Newsflesh

A new short story from Mira Grant, the author of Feed. Every week five friends get together to play a game - a game they call the Apocalypse Game. It's a fun time, with chips and beer and plotting the end of the world. Except this time, one of them is missing - and the stakes are higher than ever before.

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

The year is 2014, the year everything changed. We cured cancer. We cured the common cold. We died.

This is the story of how we rose.

When will you rise?

Countdown is a novella set in the world of Feed.

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we unleashed something horrifying and unstoppable. The infection spread, leaving those afflicted with a single uncontrollable impulse: feed. Now, 20 years after the Rising, a team of scrappy underdog reporters relentlessly pursue the facts while competing against brother-and-sister blog superstars the Masons.

Stacy and Michael Mason are among the most famous heroes of the zombie apocalypse. Stacy, however, has fallen into a deep depression after having to shoot their infected son. In the aftermath of the pandemic, they start publicly documenting the recovery effort, which Michael hopes will take Stacy's mind off of her trauma and help her recover. As they film the rescue of an enclave of orphans and report on the orphanages that have sprung up to care for traumatized, parent-less children, they begin to consider the last, greatest step of recovery: adoption.

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so, we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one unstoppable command...FEED.