, internet, food, or water. And nothing can get out.

One day, it starts raining-and never stops. Global super-storms decimate the planet, eradicating most of mankind. Pockets of survivors gather on mountaintops, watching as the waters climb higher and higher. But as the tides rise, something else is rising, too. Now, in the midst of an ecological nightmare, the remnants of humanity face a new menace, in a battle that stretches from the rooftops of submerged cities to the mountaintop islands jutting from the sea. What hope does an already-devastated mankind have against this new supernatural adversary.

The Rising is the story of Jim Thurmond, a determined father battling his way across a post-apocalyptic zombie landscape, to find his young son. Accompanied by Martin, a preacher still holding to his faith, and Frankie, a recovering heroin addict with an indomitable will to survive, Jim travels from state to state and town to town facing an endless onslaught of undead hordes and the evils perpetrated by his fellow man.

Something very strange is happening in LeHorn's Hollow. Eerie, piping music is heard late at night, and mysterious fires have been spotted deep in the woods. Women are vanishing without a trace overnight, leaving behind husbands and families. When up-and-coming novelist Adam Senft stumbles upon an unearthly scene, it plunges him and the entire town into an ancient nightmare. Folks say the woods in LeHorn's Hollow are haunted, but what waits there is far worse than any ghost.

Long ago, Thor saved the people of Miskander from a rebellious horde. As a thank you for his selfless heroism, he was gifted a crown which he safely stored on Asgard. Until Loki stole it. The Trickster God has been partying hard as a rock band guitarist and thought it would be fun to bequeath the crown to the lead singer, Nihilator, unaware of its true significance—and the corruptive, destructive influence of its true power.

In this sequel to The Rising, cities are overrun with legions of the undead, intent on destroying what's left of the living. Trapped inside a fortified skyscraper, a handful of survivors prepare to make their last stand against an unstoppable, merciless enemy. With every hour their chances diminish and their numbers dwindle, while the ranks of the dead continue to rise. Because sooner or later, everything dies. And then it comes back, ready to kill.

Halloween is coming, and a new haunted attraction is open for business in LeHorn's Hollow. Folks will come from miles around to walk down the spooky trail and get scared witless. But there's one thing the owners of the ghost walk haven't counted on. There really is something waiting in the woods - a vast, ancient evil whose hunger threatens to consume all life on Earth. Soon, the unsuspecting customers will pay their money and get in line...to die.

There is something in the local cemetery that comes out at night. Something that is unearthing corpses and killing people. It’s the summer of 1984 and Timmy and his friends are looking forward to no school, comic books, and adventure. But instead they will be fighting for their lives. The ghoul has smelled their blood and it is after them.But that’s not the only monster they will face this summer....

The Labyrinth - an interdimensional construct that binds all of reality together. Now, the Labyrinth is threatened. A group of malevolent cosmic entities, known as The Thirteen, have been loosed upon the universe. Ob, Leviathan, Behemoth, Nodens, Meeble, Shtar, Kandara and the rest of their kind have one goal: The complete destruction of all Creation. Seven unlikely warriors from across time and space have been called upon to stop them. If they fail, reality itself will crumble. And the collapse has already begun.

One day it started raining—and it never stopped... So began Brian Keene's Earthworm Gods, a novel that straddled the lines between the horror and bizarro genres. Fans have long marveled over that post-apocalyptic landscape—a flooded earth filled with strange and terrifying monsters. Audiences returned to that world in Earthworm Gods II: Deluge. Now, it's time for one last trip.

Brinkley Springs is a quiet little town. Some say the town is dying. They don't know how right they are. Five mysterious figures are about to pay a little visit to Brinkley Springs. They have existed for centuries, emerging from the shadows only to destroy, to kill. To feed. They bring with them terror and carnage, and leave death and blood in their wake. As the night wears on, Brinkley Springs will be quiet no longer. Screams will break the silence. But when the sun rises again, will there be anyone left to hear?

They came to the deserted island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one hoped to be the last to leave. Now they're just hoping to stay alive, because the island isn't deserted after all. Contestants are disappearing, but they aren't being eliminated by the game. They're being taken by the monstrous, half-human creatures that live deep in the jungle. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives. Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so far away....

The Westgate Galleria Mall was once a sprawling, shining monument to American consumerism and suburban growth. Now, it is a crumbling reminder of how both have fallen - an architectural ghost, haunting the outskirts of society. That makes it the perfect filming location for a YouTube channel devoted to the exploration of abandoned places. But the mall isn't as empty as it seems, and the residents have sinister obscene plans for them. Now, with the daylight still hours away, both the hunters and the hunted will fight to stay alive...and desperately try to make it home.

As the last of the mountains sink beneath the waves, the survivors make a desperate final stand. But the worms aren't the only enemy they face. The worldwide ocean is host to a legion of monsters, each more terrifying than the last, and mankind is vastly outnumbered by these new horrors.

For a group of middle-aged friends, the trip into the forest was supposed to be simple. All they had to do was find a place to set up their criminal enterprise, and all of their financial problems would be solved. But now, night is falling, and with the darkness comes something else. Something fast. Something ferocious. Something...with teeth.