“Readers who enjoyed The Strain Trilogy, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, will find plenty to satisfy them here.”— San Francisco Book Review on Omega Days In the weeks following the Omega Virus outbreak, survivors form desperate clusters, uniting to defend against hordes of the walking dead. But they can only hide for so long… Father Xavier Church never wanted to be a leader. Nonetheless, he’s grown attached to his fellow survivors, and he won’t let anyone cause them harm—though he may be the one who inadvertently leads them to destruction… Ex-con Bill Carnes may crave freedom, but he still prefers sticking with the group rather than fleeing to Mexico with his former cellmate TC. Maybe he’s changing. Or maybe the look in TC’s eyes is more dangerous than the undead… EMT Rosa Escobedo gave up on hope after she watched the man she loved rise from the dead. But when a patient seems to start getting better, she can’t help but hope for a cure, even if it means risking her life… As the numbers of the dead swell, the living are running out of safe havens—especially when the biggest threats lie within their own ranks. Praise for  Omega Days “When people ask me to recommend great zombie fiction one of the names I consistently mention is John L. Campbell. Nobody writes an urban battle scene quite like he does. The pace of his storytelling will leave you breathless, and his characters are so real and so likeable you will jump up and cheer for them. Omega Days is, hands down, one of the shining stars of the zombie genre. Do yourself a favor and move this one to the top of your to-be-read pile right now. You can thank me later.”—Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Savage Dead and Dead City “Characters as diverse as a priest fallen from grace, to a prisoner who finds his heart, are all in this story of terror….Campbell is good with characters…It’s stories like Omega Days , with a setting in a popular city that most people have heard about, that can take an average story and make it unique.”—Examiner.com “An impressively convincing vision of a world suddenly gone insane…The maelstrom that Campbell creates is a somber portrayal of the human capacity for both selfishness and, more rarely, altruism. He effectively builds a mood of terror that sweeps the reader along in this powerful example of zombie thriller genre at its best.”— Publishers Weekly "A highly entertaining read with a style that grabbed me from the very first page...There are creepy echoes…of masters like Koontz and King…If you want highly entertaining, escapist, zombie fiction with plenty of action peopled by rich and interesting characters, you couldn't do better than Omega Days ."— SF Revu  John L. Campbell , author of  Omega Days , was born in Chicago and attended college in North Carolina and New York. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, literary magazines, and e-zines, as well as in two of the author’s own collections. He lives with his family in the New York area, where he is at work on his next novel.   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A GATHERING OF SOULS ONE Rosa Escobedo should have stayed with her partner, should have been there to protect her mother. She should have tried harder to report to her unit. She did none of that and instead ran to save her own life. It hung on her as heavy as a cross, one she had carried since that terrible day. That was the night Jimmy Albright punched the siren, blasting a high-pitched WHOOP-WAAH as he hauled the ambulance left, then snapped it hard right again, neatly cutting around a BMW that hadn’t bothered to pull over for the flashing lights. The rig sped after a pair of San Francisco Police Department Crown Vics, slashing through traffic on the Embarcadero. “All I’m saying is something’s gotta give, Rosie.” He was smoking in the rig, a supreme violation for Emergency Medical Service crews, the butt clenched between his teeth as he maneuvered the heavy vehicle like a sports car. His red hair was closely trimmed, and he was tall and rangy, thin but with ropy, muscled arms. “You’re gonna burn yourself out.” The two cruisers split right and left around an Alhambra water truck, and Jimmy came up on its flat back end with sirens blaring, puffing cigarette smoke out the corner of his mouth before he cut right. He cleared the truck’s bumper by six inches at forty-five miles per hour. In the seat beside him, Jimmy’s partner didn’t flinch. After three years together, Rosa was immune to his driving. “I got it under control,” Rosa said. She was twenty-five, dark-haired and attractive, something noticed by every cop, medic, and fireman she encountered. Most of them asked her out. “If it gets to be too much, I’ll quit something.” “Yeah, sure.” He stomped the brakes and flung the ambulance down an exit ramp. Even in mid-August the evening was pleasant enough to let the open windows cool the cab, and Rosa cocked her right arm outside and watched as the city flashed by. “You just