Best Apocalyptic Novels Novels & Stories

Instead, he leaned back against a mahogany shelf, his casual sweater bunching at his shoulders. He looked at the stack of books on my desk, his eyes lingering on a tattered spine I had tucked at the bottom. "Wait, is that THE STAND?" he asked, pointing to the thick paperback. I looked down, my eyes landing on the book he was referring to. It was a survival horror story. Something about an alien invasion and humans getting wiped out one by one. "Oh. Yes. I’ve read it three times, but I find comfort in the end of the world sometimes. It makes my own feel... manageable."

And tucked against my chest, warm and steady, my son is narrating the apocalypse. “The Rage has breached the third defensive construct,” Confluence says thoughtfully. “Madness favors illusion over reinforcement. It’s a flawed strategy against something so direct.” “You’ve been alive less than an hour,” Alistair growls. “I’ve been aware far longer,” my son replies. We crest a rocky incline, joining the stream of refugees fleeing in the opposite direction of whatever cosmic horror now tears at the world behind us. Wolves. Humans. Children. Some barefoot. Some bleeding. All terrified.

The night before the apocalypse was so calm it felt suffocating. I stood in front of the bunker's observation window made from bulletproof glass and watched dark red rain pour down outside. It was unusually thick with the metallic smell of blood. The news kept cutting in with one grim emergency report after another. "Unexplained mutated rabies attacks have broken out across multiple parts of the city. Residents are advised to stay home and keep all doors and windows closed..." The reporter's voice shook despite his effort to hide it, and faint, piercing screams came from somewhere behind him.

Handwriting from twelve years ago — the strokes heavier than they were now, the flourishes drawn wide and loose, like someone who wasn't afraid of wasting paper. I turned to page twelve. A layout diagram of the bunker. Seven bunks, one incubation unit, the storeroom at the end of the hallway, the concrete-sealed door nearly two feet thick. In the bottom right corner of the diagram, a note in my own handwriting: "The apocalypse has to feel real. Push the heat up, make the water filthy — let the audience practically smell it. Rotate the insiders every season, keep one genuinely unwitting participant — protects the ratings." After "genuinely unwitting," there was a note in parentheses. Just one

she convinced herself. “I don't need you" she muttered. The system disappeared. She looked at her calander... Still three years before the apocalypse. She circle the date. She brought out a note book, “I need to get everything under my control" She jotted down, when the apocalypse came, the date zombie appeared, the first building she that collapsed the safe house, the location where supplies her hidden, the place she went to get the crystal. She looked at the paper, a smile escape her lips.

Apocalypse My mind barely registered all the sirens out there, ambulances, firetrucks and arrays of police cars. I was still basking in the aftermath of the chaos and despair. People were still screaming and crying. My smile widened at their suffering. Those fools Finn and Xalvy thought they were going to stop me. I clenched my hands at the mere thought of their names. They are in for a rude awakening. I’m not that defenceless and pathetic woman from so many years ago. Subconsciously, I bared my teeth at the thought of the past.

But I knew everything that happened was too real to be a dream. The pain, the bites, the betrayal… My best friend and girlfriend leaving me to die. Just then, a birthday tune filled the air and I glanced at my phone to see that it was my birthday. My calendar remembered my birthday while I didn't. I suddenly remembered what happened on my birthday before the apocalypse. The biggest nuclear energy plant had exploded and clouded the city for weeks. That very day, the AI bots started to malfunction and all of them began to drop dead. That was probably the trigger before the apocalypse.