Book About Apocalypse Novels & Stories

"The temple also gave you a magic customer service voice. Maybe it has bugs." [Temple records do not have bugs.] I looked up. "You heard that?" The first argument in the new temple was about where people could pee. That was the moment the apocalypse became real to me. Not the dead. Not the system. Not my impossible brother's name burning on a divine tablet. It was Aunt Lan standing in the kitchen with a flashlight under her chin, declaring that if people wanted to survive in a holy place, they could start by not turning the courtyard into a sewer.

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

I was an employee at a secretive research lab located overseas, and I accidentally discovered an impending apocalypse known as the pyro-calypse, so I resigned from my job immediately. But before I left, I signed an NDA with the research lab that stated I must never leak any details about the apocalypse to other people to prevent mass panic on a global scale. After getting off the plane, I went home with my luggage in town. I hoped to convince my mom, Dorothy Locke, and my younger brother, Nicholas Kennedy, to head to the mountains, where we could stock up on supplies and tough out the apocalypse there.

“After multiple catastrophes all over the globe this morning, government officials are looking into possible terrorist activity. Conspiracy theorist are saying world war is eminent. Religious groups are speaking of end of days…” Ally had passed out hard and must have slept away the afternoon. She awoke to the soft glow of the television. As soon as she stirred Drake turn it off, she was convinced he didn’t want her to hear it. He flipped on the reading lamp, rolled over and moved the hair from her face.

“What do you mean, Samael?” He rose to lean against the bar. “I mean,” he said slowly, “that nothing in Heaven's powers and those vested in the gods can stop this. Humanity's prophecies are coming true. The Kali Yuga, the Third Great Shaking, the Apocalypse, but not in the manner you imagine. John Lennon's song is precisely right. You are witnessing the end of an age.” He walked over to the jukebox and keyed up a song:

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I looked out at the apartment building in the distance. Flames were shooting into the sky, and faint screams carried through the air. Linda and Tyler had hidden from the zombies by climbing into a dumpster downstairs. They were curled up in the reeking trash, shivering as they fought over half a moldy bread roll someone had thrown away. Meanwhile, I took a sip of hot soup, warmth spreading through my whole body. This was what apocalypse life was supposed to feel like. Over the next three days, I followed Duke’s guidance and swept up supplies from nearly half the city.

The apocalypse did not start with zombies right away. That would have been too simple. First came the drought. The heat was brutal, day after day, pressing down on cities until roads cracked, crops burned, and people started fighting over bottled water in stores that had nothing left on the shelves. The electricity could not keep up. Power grids failed in waves, hospitals went dark, cooling systems died, and people who had spent their entire lives trusting walls and machines suddenly understood how thin civilization really was.

"Tomorrow I still have to go to the Hope Camp to deal with the last batch of 'patients.' And Celine is almost at the final stage too—I need to stay by her side and see whether she can awaken an ability. "Guillermo, don't disappoint me." Smiling, Ray took out his phone and started reading a novel. He had downloaded them all before the apocalypse—completed ones, of course. Any unfinished story would surely be abandoned forever, doomed to eternal hiatus. "I hate authors who drop their stories," he muttered, "but this time I'll let it slide. After all, this is a natural disaster—force majeure." Before he knew it, it was almost five o'clock. The sky, already gloomy, grew even darker.

Else, there'd be nobody, none on earth. I did the only thing that made sense. I jumped. And fell to my death. I woke up with a start, looking around. I was in detention. I never thought I'd ever be glad to see myself in detention. "I saw something, something I don't understand. But I was there. I saw it" I said trying to make myself understood. It seemed like I was rambling. Figures. "Guys," I said as soon as I calmed them down. "The Apocalypse is coming, don't ask me how I know, I just do." Damn. That sounded way better in my head.