Eric Ortlund

Dead Petals - an Apocalypse Eric Ortlund

Not just your garden-variety zombie apocalypse... "It was a week ago when it happened. Exactly a week when I heard the stomping on the front porch. I remember it sounded like someone was drunk. I opened the door and it was my neighbor. She lunged at me." Oz, a former professor driven to the brink of madness by a tragedy he cannot face, begins to notice that the people around him are acting strangely. They're eating each other. And they're scraping at his door. Fleeing south, Oz and a motley crew of survivors begin to notice that this isn't the zombie apocalypse they'd seen in countless movies and books. These creatures seem somehow 'closer' to the Earth, yet, perversely, somehow deader, less human, than even zombies are meant to be. The creatures are transfixed by the Sun, and they transform, their faces peeling back in short tentacles until they uncannily resemble flowers. And these zombies can't be stopped. Hack off a limb or a head and it re-joins or just grows back, like the toughest plants. The Dead have a global leader, a purpose - beyond that of just eating any remaining humans. And the seven survivors, led reluctantly by Oz, discover that they have a central role to play in the macabre new order of 'life' on Earth. Dead Petals is a different species of zombie tale. Apocalypse, Rapture and the transformation of reality, all sprouting from the same seed.