The Rising: Selected Scenes from the End of the World

After twenty-something stories of zombies, zombies, zombies, I was ready for something different. There’s only so much you can do with zombie humans, dogs, cats, birds, and opossums. Lucky for me, in the original timeline I created for this mythos (before starting work on City of the Dead), the Elilum start their invasion on the twenty-seventh day. And what better place to begin that storyline than in heavily forested New Hampshire? According to my calculations, this takes place about six hours after the events at the end of City of the Dead. I wrote this in bed, and finished the final draft the next morning, while sitting in my office and watching Chester, my Venus flytrap, eat a shred of tuna that I’d just fed him.

“March of the Elilum”

This was fun (as were all of the stories regarding the Elilum). It was written over a two-day period, in my bedroom, while I had a mild case of the flu. This story takes place two days after the end of City of the Dead. Surviving Ob and his ilk is tough enough, and to make it twenty-eight days is even harder. That’s why I was glad to hear that Michael was a geologist, had knowledge of caves, and had a cave just an hour away from his house. Realistically, he and Kyle could have rode out the storm. This made the fastmoving horror of the Elilum even more terrifying, in my opinion. As you can see, the Elilum spread much faster than the Siqqusim do.

Unlike Jim and Danny from The Rising, Michael and Kyle got to spend the zombie plague together. So there’s that. In the world of The Rising, that’s about as happy an ending as anyone gets.

“Best Seat In The House”

Like “Till Death Do Us Part,” this story is one of my personal favorites. Chris wanted me to write a love letter for him; an ode to the love he felt for Francesca. I was touched (despite what you may have heard, I’m really just a big softie when it comes to romance.) What made this extra cool is that Chris and Francesca met each other because of Delirium Books (she was selling a Delirium title on eBay and he was the winning bidder). That, my friends, is better than any fiction I could ever make up. I wrote this on a Saturday night, from 9 pm until around 1 am. When I was done, I leaned back on the pillow and smiled a big smile and smoked a bigger cigar. You ask me, I done good. Hopefully, Chris and Francesca agree.

“American Pie”

I’ve been all around the world, but the closest I ever got to Norway was sailing through the fjords onboard the U.S.S. Austin. All I saw were lots of farms and lighthouses. Luckily for me, Trygve was a wonderful tour guide. After I’d received his notes on Drammen, and finished some online research of my own, I wrote this story in my living room in about two hours time (for all three drafts). In June of 2005, I spent the night in the home of fellow author Drew Williams. He proposed the idea that my zombies wouldn’t be able to function in subzero temperatures, and I’ve got to admit, the idea really, really intrigued me. Were I to ever do another novel set in the world of The Rising, it would probably feature a situation like that—maybe the crew of an icebreaker or scientists at a polar research center.

“Two Suns In The Sunset”

This story, of course, chronicles the arrival of the fiery Teraphim—those who make up the third and final wave (spoken of in City of the Dead). The title comes from one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs (off The Final Cut). I wrote this, all three drafts, in one night, from midnight until six in the morning. Big R is a hard person to get a hold of, and despite numerous emails and phone calls; I never did touch base with him and find out what makes him tick. Therefore, writing this story presented a challenge. How was I supposed to write about a character whom I knew nothing about? All I had was his name, and the town he wanted the story to take place in. So I decided to make it about the town. Luckily, Oconto has a website, and all of the locations featured in the story were swiped from that. From what I saw on the site, Oconto looks very much like Auto, West Virginia, a place near and dear to my heart, and the basis for Punkin Center (from The Conqueror Worms, “Full of It,” and others). Personally, I think Big R made out pretty well with amnesia. If you’d survived successive plagues of zombie humans, animals, bugs, and plants, only to get burned into a crisp along with the rest of the planet, would you want to remember it all?

“Other Worlds than These”