Life After: The Maze

Life After: The Maze is the fourth short story in the Life After series, a collection of new adult horror fiction by American author Bryan Way. It was originally published as Life After: Consequences in the short story collection Chronology of the Apocalypse on February 27th, 2016. Following its initial publication, Life After: The Maze became the first in the second trilogy of short stories, preceded by the publication of the novel Life After: The Void.

Synopsis
Making a choice can be difficult in even the best circumstances, but when zombies are thrown into the mix, the stakes are literally life or death.

Trapped in an impossible situation with three other survivors, Mallory Dearden does her best outrun the undead in order to keep her diverse quartet alive. Having reached a bizarre structure in the middle of a forest, Mallory is forced to put her wit and will to the test; though her friends bravely negotiate a labyrinth of dead ends and capricious obstacles in seek of refuge, these four doomed souls seem to be grimly aware of a fate much darker than they're willing to acknowledge.

While seemingly a complete departure from the Life After canon, this peculiar short fixates on the unexplored depths of the series' most inscrutable tome, calling into question whether the ethical and moral quandaries of modern society are much different in the throes of an apocalypse…

Plot Summary
(As this short story was recently published, a summary has been temporarily withheld.)

Conception, Writing & Publication
In September of 2014, shortly after the publication of Life After: The Phoenix, Way was invited to submit a zombie-related story for potential publication in All Things Zombie: The Gathering Horde, a forthcoming anthology of shorts compiled from the works of several independent authors; having just published three shorts in under a month, Way was hard up for new ideas and desperately sought to think up something related to the Life After universe.

By April of 2015, a new anthology, then tentatively titled The Gathering Horde II, was being planned for a potential release in the fall of 2015. After discussing his intentions with the publishing partners, Way finished his first draft on June 16th, 2015, quickly submitting it to his beta readers in advance of the submission deadline. Following a final round of edits, the short was submitted as Life After: Consequences on July 1st and was subsequently selected for publication alongside the shorts of nineteen other authors on January 22nd, 2016 and published February 27th, 2016, after which Way returned his full attention to finalizing Life After: The Void.

In the years following the second novel's publication, Way turned his attention to working on a series of screenplays and participated in the production of a television pilot, after which he was determined to publish another trilogy of short stories in the Life After universe, beginning with the first stand-alone publication of the retitled short Life After: The Maze. The re-edited draft was first completed and submitted to beta readers in April of 2021, then finalized and submitted for pre-order on Amazon on July 7th, 2021.