Apocalyptic Short Stories

A collection of short stories featuring characters from the world of The Broken Gods trilogy by fantasy author Aaron S. Jones. Blood feuds in the Borderlands. Murder mysteries in the United Cities. A heist gone wrong in the East. Meet some of the weird and wonderful characters of the world of Takaara and they fight, love, and survive in A Long Way from Home.

A collection of apocalyptic short stories that are full of surprises and horror and heroism.

A hundred years ago, there was a cataclysm. Maybe a biological weapon was set off, or a parasite evolved...honestly, no one really cares any more. What matters is that the parasite was airborne, infectious, and could live in any warm-blooded creature. Those affected are driven insane and mutate, becoming a threat to those around them.

Six short stories appear in this second addition to the Fear series.

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.

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.

Phillip (the Ghost) and his friends are in Taos for a fun weekend when they meet a weird artist named Goffrey and decide to spend the weekend in the mountains. You never know where you'll be when it's the end of the world as we knew it.

Welcome to Tisaia - the last hub of modern civilization, in a world left scorched by the nuclear fires of the Biomass Wars. Surrounded by a fortress of steel walls, and protected by a fierce and loyal Council of Royal Knights, Tisaia seems relatively safe to the average State worker and citizen. A plentiful supply of Biomass powers the cities, and food is abundant, but security has come at a terrible cost.

Life after the apocalypse is one daily grind after another. It's a good thing for Wendy that she's got friends - a lot of friends as a fairy summoner. But life in Exeter is not easy, even for a summoner, and the grind of daily jobs and never-ending quests is getting to her. She's got one shot at getting a place for her own, a place of safety and maybe getting ahead. But it'll require Wendy to do the one thing she swore she'd never do again.

What happens when the apocalypse is over; to love, strained and torn? How do you pick up the pieces, when life stabilises? It's a question our heroes must ask themselves, when they're no longer fighting off swarms of monsters, no longer struggling for Credits and Levels. Valentine's in the Apocalypse is set four years after the System Apocalypse has arrived, between books 5 and 6 of the System Apocalypse and features new characters. The story is set in Vancouver, BC.

I’m a perp. When I got older and actually cared about history, I found out that wasn’t a name people were proud to have a few decades ago, but most people today are perps. It’s short for "perpetual". We wear collectors that harness the power created by our movement. It’s so normal now it’s hard to imagine a world without them. When humanity exhausted the resources of Earth, we had to resort to harnessing energy in a different way.

Fighting in the streets, corruption at the highest levels, collapsing infrastructure, brutal police, a daily threat of nuclear war: few of us thought we’d find ourselves here, so far into the 21st century. What’s next? Are we really going to be “great again,” however that’s meant? And if we are, what does that mean for those of us on the receiving end of the less-than-great? In this diverse and vigorous mix of stories by newcomers and luminaries, writers offer their takes on what life might hold for us in the next few years.

The stories in this second anthology explore the legends of the Outlands, beyond the border of humanity's immediate control, where strange and powerful creatures roam.

Rachel and the Smith Brothers are on the run, trying to escape the dangers they left in the city. But when they stop off for supplies, they suddenly find themselves in a whole new kind of trouble. Rachel realises the true nature of the men she is travelling with, but where exactly does she fit in?

In the post-collapse world, animals are once again returned to the top of the food chain as nearly all of the humans on the planet have perished. The budgies and bats of Davao City are expanding their colonies as nature intended when they stumble upon remnants of the human population. The decisions made after this discovery will affect all those involved in ways they could never imagine.

It's 2085, the time of the Great Affliction. Continents are burning, land is disappearing, and humanity is destroying itself as mass shootings and suicides wipe out the population. To Marjaana Salonen, the solution is found in high technology. By integrating the human brain with a sophisticated computer chip, she believes she can bring new hope to society. Her invention was supposed to fix it all, but Salonen's daughter has her own ideas. To Laura, her mother's invention is an opportunity to impose her own vision on the world—the promise of a new reality that is far more sinister.

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.

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.

Brace your brain for "Reboot Protocol" - a tech-nightmare that'll haunt your digital dreams! Follow Dr. Elias Roth as he sprints through neon-drenched streets, pursued by Spectre 77 - a killing machine with blood all over him and extinction on its mind. This isn't just an audiobook, it's a nitro-boosted thrill ride that'll have you eyeing your toaster with suspicion! Feel your pulse race as man and machine clash in bone-crushing battles, with humanity's fate hanging on every line of killer code. After this electrifying earful, you'll never look at your gadgets the same way again.

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.