The outbreak began in New York. Within days the world descended into chaos. Across Britain, millions are told to evacuate to one of the coastal enclaves. When George Tull and the other residents of the Waverly-Price Retirement Home are abandoned by the staff, George must choose to fight or abandon the woman he loves. This short story accompanies the series "Surviving The Evacuation".The outbreak began in New York. Within days it had spread throughout the world. Nowhere is safe from the undead. As anarchy and civil war took grip across the globe, Britain was quarantined. The press was nationalised, martial law, curfews and rationing were implemented. It wasn’t enough. An evacuation was planned. The inland towns and cities of the United Kingdom were to be evacuated to defensive enclaves being built around the coast, the Scottish Highlands, and in the Irish Republic.For George Tull and the other residents of the Waverly-Price Retirement Home, walking to the coast is not an option. Abandoned by the staff, they wait for rescue. It doesn’t come. When George leaves the illusory security of The Home and ventures into the nearby village, he finds it deserted. But he is not alone, his unhappy retirement is broken by the undead. George is left with a terrible choice; stay and fight to save the people he loathes, or leave and abandon the woman he has come to love.Other books in the near future, post-apocalyptic series Surviving The Evacuation: 0.5: Zombies vs The Living Dead. 1: London. 2: Wasteland. 3: Family. 4: Unsafe Haven. 5: Reunion.

Fourteen months after the outbreak, thirteen months after the nuclear war, the old world is gone, but a new world is emerging. The evacuation of Britain failed, but other evacuations were a success. In Canberra, a new civilisation is being born, but in Canada, the survivors bid a last and final farewell to the Atlantic.While a final evacuation of Nova Scotia is planned, the search for lost communities begins. The journey takes Bill and Kim to the very end of the Earth, and to a meeting with familiar strangers.Crossing the border, Sholto endures a bittersweet return to the country he'd embraced so many decades ago. The United States he remembered is gone, and yet he can see its shadow among the burned ruins and desolate towns of the American Northeast.But the rains soon turn to a flood that washes away the few bridges not destroyed during the failed quarantine. With no other escape from the deluge, they take to the river. On the Hudson, they sail into the...

In a post-apocalyptic world where food is treasure, pirates will kill for a meal.A month after the nuclear war ended, Commissioner Qwong and her crew of scientists and soldiers head north. Following a clue found in the logbook of a sinking ship, they search Mexico for a community trading safety for oil. As they follow garbled radio messages and breadcrumb-clues northward from one small band of survivors to another, a picture of the new world emerges.Sinking cities and rising swamps, fallout-laden farmland and fire ravaged homes, pirate-ridden coasts and zombie-filled shores: the damage is irreversible, and the rescue mission soon becomes an ecological survey, charting the spread of fallout, the location of inland craters, the growth of oceanic dead-zones, and the extent of coastal flooding.Despite the increasingly bleak discoveries, a new plan emerges, a blueprint for a new haven and a new way of living, a new future for the last survivors of humanity. One...

The outbreak began in New York. Within days it had spread to every corner of the world. Nowhere is safe from the undead. Bill watched from his window as London was evacuated. His leg broken, unable to join the exodus, he waits and hopes for rescue. As the days turn into weeks, he is forced to escape into the undead wasteland that once was England. This is the first volume of his journalZombies. The outbreak began in New York. Soon it had spread to the rest of the world. People were attacked, infected and they died. Then they came back. Nowhere is safe from the undead.As anarchy and civil war took grip across the globe, Britain was quarantined. The press was nationalised. Martial law, curfews and rationing were implemented. It wasn’t enough. An evacuation was planned. The inland towns and cities of the UK would be evacuated to defensive enclaves being built around the coast, in the Scottish Highlands and in the Irish Republic. Bill Wright broke his leg on the day of the outbreak. Unable to join the evacuation, he watched from his window as the streets filled with refugees, he watched as the streets emptied once more. He watched as they filled up again, this time with the undead. Then the power went out.He is trapped. He is alone. He is running out of food and water. He knows that to reach the safety of the enclaves he will have to venture out into the wasteland that once was England. On that journey he will ultimately discover the horrific truth about the outbreak, a decades old conspiracy and his unwitting part in it.This is the first volume of his journal. (74,000 words)

Twenty years after the apocalyptic Blackout, steam-trains and the telegraph have replaced smartphones and satellites, but while some still fear technology, many dream of its return.In France, winter has brought the terrorist insurgency to a frozen stalemate. On the home front, thoughts turn to spring and the dream of a more peaceful future. The Houses of Parliament are finally relocating to a new permanent home in Highcliffe Castle on the British south coast. In the far north of Scotland, a new national gallery is set to open in Thurso, displaying re-discovered paintings looted from Edinburgh just after the Blackout. In Dover, despite the curfews and rationing, pubs, bars, and clubs are thriving, but the re-opening of the cinema is put on hold after all its seats are stolen for firewood.Ten years ago, Henry Mitchell chased the gang known as the Loyal Brigade from the ruins of Sandringham. A decade later, the gang has returned. After his arrest for arms dealing and...

It took three weeks to destroy civilisation. It won't be rebuilt in a day.A year after the outbreak, a sharp winter is followed by a sudden thaw. Spring has come early to Nova Scotia, bringing new hope. For the thirteen thousand survivors who've found sanctuary in northern Canada, and for the first time since the apocalypse, extinction isn't imminent. But it looms large in the near future, a legacy of the nuclear war that destroyed civilisation.As the weather improves, some survivors quit the small community. Even more plan their departure. The old-world supplies of food, oil, and ammunition have been consumed. More will have to be grown, drilled, and made. Medicine, paper, clothes: in a few years there will be none left to salvage. If it can't be manufactured, it will have to be forgone. What knowledge can't be preserved will be lost.Humanity's future appears bleak unless more people can be found. Hoping there is some truth in the rumours of a redoubt in...

The final evacuation begins.A year and a half after the collapse of civilisation, pirates plague the Atlantic, the Saint Lawrence River is a radioactive dead-zone, and the forests of Quebec are succumbing to disease. With insufficient supplies to last until autumn, the survivors in Eastern Canada have no choice but to flee. A final evacuation is planned, to migrate across the breadth of irradiated North America to what they hope will be permanent safety on the Pacific coast.Until they leave, life goes on, and children grow up. For Jay, that means getting a job. Apprenticed to old George Tull, he's tasked with scouting the Digby Peninsula for roadworthy vehicles left behind during the first evacuation of Canada. Instead, he finds signs that an old foe has returned.For the Canadian evacuation not to become a deadly tragedy like its British forebear, safe roads and intact bridges must be found. Tuck and Sorcha join the soldiers mapping the tracks and trails...

There is always hope.Northern France is a frozen morass of mud and snow across which rampages a horde of the undead, a hundred million strong. That won't stop Chester Carson and his comrades. Seeking a way across the Channel, they make for the coast, unaware that Britain has been abandoned, Belfast is a ruin, and that radiation is seeping into the Irish Sea. If they knew, that wouldn't stop them either. They're on a quest to save their family, their friends, and humanity itself; failure is not an option.As they journey through war-ravaged ports and storm-wrecked beaches, a new truth becomes clear. The flotilla that found refuge on Anglesey wasn't the only group of sea-borne refugees to have survived the outbreak. There are other survivors. Some good, some evil, some just determined to do their duty no matter the cost.Danger lurks along the French and Belgian coasts. So do answers, and hope that humanity now has a future.

October 2022, eight weeks after first contact, the people of Earth are handling the news of extra-terrestrial life rather well. Sure, there'd been some petty rioting, light stockpiling, and hasty coups, but not more so than during the pandemic.In Oxfordshire, tourists flock to the exclusion zone set up around the crashed battle-station. Nearby, in the newly named RAF Space Command, Harold Godwin has settled into his new job as a liaison between the British government and the friendly alien federation, known as the Valley. Aside from giving occasional tours to visiting dignitaries, the work isn't arduous until the search for a missing dog leads to the capture of a hostile alien mercenary.In Ireland, on the outskirts of Cork, an international conference has begun. The diplomats have been tasked with selecting twenty people to represent Earth on a ceremonial trip to Towan III. After two months of bickering, they're still arguing over the conference's seating...

A murderer stalks the post-apocalyptic wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.A year after the outbreak and nuclear war, the planet is teetering on the edge of environmental collapse. Across the entire Northern Hemisphere, very few survived. Fourteen thousand Europeans and Canadians found safety behind the great defensive walls erected across Nova Scotia. Attacked by piratical bandits based out of New York, they have no choice but to flee. While Bill Wright organises their evacuation, Kim and Sholto remain in the Pacific Northwest, searching for a new home for all those in the east. Kim thinks they have months to prepare until a plane full of pilgrims arrives from the south, bringing a murderer with them.Where the evacuation of Britain was a bloodbath, the Southern Pacific fared better. Survivors thrive in fortified enclaves in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Thousands of Canadians found a new home in Australia's Northern Territory, albeit living in hastily...

If first contact took place today, how would the world react?For the alien towani, Earth is a holy site where their Last Prophecy will be fulfilled. They will do anything to protect the planet. Protecting humanity is an optional extra.In 1888, fleeing starvation in Ireland, Sean found work as a guide to the Whitechapel slums for the publisher of grisly penny dreadfuls. Not even the most lurid of those tales was as outlandish as his encounter with visitors from another world. When they take him back to their home-world, first contact with a human will change their society forever.By 2020, there is a permanent, but secret, non-terrestrial presence on Earth. Negotiating our planet's membership in the alien federation, and concealing its existence, is the responsibility of the UN. When the pandemic begins, Earth enters lockdown, and our solar system is quarantined.While technically not a prisoner, Serene is no more able to leave the tunnels below the...

Two deaths could be an accident. Three must be murder.2039, twenty years after the AIs went to war, plague and famine has reduced the global population to a hundred million. Most of the planet is a wasteland, with only a handful of enclave-nations preserving a dim shadow of civilisation. Technology has regressed to the era of steam trains, telegrams, and sailing boats, but democracy survived and is again under threat.Three terrorist insurgencies have swept across Europe, pillaging farms, burning villages, destroying two decades of fragile recovery. Those refugees who escaped the massacres fled to the coast. Like a century before, Calais and Dunkirk have become the front line.On the home front, rationing continues, and another ice-age winter has begun. Christmas is only days away, but Constable Ruth Deering's mood is anything but festive. In the walled city of Dover, a lonely chef is discovered dead, poisoned. What first appeared to be an accident is soon...

If not us, who? If not now, when?As the much-depleted United Nations meets in Canberra, the scale of the global catastrophe becomes clear. The tsunami left Brisbane a flooded ruin. Vanuatu has disappeared. The Madagascan evacuation has failed. Vancouver has been reduced to a radioactive crater. For as far west as Mozambique, as far to the east as Chile, and as far north as Canada, the world is a catalogue of devastation. From the Atlantic, there has been no news since the early days of the outbreak, four weeks ago.With the satellite networks down, searching for survivors is difficult. With the relief fleets destroyed, rescue is impossible. While the fallout is still settling, the collective minds of the refugees in Australia focus on rebuilding as a distraction from the rising risk of radiation and extinction.Commissioner Tess Qwong has a different duty. She must find those responsible for this ultimate crime against humanity. Her investigation into the...

Save Australia, Save the World.Three weeks after the outbreak, most nations have collapsed. An ever-increasing number of refugees flee, by boat and air, to the perceived safety of the remote Pacific nations. In Australia, every able body is conscripted, local and newcomer alike. The lucky few are put to work in the new factories, farms, and mines. The unlucky many are given tools for weapons, put aboard cruise-ships and cargo freighters, and returned to the ever-moving frontline. But even though the death toll rises, victory is still within reach.The recordings made in North America by Pete and Corrie Guinn contained more than the siblings realised. The footage from Canada and Michigan is further confirmation the outbreak was no accident. The Canadian scientist, Dr Avalon, can prove it.As Commissioner Tess Qwong takes justice to the increasingly lawless outback, Anna Dodson brings order to the chaos of Parliament House, and Dr Avalon works on a weapon to...

The outbreak changed everything, but there are some bonds even the undead can't break.It's been six years since Pete Guinn last saw his sister, Corrie. He always hoped to see her again, but feared she was dead. When an elusive billionaire reveals Corrie is living under an assumed name in the Australian outback, Pete unquestioningly jumps at the chance of a reunion. But you can't win the lottery without buying a ticket, and billionaires don't do favours for free. Corrie is in hiding from her old employer, and from the Rosewood Cartel. Now that they've both found her, only a miracle can save the two siblings, and what happens in Manhattan can't be described as miraculous.What begins as a viral outbreak soon turns into an impossible horror. People are infected and die, only to rise up and continue transmitting the infection. Even as the army is mobilised, the virus spreads beyond the borders of the United States. Nowhere is safe from the living dead.As Australia...