Showing results by author "Peter Meredith" in All Categories

The people of the Estes Valley have found their peace destroyed as they are attacked by the single greatest army left in the world. Not only do they have to contend with an army of men equipped with the latest hi-tech military gear, they also have to battle a horde of undead half a million strong. But, perhaps worse than all of this, they have to deal with a seven year old girl - Jillybean. Cruelly coerced into helping her enemies, Jillybean bends her mind to the destruction of the valley, the death of kings, and the loss of her own soul.

Five days in the grinder. Five days of endless pain and no sleep. Five days of the hardest work imaginable-it’s the work of surviving and not one second of it has been easy. This is the story of how the world ends as we know it. It’s the story of the apocalypse. It’s the story of how we lost. Those of us who can fight against these urges are called the good guys. There’s very few of us left at the beginning of day five and by the end...well, you will have to see for yourself if there are any good guys left when the clock strikes midnight on humanity.

Greed, 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.

The journey across the zombie-filled country does not get easier for the renegades. The Great Plains, the heartland of America, is now home to vast herds of the undead. These savage hordes sometimes stretch as far as the eye can see. Among them live the Azael - men who have regressed back to the bloody and chaotic roots of our collective ancestors where only the strong or the blood-thirsty survive.

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. 

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.

As if a zombie apocalypse wasn't bad enough, the country is also in the throes of a second Civil War. Massachusetts has closed its borders to everyone, including the 101st Airborne Division and five million desperate refugees. It's an act of rebellion that the President won't stand for, and with nuclear missiles flying by the hundreds in China, he mulls the idea of using nukes on American soil for the first time.

Savage fighting rages from one end of the bay to the other as the still-dangerous Corsairs splinter into factions, each battling to see who will end up in ultimate control. Trapped in the middle of the bay on a little nub of an island, Jenn Lockhart and her shattered defenders can only watch helplessly, knowing full well that they will be the eventual prize. And Jenn can do nothing. The battle has left them fearfully low on ammunition, and they have no way to cross the zombie-infested waters. Only Jillybean’s return gives them any hope - and yet this is the same woman who started the war in the first place.

There are no happily ever afters in the new Undead World. There are no vacations or time-outs or do-overs. There's only the endless daily grind of living or the shockingly horrific fact of death that hangs over every living creature left on the face of the earth. For some, that death lies in a single mistake or a moment of bad luck, or simply in fate. For others, that hard death hounds them day and night, relentlessly.

Nothing is simple anymore in the new undead world. Crossing a road, making tea, meeting new people, all can turn deadly in a twitch of an eye. For the Renegades, who are unarmed and hounded over half the state by ruthless bounty hunters, there's only one thing that they can say is simple: dying. Surrounded by enemies and without help from the imprisoned Captain Grey, they flee from one trap into another with little but the wits of Jillybean and Neil's steadfast leadership to keep them alive. But is it enough?

With the threat of more assassinations on Bainbridge paralyzing the fortified island and spies in her own ranks turning her own men against her, Jillybean has to look to unlikely allies as The Black Captain brings his fury south to destroy her. He is consumed with the idea of revenge, yet he retains a cold, calculating rationality that Jillybean does not. The stress of war, as well as the deaths of her friends and the man she loves by her own hand, is eating away at what little mental stability she has left.

Beaten and battered in mind and body, the fugitives limp west, unaware that the human world is fading all around them, unaware that the last remnants of the goodness of man is being ground under the heel of evil at every turn. When confronted with that evil, fight or flight are their only choices, however, Neil's small group is hamstrung, forced to take on more refugees who come to them empty-handed, unarmed, and hungry.

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.

In The Apocalypse, the great majority of the men and women who fought with honor - with a sense of duty and loyalty - gave their lives for others, leaving those without honor to flourish and rule. Their rule is not marked by decency or civility, but by wicked brutality. Yet, in some very rare cases, the kind and the noble survived. These hardened survivors learned to live among the undead, but now they must learn how to stay alive among creatures that are far more monstrous: their fellow man.

The Corsairs have been driven away but only temporarily. Jillybean knows they'll be back in even greater numbers, lusting for vengeance. Yet she is trapped on the hilltop surrounded by thousands of zombies, and worse, she is out of medicine and fast becoming dangerously unpredictable. Things spiral quickly out of control when she is charged with cold-blooded murder, barely escapes a fire that turns the hilltop and half the state to ash, and flees to a city that is being ravaged by a deadly disease

Because of his well-placed spies, his hidden assassins, and his backstabbing traitors, the Black Captain reigns supreme in every facet of the war. He has Jillybean in his clutches. She’s chained, caged, and guarded day and night, meaning escape, even for someone as brilliant as her, is impossible. She won’t be held forever. Her life expectancy has been reduced to only as long as her body can hold out against the most vile tortures devised by the most sadistic of men.

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 chooses 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.

With people fleeing the valley in droves and Estes no longer the safe haven it had once been, Neil Martin must make some hard choices. His group has dwindled to 70 homeless refugees who have very little left to survive on. They desperately need to find a place to call home before their many enemies realize how defenseless they truly are. Instead of risking everything on a blind thrust across the Rockies to the Pacific, Neil sends out three picked teams to not only find a safe passage through the mountains but to also find a community that will take them in.

For Jillybean, moments of utter happiness and pure sanity are as fleeting and wonderful as sun-showers at a July picnic. Her time with Granny Annie is one such moment, but as always it ends far too quickly and she is once more thrust back into a world of crushing loneliness and endless despair.

The war with the Azael has left the people of Estes Valley weakened and isolated in their mountain retreat. Supplies of fuel and ammo are dangerously low and yet Neil bets most of what he has left on a gamble to find Jillybean, who was last seen in the forests of Missouri. Neil is the only one who sees in the little girl a chance at a new beginning. He hopes to harness her genius for the benefit of the valley, but when the gamble fails he must send the only two people he can trust out into a dangerous world to gather more supplies.