Peter Meredith

It’s been twelve years since the undead hordes swept over the earth forcing mankind to the brink of extinction. We now live like rats, scavenging in the ruins of our fallen civilization as the dead hunt us night and day.There is little left to scavenge, however. Grocery stores were emptied ages ago, gas tanks have long been dry and bullets are so precious that a man is lucky to have two to his name. Still, we survive. But for how much longer? Instinct and love have combined to turn Darwin’s theory on its head. The strongest didn’t survive in this world. They were the first to die, leaving behind a generation of orphans.It’s a generation that’s never had a full belly. It’s a generation that has no idea what an Xbox did, or what algebra is for. It’s a generation of children who never laugh out loud, and who have learned to cry softly because the dead are always near and the dead are always so very, very hungry.

The Apocalypse--The Undead World: Novel 1 Money, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest. It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are fast, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.

In an apocalypse there is definitely a beginning where mistakes are made and the seeds of evil are allowed to sprout and take shape. However, an end is not so certain. Once an Apocalypse occurs not even death is certain. Sometimes death is only the beginning. At first light that morning, Dr Lee steps into the Walton facility on the initial day of human trials; she can barely contain her excitement. The labs are brand spanking new and everything is sharp and clean. They've been built to her specifications and are, without a doubt, a scientist's dream. Yet even better than the gleaming instruments is the fact that Walton is where cancer is going to be cured once and for all. It’s where Dr. Lee is going to become world famous…only she doesn’t realize what she’s going to be famous for. By midnight of that first day, Walton is a place of fire, of blood and of death, a death that, like the Apocalypse, is seemingly never ending.

With the great battle between man and the undead apparently won and the situation seemingly in hand, the president leaps into action to take all the credit he can for saving the country and defending the Quarantine Zone. Surrounded by battalions of television news crews, he authorizes operation Swift Stand in which he commits the nation’s entire rapid deployment force in a show stopping extravaganza designed more to rekindle patriotic fervor and to lift his own sagging poll numbers than to stop the undead. Unfortunately, there have been leaks in the hard fought line and by the time the 82nd Airborne Division is dropped into central Connecticut, there are flesh hungry zombies wreaking havoc in Hartford, ten miles behind their lines. Suddenly, there is no line. Day three devolves into chaos as no one knows who is infected and who isn’t. Battles break out everywhere: soldier against soldier, and brother against brother, with fearsome zombies waiting to feast on the winners. In the middle of all the mayhem, Deckard and Thuy are fighting not just to stay alive, but to find each other in a land that now belongs solely to the dead.

Day two. Quite simply, what could go wrong did go wrong. Given the choice between assuming leadership of a situation that is pure chaos, where the National Guard is forced into a position of going to war against a trapped and possibly infected citizenry, the President choses to punt. He knows what enforcing a quarantined zone will require: the massacre of tens of thousands of terrified people demanding to get out, and there is no way he’s going to have his name and legacy sullied. Suddenly a “States Rights” champion, he leaves the situation under the control of the Governor, but not before hampering the men on the lines with Rules of Engagement that are meant to sooth journalists instead of creating a possibility of victory. Tasked with the impossible, General Collins, commander of the 42nd Infantry Division is in a meeting with the Governor when the perimeter of the quarantine zone is ruptured. When his command post is overrun he’s grinding his teeth, sitting in front of the President as he smiles for the cameras, makes jokes and demands answers. And in the dead of night when a hundred thousand Infected Persons slug it out toe-to-toe with the fractured remains of his division, he is the only reinforcement available to shoulder a rifle. Inside the Zone, the survivors of Day 1 are dying by the score as Dr. Lee and her friends, hopelessly fight their way from one end of the Zone to the other, desperate to escape. But there is no way out except through death at the ripping teeth of the undead. Striving to put that horrible moment off as long as possible, she finds herself trapped alongside Anna Holloway and Lieutenant Eng—they are three scorpions in a bottle...a bottle surrounded by countless undead.