Apocalyptic Short 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.

A collection of (mostly) previously unpublished stories by award-winning journalist and cult horror author Ryan C. Thomas. From zombies to monsters to ghosts and more, Thomas weaves unique tales that will send a chill up your spine.

Earth as a new Dungeon World means opportunities and dangers galore. One of the enduring aspects of the System is the Shop, an interdimensional series of stores that compete for the opportunity to service clients and make a profit doing so. New clients on a new Dungeon World mean rare and heretofore unseen items and massive profits. No surprise that the vultures have arrived, searching for easy marks.

Earth is quickly becoming an undead wasteland, that much is for sure. What isn't certain is the fate of her three children, as their desperate bid to find safety at their family cabin is cut off by the revelation of world-altering proportions. What seems like a lifetime ago, the secret battle to be the first superpower to perfect the perfect bioweapon has been corrupted into a scourge now headed straight for them. Suddenly Abby's past becomes just as unclear as her future.

You’ll be treated to Lord Aegis of the Flame, which gives a rough account of Magnus’s day until he was able to meet up with Iain. After that, you’ll be introduced to Domonic and Terrence’s story in Imperial Daimyo, which describes their harrowing flight through the city. From there, you’ll find that not all is what it seems in the Hellion Initiative, which describes Thaddeus and his fortuitous encounters. Next up, you’ll discover just how transformative the System’s arrival can be with Jeremy Simms in Spartan. Finally, stick around to meet Rufus and her evolution into something entirely new.

Here are eight of World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow’s most controversial stories, including three previously uncollected ones. Each deals with a “sacred cow” of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and subjects it to the pitiless scrutiny of historian, mythographer, and fantasist. Violent, sometimes kinky, these stories nevertheless reach surprising epiphanies about faith and redemption. A curiously sympathetic Antichrist hunts down the next messiah with the aid of a unicorn. St Paul ponders about whether, in order to make his miraculous new religion work, he needs to get rid of an ...

Vidu, a used-car dealer and d-bag extraordinaire, had been aimlessly wandering the streets of Chicago with only one thing on his mind… and that was before he got turned into a zombie. Just when you thought you had seen the last of him, now you can find out what happened to Vidu after he left his friends behind during the pandemonium of Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse… One Beer at a Time. Humor, action, zombies, hangovers, gratuitous insults, and more Vidu!

Five tales of dragons are included within this special Young Adult fantasy collection. The overall theme is dragons and features a sample of J.E. Feldman’s work. There are no triggers. Inferno A time traveling grandma and her granddaughter discover the true cause behind the burning of the Library of Alexandria. The Loch Legend An orphaned teenager harboring a secret of her own discovers the Loch Ness legend is real, but can she trust her new family with the truth? Instinct Vaccines made from dragon shifter blood turns the world into apocalyptic chaos and there’s no promise of surviving ...

The Event causes the failure of every electronic device in the town. Suddenly, the ageing Vietnam War veteran Jimmy Spears doesn’t seem as crazy as many people had assumed him to be as he built a life around concepts of self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on state support structures.

Origins of the Outbreak follows the chain of infection from one person to another after a university researcher in a small Texas town unwittingly develops a disease that turns its victims into zombies and threatens to destroy the world as we know it.

Van Dorn is 18 and running solo, dodging the bloodthirsty hordes and militias that have emerged since the country went haywire. His dead father's voice rings in his head as Van Dorn sets his sights not just on survival but also on an old-fashioned system of justice. Meanwhile, a leader has risen among the gangs - and around him swirls the cast of brawlers from Donnybrook, with their own brutal sense of right and wrong, of loyalty and justice through strength. This is not the distant post-apocalyptic future - this is tomorrow, in a world Bill has already introduced us to.

A celestial entity sets out on an extraordinary quest to breathe life into a barren planet, weaving the foundations of existence itself. But as creation takes shape, unforeseen challenges arise, testing the limits of its power and purpose. "What a great fiction book about the cosmos! From the very first page, the story immerses you in the fascinating life of the cosmic builder, whose ability to create planetary life for the first time is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The vivid descriptions and imaginative storytelling by the author immediately draw you into this cosmic realm, making you ...

The Philip K. Dick Award-winning debut short story collection from Sarah Pinsker, author of the Nebula Award-winning A Song for a New Day. Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with stories multiply nominated for awards as well as Sturgeon and Nebula award wins. The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn listeners into travellers to the past and the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with Classes, magic and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

From the author of the Hugo-winning Six Months, Three Days, a new wrinkle on the old story of three wishes, set after the end of the world.

Jim travels to northern Michigan to decompress and deal with his feelings in a rustic log cabin owned by his deceased girlfriend's family. Not only is the cabin off the grid, it is a place of peace and solitude, that is, until the Ebola virus is unleashed upon the USA. In a panic, the CDC and the FDA release a vaccine that's only just started testing.... Now the infected roam the world, and even in northern Michigan, Jim isn't safe. He eagerly awaits Janie's family to join him; they are preppers, who may be the key to his survival, and they are the only family he has left.

Join the postapocalyptic adventure as David and the survivors of a solar storm taking out the grid try to find the means to survive another day. Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history.... Are you prepared for the loss of all modern electronic technology? The sun is waking up from a deep slumber. NASA says in next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity and to prepare ourselves for a century-class solar storm event.

Nine-tenths of the world’s population is dead. A biological scourge - a dark blight swimming through human veins - was to blame. Adam is thrust into a world of loss and would no sooner set out in search of a woman for whom he is willing to travel across the broken globe to see again, if only to serve as her piece of comfort for a loss that they both share.

So close, yet so far away. Still reeling from Elijah’s brutal retaliation, Sparks and the other survivors continue their ill-fated journey west. As the reach the town of Junction, the group finds that their troubles are far from over.

Strap yourself in for 13 tales of murder, madness, monsters, mayhem, violence, and vengeance from local horror master James Noll! From a remote mountain village where something drains the inhabitants of their blood to a post-apocalyptic nightmare where the last remaining human beings fight for survival, Thirteen Tales will plunge you into some of the most chilling, eerie stories of the decade.