After escaping a stalled elevator into a zombie apocalypse, Emily must learn how to trust people again or risk losing everything in this terrifying world. ***** For Emily, every day of the last two years have been a blur. She keeps her head down, takes her college courses online, and only goes out to work at her mandatory internship. But all that changes on the day the office elevator breaks down, leaving her trapped when the screams begin. And when the doors finally open, revealing a dystopian world ruined by bloody teeth and disease, Emily is launched into a terrifying run for her life, caught between the strangers she's not sure she can trust and the man-eating monsters that hunger for her flesh. Now she must learn not only how to survive in this new and dangerous world, but also how to overcome her own inner demons before they cost her something more precious than her life. [[Wattys' Shortlist]] [[Promoted by AMC]] Content and/or Trigger Warning: The story contains some gore, violence, strong language, and dark themes. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]

Elizabeth is a six-foot-seven, sword-swinging, bacon-loving ex-farmgirl with a hair-trigger temper. Annabelle is a sorceress with gentle manners and a firm stance against foul language. They are soldiers of the Knights Council of Gladexus, a country in a world of dragons, elves, and narcoleptic owls. One day they embark on a routine mission to stop a psychic in a fortified castle who believes soup will be outlawed. Before they know it, they're swept up in the chaos of the 60th-century Milky Way Galaxy, where they find themselves in the crosshairs of a psychotic rooster named Xitanker who is hellbent on conquering the galaxy with his mighty army of war criminals and genetically modified battle mutants. Not even knowing what a toaster is, Elizabeth and Annabelle vow to stop him however they can. Along the way, they'll get acquainted with nuclear war, fight monstrosities beyond comprehension, evade arrest, and maybe figure out how to save the galaxy without punching each other out first.