Post Apocalyptic Seattle Novels & Stories

A light frown on my face would make him panic. I used to think I was the happiest woman in the world—until that familiar scar appeared in a trending post written by a woman who claimed she had given birth to her best friend's husband's child. It felt so surreal that I could barely believe it, yet the truth sat there on my screen, cruelly crushing everything I once believed.

When they finally finished, they dragged me outside into the wasteland. The base had been transformed into a sprawling post-apocalyptic settlement. Burned-out vehicles served as shelters, barbed wire fences marked territories, flickering fires burned in metal barrels, and groups of “survivors”— all rich Club members dressed in ragged, sexy post-apocalyptic costumes— roamed the area like predators. The sky was artificially darkened with massive screens, making it feel like the real end of the world. I was thrown into the center of the main camp, landing on my hands and knees in the dirt.

Rain fell soft and steady on the awning of Maya’s Sweet Start, the kind of Seattle rain that soaked into your bones without you even noticing. Sophia pressed her face to the window, watching people hurry past with umbrellas like colorful mushrooms moving through the gray. She’d been back for three days, and already the city felt more like home than New York ever had. “Earth to Soph!” Maya called from behind the counter, sliding a warm croissant onto a plate. “You’ve been staring at that street corner for twenty minutes. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

After returning to Camp Arthor, I settled all of Sasha's paperwork and placed her at the hospital while Leo stayed by my side and followed me around. "You know that you don't have to keep following me around, don't you? I'm just a regular researcher now," I said with a sigh. After arriving at this base camp, the water crisis had been temporarily resolved for now. But there was an even greater challenge on the way, and it required more attention. Every researcher was desperately trying to find a way to end the apocalypse.

The transition from "Gods of the Code" to "Leaders of the Ash" was a brutal education in logistics. Within forty-eight hours of the Apex takeover, the Needle City had transformed. The upper tiers remained a lush, high-tech garden, but the lower tiers—the "Mechanical Gut" of the spire—were now a teeming, chaotic metropolis of millions. The refugees from the Stack were waking up to the three horsemen of the Real: Cold, Hunger, and Scarcity.

Except for enough explosives to level a city block, the facility you're approaching is empty. The real facility is three miles east, and I've activated Seattle's hybrid release protocol. You have thirty minutes to surrender or watch the news coverage of thirty-two rabid wolves in Pioneer Square."

I left her anchored in the safety of the concrete alcove, stepping three inches to the left to peer through the massive western window. Sixty stories below, the city of Seattle was partially blind. The entire financial district block containing Ambrose Tower was completely blacked out, the streetlamps dead, the traffic signals dark. In the eerie, gray ambient light of the storm, the rain swept across the asphalt in vast, ghostly sheets.

​The second I finally got back to my own apartment and locked the door behind me, the sheer reality of the situation began to dawn on me properly. ​I was truly back. I was back in the past, and there were exactly two weeks left before the apocalypse. ​I walked straight into my bedroom and collapsed face-first onto the mattress, tightly gripping the large brown teddy bear I used to cuddle every single night. The teddy I missed so much in those gruelling nights after the apocalypse hit.

Amanda demanded more information about the unknown event, staring at the warning still hanging inside her vision. “What exactly changed?” she asked, her voice tight. “Tell me what you detected beneath the ocean floor.” A.R.I.S. answered without delay. {Environmental movement detected beneath the ocean floor.} Amanda's stomach tightened. She stared at the words, then toward the distant coastline beyond the unfinished fortress, suddenly unable to breathe normally. “What is moving?” Amanda asked. {Unable to identify the source.} Her fingers tightened around her phone. “How deep is it?” {Insufficient information.} Amanda's heart began pounding harder as uncertainty settled deeper inside her.

“And?” I looked toward the road ahead. “They’re giving me a chance to stop it.” Marcus didn’t say anything. Neither did I. But for the first time, I wasn’t thinking about Daniel. I wasn’t thinking about Sophia. I wasn’t thinking about revenge. The apocalypse was coming. The Collectors were moving. And someone inside our own safe haven had betrayed us. This time, I wasn’t going to wait for the future to happen. I was going to change it.