Apocalyptic Short Stories

When an EMP catastrophe shuts down power worldwide, Melanie Pearson must embark on a grueling trek to reunite with her family. But before she can cross the savage wastelands, she’ll need to help her boss find his own son first. And Melanie quickly realizes she may have made a deal with the devil himself….

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.

A leaderless, exhausted federal government is pulling out of Texas, leaving nine million survivors of the apocalypse to fend for themselves. In an attempt to fill the void, the Alliance of West Texas prepares to step in. The ruling council establishes five directives; Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Communications and Security.

A reluctant hero. Dick aka Devil Dog's world changes drastically when the EMP takes out the power grid. A homeless Marine veteran living in the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago, he's far better prepared than most people. Devil Dog becomes the reluctant savior of women and children from the worst of the gangs that now rule topside. Doing the right thing makes him new enemies, driving him ever deeper into the tunnels that keep his charges safe - until he runs across a young woman who might be his daughter.

Zone guide Yuri Bonyev escorts three scientists to an uncharted sector in the Zone chasing rumors of an old military bunker. Not everyone is who they appear to be, and Yuri learns perhaps some secrets are better left buried.

For fans of the oral history genre phenomenon World War Z, a worldwide plague of insomnia creates a devastating new apocalypse. Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.

Earth has fallen far from its splendor and progress. Humanity’s long-held fear of an asteroid colliding with the world has come to pass, and the repercussions are devastating. Resultant natural disasters, plagues, and famines have taken billions of lives. With mankind’s future uncertain, scientists set to work creating a virtual Earth in which people can live in the mind rather than in physical form.

Waiting for Martin is set in a nebulous future-never in which catastrophic environmental change has returned ancient beings to Earth, as well as raining down a disastrous helping of new ones. A family of children try to make their way home to their older brother, who is their guardian, when a bit of environmental fallout gets in their way.

A Paperback Original A sharply constructed, death-defying story collection that dismantles the myths of white America, revealing race, class, and gender as fictions that can be taken apart and remade In his first story collection in fifteen years, Jess Row evokes white America—specifically...

A glittering landscape of twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and envision new futures for America - from N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, and more.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. George Orwell once wrote of a world where abuse of power begins with an abuse of language and a bastardization of truth. Some of today's most exciting voices in speculative fiction explore the ramifications of those ideas in Ignorance Is Strength.

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.

Are you ready for a journey through the end of the world? G581: Plague Tales is an anthology of science fiction stories that will take you on a roller coaster ride of survival, love, and loss in the face of a devastating virus and an asteroid so large it will destroy life on Earth at the end of the 21st century.

Before The Road by Cormac McCarthy brought apocalyptic fiction into the mainstream, there was science fiction. No longer relegated to the fringes of literature, this explosive collection of the world’s best apocalyptic writers brings the inventors of alien invasions, devastating meteors, doomsday scenarios, and all-out nuclear war back to with a bang. The best writers of the early 1900s were the first to flood New York with tidal waves, destroy Illinois with alien invaders, paralyze Washington with meteors, and lay waste to the Midwest with nuclear fallout.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

The world isn't how they left it. When the bunker airlocks release them after 20 years in hibernation, the survivors find a silent, barren world outside. But they are not alone. There is a presence here, alive in the dust - spirits of the earth, benevolent and malicious as they interact with the human remnant.

A boy and his father walk on the shore of an ocean filled with bloody spears cast off from a war between gods. A father travels back in time over and over, unable to rescue the mother of his child. A mischievous satyr lurking in a dungeon has a field day with trespassing adventurers. These tales and more are in Resurrections, a compilation of short stories written by Chris Philbrook.

It's the start of summer vacation, and poor Tony has just lost his grandfather. His father is deployed overseas, and his mother is raising him and his little brother all alone. But that's not what's bothering Tony. It's that his nana will be all alone in her small, rural home during the heat of summer, doing the yard work, the laundry, and all the things around the house, while mourning her husband. That won't sit for Tony. With his mother's permission he moves in with Nana for the summer.

My name is Zoe Cartwright, and I see people’s memories. They haunt me. I know things I shouldn’t about my friends and family—their experiences with love and loss, hope and fear—things that must never be forgotten. Stories that must be written down. The world has already changed so much; who knows what the future will hold.

The power is out. The government is gone. All that’s left are gangs, violence, and desperation. Lacey doesn’t care about saving the world. She just wants to find her sister and keep her alive. But with every mile north, the bodies pile up and secrets from Lacey’s past come hunting. Family is all she has left, and she will burn what's left of the world to protect it.