Plagued: The Midamerica Zombie Half-Breed Experiment

When zombie research scientist Doctor Wendy O’Farrell is abducted by fanatics who live deep within the Quarantine Zone, she must struggle to protect the recently cured daughter of a powerful Senator while being forced to deliver a curative to the infected friends and family of her mad captors. 

In this full-length novel, appropriate for teens and young adults, a new twist on the role of gargoyles is imaginatively brought to life in spellbinding fashion. Woven into the pages are twenty original works of art by Miimork, which breathe life into this ghostly tale.

What kind of self-respecting zombie can be stopped with a bullet to the brain?

This isn’t your typical, whining little weakling trying to navigate his way through a zombie infested dystopian society. This is the epicenter of the outbreak, where your average novel doesn’t dare venture. This is Noah Britton fighting his way through the heart of the zombie freakin’ apocalypse.

The high school is on lockdown but the infection has already invaded its borders. It’s too late. Screams echo through the halls, blood stains the lockers, the dead don’t die for long. Mutilated, half eaten corpses wander the halls in search of the living. These aren’t your normal slow moving corpses that trudge along hoping for victims. No. They run faster. Fight harder. Know no pain. Show no weakness. Offer no reprieve.

Noah must make the ultimate sacrifice and decide who to save and who to leave behind. What ranks higher in these desperate times; friendship or strategy? Can old rivals put aside their differences and work together for the greater good or will human emotions lead to the end of the world as we know it?

 The edge of your seat intensity never dies as Noah, his neurotic bus driver, his best friends, his worst enemies, the girl he likes, the girl he hates or loves or who the hell even knows anymore and a power hungry rival desperate for control all try to co-inhabit a school bus in search of a safe haven that may no longer exist.

 Gruesome. Intense. Graphic and Brutally violent. Yet emotionally driven with enough heart to sustain a dying species taken off life support. The characters tear themselves from the pages, forcing their way into your heart, demanding you continue when it all gets to be too much. This is hope. This is strength. This is the end. And it’s only the beginning.

When John Bandicut encounters an alien intelligence on Neptune’s moon Triton, his life changes irrevocably. Urged by the alien quarx now sharing his mind, he accepts an audacious mission—to steal a ship and hurtle across the solar system in a desperate bid for Earth’s survival. Book 1 of The Chaos Chronicles, by the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End—with an Afterword by the author.

Appeared in print from Tor Books.  DRM-free ebook edition.

REVIEWS:

One of the best SF novels of the year — Science Fiction Chronicle

“Masterfully captures the joy of exploration.” — Publishers Weekly

“One of the very best things Carver has written, a traditional adventure filled with mystery and wonder and featuring a likable and believable protagonist thrust onto a stage for which he is ill prepared.” — Science Fiction Chronicle

“Jeff Carver is a hard sf writer who gets it right—his science and his people are equally convincing. Neptune Crossing combines his strengths, from a chilling look at alien machine intelligence, to cutting-edge chaos theory, to the pangs of finite humans in the face of the infinite. If you like intriguing ideas delivered in an exciting plot, this is your meat.” —Gregory Benford, author of the Galactic Center series

“A complex and believable protagonist—an ordinary man rising to extraordinary circumstances—and an alien presence that is at once convincingly strange and deeply real. I’m really glad to have read this one.” —Melissa Scott, author of Dreamships and Trouble and Her Friends

“A roaring, cross-the-solar-system adventure of the first water. The kind of stuff that made us all love science fiction.” —Jack McDevitt, author of Seeker and Chindi

“With works such as The Infinity Link... and his popular Star Rigger novels, Carver won acclaim as a master craftsman of compelling hard science fiction. This captivating opener to a new series incorporating the emerging science of chaos theory should keep that reputation flourishing... Carver has created yet another electrifying scenario as well as a winning combination in Bandicut and the sometimes vulnerable yet superintelligent quarx. First-rate entertainment.” — Booklist