Zombies, starships, and one very good dog. Author of Deadbreak (2,600+ ratings, 4.7★) and Galatea. Free apocalypse fiction 3x a week.
Los Angeles, CA
Joined December 2011
- Tweets253
- Following183
- Followers289
- Likes280
Pinned Tweet
Eight years after the end of the world, life goes on: HOA meetings, goat disputes, and the occasional zombie.
I post free Deadbreak Shorts every Mon/Wed/Fri. Want the full story? Book 1 has 2,600+ ratings at 4.7★.
📖 amazon.com/dp/B07MH63S6F
Deadbreak Shorts: The Wrong Kind of Quiet
There’s a stretch of Highway 50 where you never see the dead. You won’t find a single shambler or a bootprint or anything else out of place. I’ve driven it six times with my caravan, twenty miles of open road, and I’ve never once had to stop for a corpse.
Most traders call it the safest route in the region. I used to agree with them.
Yesterday I saw a shambler wandering toward the shoulder, and then it just vanished. I told the caravan to hold up and walked over to take a look.
Behind the guardrail there was a pit, twenty feet deep, maybe more, and it was full of dead. There were dozens of them, packed in so tight they could barely move, all of them making that low, tired moan. Someone had covered the top with branches.
That’s when I noticed the wagon tracks.
They were fresh tracks, leading off the highway and into the trees. I stood there for a minute, listening to all those things shuffling around under my boots, and then I walked back to the truck.
“Everything okay?” my driver asked.
“Keep moving. Tell the others not to stop.”
He asked what I’d found.
“Nothing we need to know about.”
I’m looking for another route.
Zombie apocalypse. You get one weapon, and it has to come from your kitchen.
🍳 Cast iron skillet
🔪 Chef's knife
🧊 Frozen turkey
🧂 Salt, for morale
Deadbreak Shorts: A Proper Wedding
Before the world ended, I planned weddings for people who spent more on flowers than most families made in a year. Now I run ration schedules and occasionally referee disputes over laundry. That laundry may or may not be mine.
So when a girl in our settlement announced she was marrying a boy from across the river, I volunteered to plan it, obviously. The catch was that their families hadn’t spoken in six years. It had something to do with a herd of goats eating somebody’s vegetable patch, and both fathers insisted the other one started it.
The goats were unavailable for comment.
The groom arrived with a black eye, because apparently his brother had tried to talk him out of it. The bride’s mother cried through the entire ceremony, and the groom’s father stood in the back with his arms folded.
When the officiant asked if anyone knew a reason these two shouldn’t be married, I picked up the shotgun, racked the pump, and looked at the bride’s family. And then at the groom’s.
“Anyone?”
Nobody said a word. Honestly, it was the smoothest objection segment I’ve ever managed.
The reception was in the playground, with music from an old battery-powered speaker, watered-down moonshine, and enough food for everybody to get a little. The two fathers sat at opposite ends of the table.
Then the groom’s father asked the bride’s father to pass the salt, and he did. There was no gunfire and no shouting, and nobody stormed out. The bride danced barefoot, and the groom couldn’t stop smiling.
Before they left, she hugged me.
“Was it a good wedding?”
“Girl,” I said. “I’ve done weddings with ice sculptures and champagne fountains.”
I looked at the two families sharing a table.
“This one’s going in my portfolio.”
A reader DM'd me this week to say he liked the idea behind Deadbreak Shorts.
Here it is: the books follow Jay, but the world's bigger than one guy and his dog. The Shorts are a glimpse at what everyone else is doing to survive out there. Some of them are doing better than Jay. Most aren't.
Deadbreak Shorts: Community Standards
I got a citation from the HOA yesterday, and apparently the chicken wire around my corn isn’t up to code.
Think about that for a second. There’s no electricity, half the neighborhood is dead, and I’ve got eleven pathetic stalks of corn that might feed us for a week. But according to Karen, the fence is an eyesore. She wants it replaced with white pickets. Tasteful ones.
I told her the wire keeps the critters out. She said agricultural structures require board approval.
I asked which board, since two of the members got eaten last spring and the treasurer ran off with our generator. She said vacancies don’t invalidate the bylaws.
Then she fined me three cans of food and wrote out the receipt in neat cursive.
This morning I found Karen in my yard with a clipboard, measuring the fence. A shambler came shuffling through the hedge behind her, and I yelled a warning.
She told me to lower my voice.
Then she turned around and smacked it across the face with the clipboard, and it staggered back into the hedge. She went right back to measuring.
I think I’m going to pay the fine. I’m more afraid of her than I am of the dead.
Deadbreak Shorts: Wrong Place, Wrong Time
We were robbing a trader outside Stone Creek. Nothing personal. The guy had supplies, we had guns, and that’s just economics, you know?
Then some asshole came strolling down the road with a dog and a shotgun, like he was out for an afternoon walk. Max told him to mind his own business.
The dog sat down and looked right at us, calm as a church usher. I should’ve taken that as a warning.
The shotgun guy dropped Max before he’d even finished the sentence. Then he pulled a pistol and shot Reggie twice, and the dog went for Carl.
I grabbed a can of beans off the trader’s wagon and threw it as hard as I could. It caught the bastard square in the nose, and he actually staggered. His head snapped back and everything.
For about half a second, I was the baddest man alive.
Then he looked at me.
I ran. I went straight off the road, through a stand of bushes, and down a ravine, screaming the whole way as bullets whipped past. By the time I hit the bottom I’d broken my ankle and left three teeth somewhere behind me.
But I’m alive, which is more than I can say for the rest of the crew.
Anyway, if you see a guy missing part of an ear and a finger, traveling with a dog, leave him alone. And don’t throw beans at him. He takes that personally.
Available now: amazon.com/Deadbreak-Jorge-S…
Eight years after the world ended, and life goes on.
People still fall in love, argue with their neighbors, make terrible decisions, and occasionally get eaten.
I'm starting a series of short stories set in the world of my Deadbreak novels. Different survivors, different stories, and a little humor in the apocalypse.
Hope you like it. Here's the first one.
Deadbreak Shorts: Fair Trade
A young couple came by my stall yesterday looking for flour, beans, and a little cooking oil. They didn’t have much to trade: two batteries, a cracked pocketknife, and a silver necklace.
The girl kept touching the necklace while the boy talked. I figured it was the last thing she had left from before. They’d already been turned away twice, and you could tell from how they stood like they were braced for the next no. Their shoulders were tight, their lips pressed, but they weren’t ready to give up yet.
Then the boy asked if I had any work.
I told them my storeroom needed sorting and paid them two hours to stack crates, sweep, and check for rats. They worked hard, harder than the job really called for, the way people do when they’re trying to prove something. Been there myself a few times.
When they finished, I put together a small sack of flour, dried beans, oil, salt, and a few potatoes. The boy offered me everything they had. I took the pocketknife.
He looked at the sack, then at me.
“I can’t take that. It’s too much,” he said.
“The knife’s worth more than you think. Good steel. It just needs fixing.”
He knew I was lying, and I knew he knew. He shook my hand anyway. The girl tucked the necklace back under her shirt, and they left carrying enough food to last a couple of weeks.
That night I put the knife in my drawer with the three others just like it.