Book picks similar to
No Way Out by T.L. Payne


apocalypse
apocalyptic
t-l-payne
emp

The Drowned


Kevin Partner - 2020
    Billions are dead, governments are in chaos, and the few survivors left are literally treading water, trying to find the few bits of dry land left.In the midst of the chaos, family ties, determination and the sheer will to live will be the only protection against the complete annihilation of mankind.

Then Came War


Jacqueline Druga - 2012
    He served his country, fought two wars, and in his eighty years on the earth could say he had seen it all. Until that day.Surprised that the group separates, Harry is left alone to care and guide an eight-year- old boy out of the devastation of New York and hopefully to safety. But finding safety isn’t easy. The destruction extends far beyond New York. A massive strike has commenced on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and for the first time since the War of 1812, America has been invaded.Harry and the boy, along with the other survivors are deep inside occupied territory. As they journey and struggle through the front lines of a war that will rage for decades, they discover just how hard they have to fight for the price of freedom. A freedom they all had taken for granted.First there was normalcy ... then came war.Then Came War is the prequel to Wasteland and is part of the America’s Demise Series.

Crossing


Tom Abrahams - 2015
    It's a bullet-train of a thriller riding on the edge of the rails to the last page.CROSSING is a novella and is part one of The Pilgrimage Series.

Echoes of a Dying World:


Don M Esquibel - 2017
    What he never expected was it turning into a weekend he wished he could forget. Unbeknown to Morgan, a shadow terrorist organization has been building over generations, quietly infiltrating the world’s governments and armies, all so they might one day be in a position to destroy our way of life. On a bright July morning during the summer of 2020, that fateful day arrives. When an EMP levels North America, Morgan and his friends are viciously thrown into a world without rule or order, and in which survival itself does not come without sacrifice. In their mad dash to escape a city suddenly swarmed in chaos, they are joined by two young sisters, an act of violence bringing their paths together. Once cleared of the city, shell-shocked and desperate to reunite with their families, the group embarks on the Colorado Trail—a 500-mile long hiking trail beginning in Waterton Canyon just outside of Denver, and ending in their hometown of Durango. But to make it home, they must find within themselves the strength and resolve to navigate 500 miles of hostile country, filled with hungry and desperate souls who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them for what they have. On its surface, Echoes is a tale of survival—of a group of friends who must band together against insurmountable odds. At its heart is a story of the power behind a family’s love, and how even in the darkest of times, it alone can serve as the light to guide you home.

Solar Storm: Homeward Bound


Vincent Keith - 2017
    He'd spent years learning to live in a minimalist and sustainable way. He'd changed careers, and he had a plan. A plan just in case the worst happened. Unfortunately for Jack, he was far from home when disaster struck, when the end of the world as we know it came. Now he is on foot, with winter coming. Jack and his two dogs will need to trek over 750 miles to get home. How do you cope when almost everything you depend upon is lost? When everything you've come to rely on stops working. There was no way to predict a Solar Storm. There was no way to predict its enormous magnitude or the damage that it would do. What do you do when you can't call for help? When transportation stops and the lights go out? How hungry do you have to be to steal, to kill? What will people do when there is no law? Who can you trust? Jack would most likely run out of food before he got home, even if nothing went wrong. But something had already gone wrong, and it was just the beginning. He had choices to make and no information. Every decision was a trade-off. Would he survive if he chose wrong? Jack was about to find out.

Rain


Shaun Harbinger - 2014
    Trapped in a dead end job and spending his weekends gaming, Alex is coasting through life at his own pace. But one fateful weekend, he agrees to go hiking with his pal Mike. Mike’s girlfriend, Elena, is bringing her friend Lucy along and that is good enough reason for Alex to endure gruelling hikes along a mountain range in Wales. The day the four friends hit the mountains, the outbreak begins. Day Z has arrived. Alex’s radio receives mysterious reports of savage attacks in London before switching to the Emergency Broadcast System. The dead are rising, and the living must fight for survival. Fighting hordes of zombies and avoiding army patrols, Alex and his friends must reach the coast, and the safety of the sea. But then their problems will just begin…

Drums of War


Timothy W. Long - 2017
    A government obsessed with power. A series of coordinated attacks on the largest cities in America. Bradley Adams, a former Army veteran, and prepper, is swept up in a web of lies following a politically motivated work place shooting. When martial law is declared, his life descends into a series of nightmares from which there may be no escape. This is the story of a man dedicated to defending his family, his home, and his country. "Timothy W. Long injects a stark degree of realism into everything he writes. His horror is more horrific, his heroics more heroic, I love reading his stuff." --Peter Clines, bestselling author of the Ex-Heroes series, 14, and The Fold "Reading Timothy W. Long is like being in a knife fight that doesn't end until the last page." --Nicholas Sansbury Smith, bestselling author of The Extinction Cycle

Impact


Bruno Miller - 2019
    But while picking up his son at the Indianapolis airport, the country is thrust into nuclear warfare with the detonation of multiple EMPs. With fires burning out of control and the loss of the electrical grid, the entire country is thrown into chaos. Vince and his son, Cy, are forced to fight for their lives and escape the city as the world they once knew crumbles around them. As they try to return to their hometown of Cloverdale, Indiana, or what’s left of it, they struggle to accept their new environment. Forced to come to terms with the harsh reality of the nuclear attack, they press on through what is quickly becoming a post apocalyptic wasteland. Challenged with the absence of utilities and emergency services, they must save who and what they can before it’s too late.

Tammy and Ringo


N.C. Reed - 2015
    On her way out of town she befriends a young man whose only name is Ringo and who just might be a little bit more than he seems. The two of them will travel together as Tammy tries to make it to her father before things break down. Thrust together by events out of their control, the two will learn to depend on one another as they cover each other's weaknesses and search for a way home.

Dead South


Zach Bohannon - 2020
    Society is broken, and most who remain have banded together in small camps and communities.Jon South is not like most other survivors.After losing his wife and son nearly two years into the pandemic, Jon now wanders the country roads and woods of rural Tennessee, a vigilante taking his revenge out on the undead monsters that took his family from him. He lives in solitary, and with nothing more to live for, he plans to die alone, sooner rather than later.But after coming to the aid of a pair of strangers out in the woods being attacked by men, Jon learns that he might have been fighting the wrong monsters the entire time.

EMP


Orion Enzo Gaudio - 2014
    Things get unimaginably worse when two nuclear devices are detonated in the atmosphere over the United States. The country is torn to pieces and only the strong can put it back together again.Nick is stuck in traffic on his way to work in Denver. General Sutherland is on his way to Ft. Drum for a routine inspection. Sandra is sitting on her porch and drinking her morning tea. The United States of America is about to change forever.

Burning Down Boise


Franklin Horton - 2020
    With his wife dead and his kids grown, he’s slowly reverting back to the east Tennessee boy he used to be three decades earlier. He quit cutting his hair and started smoking pot. He drinks when he wants to and sings along with the classic songs of his lost youth.When his childhood friend Carl dies suddenly, Dan agrees to help Carl’s mother with the estate, even when it means traveling across the country to Boise, Idaho. Worse yet, Dan has to fly and that’s no easy task for a paranoid hillbilly not used to following rules.Once he arrives in Boise, it doesn’t take long for Dan to figure out that there’s a lot more to his friend’s death than he’d been led to believe. He begins to suspect the overdose was actually murder and he can’t let it rest.Only days after arriving, a mysterious solar event traps Dan in the city, leaving him with no prospect of returning home anytime soon. Rather than panicking, Dan readily accepts the new state of things. For him, the apocalypse is an opportunity. With no law enforcement, his plan to deliver a dose of Tennessee justice in downtown Boise just got a whole lot easier.

The Last Town


Stephen Knight - 2017
    A flu-like plague that infected thousands and killed roughly ten percent of its victims. Those who died awoke once again, but they were no longer among the living--they came back as soulless carnivorous corpses who desired only one thing: to feed on living human flesh. As the infection spread, across Europe and the rest of the globe, cities were overwhelmed. Nations fell. Humanity flickered like a candle flame in the wind. In the United States: the nation's great cities are becoming hunting grounds. New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles...all are falling victim to hordes of shambling dead who want only one thing: to devour the living. Single Tree, California is a small resort town in Inyo County. Between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, it's easy to overlook. And that's exactly what the citizens of Single Tree want, for the stenches and those fleeing them to ignore the town long enough for it to be transformed into a desert fortress at the foot of Mount Whitney. But time is not on their side. Not only do they have to worry about the dead... they have to fear the living.

The Ranch: A Legacy of Darkness (The Legacy Series Book 3)


Sean Liscom - 2019
    He had worked the same job his entire adult life, he had never married and he had no children. He was used to doing things on his own. His comfortable life was shaken to the core the day he learned of his fathers death. It set in motion life altering events and the allure of a new life that was too great to walk away from. When an Electromagnetic Pulse brings the modern world to its knees, Jason's choice proves to be the right one. EXCERPT “You should see yourselves,” the rough male voice said. There was something eerily familiar about it. He chuckled a little. “You see, I told you girls, didn’t I? The looks on their faces would be purely magical, priceless even!” the man said. The two women stepped farther into the light. They were identical twins. I knew one as Kari, Braden knew the other as Isabella. When the man stepped into the light. My heart stopped. “OH….” Jill said quietly. “MY….” I whispered. “GOD….” Braden finished. “Is that any way to greet your father and your sisters?” Jack Sterling asked as the trio closed to a few feet from us. I felt my knees go weak; my head was spinning. I wasn’t even sure if I was still breathing. The fine line that separates reality from imagination was suddenly gone. What had only a few minutes before been a straight, defined path, had become shrouded in a mist of skepticism and fear. Just before I’d lost sight of that path, I could swear I’d seen a “Dangerous Curves” road sign. I also knew things were travelling far too fast to even attempt negotiating those twists and turns. There are times when reacting too slowly can save your life. For instance; you have a blowout on your car at 70 MPH on the freeway. Reacting slowly can keep you from doing the opposite and rolling your car. This wasn’t one of those times. This wreck was going to happen. Just like the blowout, I was experiencing the sudden onslaught of emotions. Panic.... Surprise.... Anger.... Most of all was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. You know, the kind of fear that leaves you unable to speak or scream. The fear that leaves you unable to move, let alone run for your life. The fear that can cause time to stop along with your heart. A slight breeze picked up in the late summer night and it felt like a blast straight out of the arctic, in the dead of winter. I could feel the goosebumps on my arms and neck. Even though I was sweating profusely, my entire body was frozen. All I could do was stand there, mouth open, thoughts racing. My mind was beginning to explode with questions for the man before me, my father, Jack Sterling. Every thought stopped just short of exiting my mouth. The words prob-ably couldn’t get past the fact that my heart was jammed firmly in my throat. That’s probably the same reason I hadn’t taken a breath either. Was I dead? Was this the spirit of my father coming to take me into the light? That thought left as quickly as it had come only to be replaced by anoth-er, darker notion. Maybe he had come to take me to Hell.... I stood, unmoving, as he began to cover the last few steps between us. This was it. This is how it all ended. He stopped less than an arm’s length away. I could smell him now. The slightest hint of body odor with just a hint of diesel fuel. The only scent of him that I could remember was his cologne. He’d always been clean shaven, wearing a pressed blue or black suit and that damned cologne. He reached for me, and as much as I wanted to, I was unable to pull away. I wanted to run away screaming like a small child. I could feel my muscles tremble as his hand came ever closer.

After the EMP: The Darkness Trilogy


Harley Tate - 2017
    She plans to graduate and put those skills to work only a few hours from home in the Central Valley. The sun has always been her friend, until now. When catastrophe strikes, how prepared will you be? Tracy starts her morning like any other, kissing her husband Walter goodbye before heading off to work at the local public library. She never expects it to end fleeing for her life in a Suburban full of food and water. Tackling life’s daily struggles is one thing, preparing to survive when it all crashes down is another. The end of the world brings out the best and worst in all of us. With no communication and no word from the government, the Sloanes find themselves grappling with the end of the modern world all on their own. Will Madison and her friends have what it takes to make it back to Sacramento and her family? Can Tracy fend off looters and thieves and help her friends and neighbors survive? The EMP is only the beginning. The Darkness Trilogy (Books 1-3 in After the EMP) follows the Sloane family as they attempt to survive after a geomagnetic storm destroys the nation’s power grid.