Subgenre: Post-apocalyptic science fiction, horror
About Stop the Sirens:
When the sirens end, "post-apocalypse" begins.
Exhausted after two weeks of rolling chaos since the sirens, Liam and his family prepare for their biggest challenge yet.
Fifteen-year-old Liam Peters starts his day in a muddy creek. The Air Force tried to wipe his subdivision off the map, but luck and fast feet helped him find refuge from the big bombs. When he looks up, he sees his whole life has been swept away by fire. And Grandma? He'd been successful getting her out of the city, and across suburbia, but she was snatched from him minutes prior to the attack. She'd gotten a one-way ticket to a brutal government facility set up to research the cure.
As a studious reader of zombie literature, Liam knows the dangers of being without shelter or direction during the zombie plague. He'd already been attacked by angry looters, malicious refugees, and hordes of zombies. His house had been riddled by a chain gun--twice--before the final bombs fell. He tried to look ahead, but saw little hope. He was bolstered by Victoria, but without Grandma by his side he felt defeated.
And yet, hope was out there. People were coming together to survive and help each other. One such group was at the Beaumont Boy Scout Reservation. It was an enclave of peace within the swirl of zombies and death engulfing all of metropolitan St. Louis. There Liam and his family might find a base from which to search for Grandma Marty.
As book 3 concludes, Liam will learn the origin of the plague, the fate of Grandma, and whether a couple of teenagers have anything to look forward to in a world filled with zombies.
Excerpt:
Liam and Victoria retreated toward the
muddy hill, too.
They were met by a dour gaggle of elderly
loitering at the base of the incline. There were ten or twelve people, mostly
women, who had apparently decided not to climb to the summit. Many of the
fleeing shooters saw them, hesitated, then ran on when the women shook their
heads vigorously in the negative. As Liam arrived, he had to stop.
“You have to
try to get to the top.” He shouted it as loud as he could. The moans and yells
of the zombie horde was all-encompassing.
The closest old woman calmly shook her
head no. She made no effort to move, or speak. He realized they were all
praying. Several had Rosaries in their hands. A couple grasped the crosses on
their necklaces. One ancient man wore a yarmulke.
It was too much for Liam. His emotions
churned like the battle around him. He was distraught to see these people were
destined to die in this dirty forest.
“Liam. We—”
Victoria choked on her own words, “we have to go. We can't save them.”
A firm hand pulled him away to follow the
other young people. He hated himself for thinking the deaths of the elderly
would give him a head-start on his own escape.
The muddy leaves were much worse than
they appeared from the bottom. He imagined himself in a movie scene where the
monsters pursue an ever-slowing hero in a bladder-loosening chase. Without any
path up the hill they had to lunge from sapling to sapling to keep from
slipping back down.
“Victoria,
don't look back. Just climb.”
The gunfire fizzled out behind and around
them.
The screams at the bottom began.
I'm
so sorry. I really am.
“Don't look
back. I'm serious!”
He made sure she was ahead of him. Any
other time he would be happy to have such a nice view, but not today. He wanted
to catch her if she fell. If he missed, she might end up dead. That meant
they'd both die...
Liam didn't take his own advice. When he
had the chance, he looked back. Some of the last gunslingers struggled up the
hill, the same as him. There were only a few. Thirty or forty dirty zombies at
the vanguard of the horde started their way up, too. They were clumsy, but
indefatigable.
The race was on.
“Victoria—”
“Let me guess!
Don't look back?” She laughed, but Liam recognized it as her nervous and
slightly fatalistic laugh. Perfectly appropriate for this situation. But she
was also stubborn. She grabbed a stout tree and turned herself around.
Did
her knees just buckle? I thought that was just a cliché?
Amazon
About the Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse series:
- Book 1: Since the Sirens
- Book 2: Siren Songs
- Book 3: Stop the Sirens
- Book 4: Last Fight of the Valkyries [available April 28, 2016]
About E.E. Isherwood:
E.E. Isherwood has been a storyteller for over 30 years. As a
young teen he would create elaborate imaginary worlds as a Dungeon
Master for many Dungeons and Dragons adventures. He kept them all in
spiral-bound notebooks. His wife often wondered why those bins of
notebooks kept following her from house to house. He began to wonder
about that too. But three decades and several careers later he realized
they were stories, and he could put those storytelling skills to good
use again by writing books. A life-long enthusiast of apocalyptic
fiction, writing about zombies was his first passion. He has other book
ideas based on those old notebooks. He lives in the St. Louis, Missouri
area, where his series of zombie books takes place.
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