ABO-Z
Michael Rushton
Type: Beta project
Genre: Science fiction, horror, literary
Word count: 46,000
Warnings:Â Graphic violence, swearing
After a blood-borne pandemic leaves Britain in ruins, a fragile group of survivors shelter inside a disused railway tunnel. Mig, Cary, Charlie and two brothers have built something like home in the dark. But when one desperate choice draws violence to their door, survival curdles into guilt, revenge and war. No zombies. No rescue. No clean hands.
After a blood-borne pandemic leaves Britain in ruins, the survivors discover the illness was the easy part. Hunger, cold and other people finish what it started.
Inside a disused railway tunnel, a fragile group has built something like home. Mig, a science teacher built like a wall. Cary, who solves problems coldly and completely. Charlie, too ordinary to still be breathing. And two brothers whose loyalty is about to be tested past breaking.
Above them, rival tribes carve the ruins into kingdoms — the Millers, who take what they want, and the Clowns, who are worse. When one desperate choice brings violence to the tunnel door, the small peace they’ve built curdles into guilt, revenge and open war.
Survival was never the hard part. Living with what it costs is — and beyond the wreck of the island, the world that remains has already looked away. No zombies. No rescue. No clean hands.
Mike Rushton is a television producer with more than twenty years’ experience shaping stories under pressure, from development rooms to live production environments. His fiction draws on that sense of pace, structure and controlled chaos, blending dark humour, violence and emotional fallout with a sharp eye for how people behave when systems collapse. His post-apocalyptic work rejects zombies and easy heroics in favour of guilt, survival, damaged loyalty and the strange rituals people build when the old world disappears. He lives in the UK and is currently developing a series of linked novellas set in the aftermath of a blood-borne pandemic.
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