Infection


Bryan James - 2010
     At least until the zombies showed up. From his cell in the asylum, he is suddenly thrust into a nightmare of unbelievable proportions when the dead rise, and rapidly become a horrific plague on the world of the living. From Long Island to the burbs to the country, Mike fights to stay alive, to recover his memories, and to retrieve a cure for the most threatening disease the world has ever known.

Cell


Stephen King - 2006
    Without warning, carnage and chaos reigned. Ordinary people fell victim to the basest, most animalistic destruction.And the apocalypse began with the ring of a cell phone...

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War


Max Brooks - 2006
    Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Domain of the Dead


Iain McKinnon - 2008
    In a decaying city a band of survivors are barricaded inside a warehouse surrounded by a sea of shambling putrefaction. But now the food is almost gone and the occupants are faced with the slow death of starvation or the undead outside. As Sarah stands on the edge of the warehouse roof preparing to step off into oblivion she spots a glimmer of hope. In the distance she spies a helicopter approaching the city. Is this the salvation they had long since given up on?

I Zombie I


Jack Wallen - 2008
    All he wanted was a Pulitzer.It took only one bite for journalist Jacob Plummer to find the story of a life time -- his own downward spiral into the zombie abyss.As Jacob slowly transforms into one of the undead, he discovers a truth that could spare the world from extinction.While Jacob struggles to reveal the conspiracy behind the virus, he must fight off his own inner zombie and the undead masses to save the human race, the woman he loves, and a planet ripped apart by the Mengele Virus.

Breakers


Edward W. Robertson - 2012
    In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter.When Vanessa dies of the flu, Walt is devastated. But she isn't the last. The virus quickly kills billions, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. As Raymond and Mia hole up in an abandoned mansion, where they learn to function without electricity, running water, or neighbors, Walt begins an existential walk to LA, where Vanessa had planned to move when she left him. He expects to die along the way.Months later, a massive vessel appears above Santa Monica Bay. Walt is attacked by a crablike monstrosity in a mountain stream. The virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job--and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.

Trudge


Shawn Chesser - 2011
    With his daughter, Raven and wife, Brook, away visiting her parents in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Cade hopes his immediate future holds nothing but an easy chair, Mariners on the tube, and paring down a honey-do list a mile long. But those hopes were quickly dashed and his life forever changed when news broke of a clash in downtown Portland between soldiers from the Oregon National Guard and hundreds of anarchist protesters suddenly turned violent and, by one anchor's account, blood-thirsty and cannibalistic. As the first waves of injured bystanders, Guardsmen, and rioters arrived at hospitals in and around Portland, it became apparent that a deadly new disease had been unleashed on the population. Whether the virus was naturally occurring or an escaped lab experiment Cade hadn't a clue, and he wasn't especially concerned until he learned of its unprecedented virulence, unusual method of transference, and the fact that, according to the talking heads on the news, it brought the newly dead back to life, semi-mindless, and with an insatiable desire to feed on the flesh of the living. Armed with this new information and now seeing the bigger cities such as Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles rocked by the rapidly spreading scourge, Cade ignores the volley of contradictory edicts drawn up by the White House and set into motion by FEMA and DHS, dusts off his tools of war, and loads his truck with supplies. Unable to get ahold of Brook and Raven and unwilling to leave them at the mercy of some distant politician's inability to hold the nation together, he begins an impossible 3,000 mile journey across a reeling United States with presumably millions of infected in his path and only one acceptable outcome: find Brook and Raven alive-or die trying.

Don of the Living Dead


Robert DeCoteau - 2011
    He must brave the savage streets to escape downtown Seattle in order to save his six-year-old son and his cruelly, vindictive ex-wife, but first he has to figure out how to escape the zombie standing outside the door of his bathroom stall.This tale is packed with dark humor, gratuitous gore, and extreme violence. It's a nonstop, action packed thrill ride. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll run screaming in terror!Come on people how many more cliches do you need? It's a book about zombies; buy it, love it, and recommend it to your friends.

The Fireman


Joe Hill - 2016
    Stay cool.No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

V-Wars


Jonathan MaberryDacre Stoker - 2012
    The genes that once created vampires. Now, all over the world, people are beginning to transform. To develop unnatural and unstoppable hungers. Are they still human? Or is there now a brand new link in the food chain?The world is filled with vampire legend. Each culture with its own unique brand of blood-thirsty killer, but the stories aren't mere myth. Strange, savage, immensely powerful, and driven by a need to feed on human blood - vampires are returning.V-Wars is the chronicle of the first vampire war. From the savage murders committed by the patient zero of the plague to full-out battles with vampire terrorist cells, these are the stories of the most terrifying war mankind has ever faced.The vampire wars have begun.The world will scream. . .

100 Days in Deadland


Rachel Aukes - 2013
    In its place rose a new species: vicious, gruesome, wandering monsters with an insatiable hunger for the living. There is no government, no shelter.Still in her twenties, Cash has watched her friends die, only to walk again. An office worker with few survival skills, she joins up with Clutch, a grizzled Army veteran with PTSD. Together, they flee the city and struggle through the nine circles of hell, with nothing but Clutch’s military experience and Cash’s determination to live. As they fight to survive in the zombie inferno, they quickly discover that nowhere is safe from the undead… or the living.This is the beginning after the end.(100 Days in Deadland is a modern remake of Dante's Inferno, the classic tale on the horrors of hell... zombie apocalypse style!)

Out of Darkness


Jason D. Morrow - 2013
    As she travels the wastelands, she discovers a power within herself, a power she believes no other human possesses. That is, until she meets others like her – the ones who call themselves the Starborn. These super-humans are on a mission also: to destroy the undead greyskins, and take down the greedy Jeremiah. Mora must now choose between the one who can keep her family safe, and those that can show her who she truly is.

Summer


V.L. Dreyer - 2013
    Within a year, it had decimated our world. Our species is on the verge of extinction. Only a few of us have survived; those of us lucky enough to be born with a natural immunity to the plague. We scavenge amongst the ruins of our old civilizations, picking out a living from the devastation.Ten years ago, I watched my family die one by one. Now, I am alone. The year is 2024; it has been a decade since the virus reduced humanity to a scattering of survivors strewn out across the world.The rules that governed our society are gone.Without laws to protect the innocent, I have seen the worst of humanity throughout the years. Now, I have found a new family who are determined to show me the best. But a fresh mutation of the virus has started turning the harmless, pathetic infected into monstrous predatory creatures bent on our destruction; even the wildlife is turning against us.We are forced to leave our home and flee for our lives. It is only through unity that we stand any chance of survival. Enemies wait around every turn. For the sake of our children and our children’s children, we must find some way to survive and flourish again. If we fail, then the human species will cease to exist.My name is Sandy McDermott, and I am a survivor. This is my story.

Chaos


John O'Brien - 2010
    Humanity went out not with a whimper, but a bang.Jack, a sometimes humorous, sometimes philosophical ex-special operations pilot and soldier is one of the few left to struggle through the desolation left in the aftermath; seeking to survive as a new ferocious species emerges from the rubble, hungry and unrelenting. Will his special forces training be enough? Will he be able to keep his children safe and guide the few survivors through perils that now roam the world they once knew? Or will the hordes that now own the night prevail, forever removing the last of mankind from existence? Humankind was once at the top of the food chain. But that has now changed. This hard-hitting, action-packed series begins with Jack Walker being suddenly thrust into a world where the infrastructure which cherished Armani suits, night clubs, fast and expensive cars and watching the daily stock market are gone. Left in its place is the material world mankind built but a majority of the population has vanished; replaced by a new, savage, unrelenting, cunning, animalistic species which hunts and operates at night.

Infected


Scott Sigler - 2008
    Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected. The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.