Showing results by author "Michael Patrick Hicks" in All Categories

The best-selling Extinction Cycle series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith first introduced listeners to a world ravaged by an engineered virus that turned men into monsters. Humanity's only hope was not a cure, but another bioweapon. When deployed it killed 90 percent of the infected, but the remaining 10 percent transformed into even more terrifying creatures called Variants. Here's a collection of Extinction Cycle short stories that explore the human spirit and the fight for survival in the face of overwhelming odds from some of the leading voices in the post-apocalyptic genre.

Cara Stone is a broken woman: penniless, homeless, and hopeless. When given the chance to appear on television, she jumps at the opportunity to win a minimum of $5,000 for her family.

Reclusive chef Heinrich Schauer has invited six guests to a blind 12-course tasting menu. As they eat, each guest is overtaken by carnal appetites, unaware of their host's savage plan - or of the creature lurking below.

It came from space.... Something virulent. Something evil. Something new. And it is infecting the town of Falls Breath. Carried to Earth in a freak meteor shower, an alien virus has infected the animals. Pets and wildlife have turned rabid, attacking without warning. Dogs and cats terrorize their owners, while deer and wolves from the neighboring woods hunt in packs, stalking and killing their human prey without mercy.

Antoine DeWitt is a man down on his luck. Broke and recently fired, he knows the winning Money Carlo ticket that has landed in his mailbox from a car dealership is nothing more than a scam. The promise of $5,000, though, is too tantalizing to ignore. Jon Dangle is a keeper of secrets, many of which are buried deep beneath his dealership. He works hard to keep them hidden, but occasionally sacrifices are required, sacrifices who are penniless, desperate, and who will not be missed. Sacrifices exactly like DeWitt.

Inside an abandoned mining station, in the depths of space, a team of scientists are seeking to unravel the secrets of humanity's origin. Using cutting-edge genetic cloning experiments, their discoveries take them down an unimaginable and frightening path as their latest creation proves to be far more than they had bargained for.

Human cloning. Technology evolves faster than we do. The law shields us from our worst temptations. But the opportunity is there, dangling just out of reach - perfection and ascension or delusion and destruction. The choice is ours. In this collection of clone-themed stories, 10 of today’s top speculative fiction writers explore our morality and built-in societal restraints and reflect upon our state of grace. Similar is not necessarily the same.

After succumbing to a deadly virus and incurring the wrath of voters in the 2020 election, the president of the United States makes a deathbed deal with the devil. Imbued with supernatural power, President Tyler Coleridge refuses to surrender office after being defeated by his rival candidate and rings in the New Year with a White House bloodbath.

Having won his emancipation after fighting on the side of the colonies during the American Revolution, Salem Hawley is a free man. Only a handful of years after the end of British rule, Hawley finds himself drawn into a new war unlike anything he has ever seen. New York City is on the cusp of a new revolution as the science of medicine advances, but procuring bodies for study is still illegal. Bands of resurrectionists are stealing corpses from New York cemeteries, and women of the night are disappearing from the streets, only to meet grisly ends elsewhere.

Jonah Everitt is a killer, an addict, and a memory thief. After being hired to kill a ranking officer of the Pacific Rim Coalition and download his memories, Everitt finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a terror cell, a rogue military squadron, and a Chinese gangster named Alice Xie. Xie is a profiteer of street drugs, primarily DRMR, a powerful narcotic made from the memories of the dead. With his daughter, Mesa, missing in post-war Los Angeles, Everitt is forced into an uneasy alliance with Alice to find her.