Life After: The Arising

Life After: The Arising is the first novel in the Life After series, a collection of new adult horror fiction by American author Bryan Way. It was self-published by Way on August 23rd, 2013. The novel currently has one sequel, Life After: The Void, and three related short stories in Life After: The Phoenix, Life After: The Cemetery Plot, and Life After: The Basement.

Synopsis
 In a scientific and spiritual sense, humanity has its world ordered, but that order slowly descends into chaos when something defies the tenets of both, leaving the events of human history divided into life before and life after the bodies of the dead began to reanimate.

  ''College student Jeff Grey comes home to be confronted by something he’d only read about in fiction and seen in movies: Zombies. Despite lungs beset by asthma and a total lack of survival skills, his lifelong desire to endure an undead apocalypse sees him unite a small group of acquaintances, but with the town quarantined as emergency infrastructure breaks down, Jeff and the rest of the survivors will have to grow up fast if they want to see a life after the arising…  ''

Plot Summary
Temple University sophomore Jeff Grey drives from his suburban dormitory to a marching band festival at Thomas Massey High School in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania when he encounters the aftermath of a catastrophic car accident at the nearby I-476 interchange. Thinking little of it, he continues to his former high school where he plans to surprise his girlfriend, high school junior Julia Marino, who will be marching for the hometown Massey Monarch marching band.

When the festival is in full swing, Jeff notices a disturbance in the gated cemetery immediately behind the TMHS football field; it doesn't take long for him to realize the crowd of decaying bodies clambering to get out are, in fact, zombies. Jeff rushes the field to rescue Julia, attracting a small following that he unwittingly leads to the green house on the high school roof as chaos erupts in the football stadium and surrounding parking lot. Once settled, Jeff uses his knowledge of undead fiction and movies to explain the grim possibilities of their situation, drawing the ire of former high school queen bee Melody Landon and impetuous sophomore Matt Hughes while finding some support for his plan to stay put in Julia's best friend Ava Vaziri, former band colleague John "John Squared" Johnston, and local vagrant Richard McKnight. Their remaining companions, band members Don Mason and Jake Klimavicius, say very little, but agree to spend the night. During the course of the evening, they are joined by Steve Parmacek, a student from out of town who was injured by one of the zombies. As a precaution, they restrain him before trying to sleep.

By morning, Matt has disappeared and Steve has turned into a zombie, confirming Jeff's suspicions. Jake tries to leave as well, but is talked out of it before Jeff laments the absence of his best friend John Anderson, a Pennsylvania National Guardsman currently in the midst of a drill weekend. The group gathers supplies and listens to the radio, learning that the zombies are believed to be protesters, but the town is nevertheless quarantined by a series of military check points. Over the next few hours, Jeff attempts to mitigate a burgeoning conflict between Ava and Melody, the group fashions a sign advertising their presence to passersby, and the group establishes a rotation to watch the street.

On the third rotation, Melody requests to join Jeff in an apparent effort to seduce him, but he rebuffs her advances, only to have her mock him when she discovers he's a virgin. When Julia joins him, Jeff assures her that Melody tried to force herself on him, and later that evening, the two hear a barrage of automatic gunfire in the distance. Embracing the gravity of their situation, Julia vows that she will stay with Jeff no matter what. When they return from roof duty, Jeff accompanies Don to the downstairs bathroom, but Don gets away from Jeff and engages a small group of zombies that breached one of the classrooms. His fight is futile, and when the undead finally overcome and consume Don, Jeff kills him by crushing his skull with a desk. Jeff tries to draw the remaining undead away from the greenhouse, taking a back way up before succumbing to an asthma attack.

Once Jeff has recuperated the following day, the group is miraculously stumbled upon by Anderson; his National Guard unit was establishing a check point at the nearby Springton Reservoir, and the gunfire they'd heard the previous night was the result of a massive engagement after the Guard first discovered that some of the zombies can run. To the best of his knowledge, Anderson is the only survivor, so his next goal is to lead the group to the nearest check point and reattach with the Guard once he gets some sleep. In the intervening hours, Jeff and John Squared become closer as they muse on the religious, scientific, and philosophical implications of the undead, while Rich elaborates on an earlier criticism of Jeff's leadership skills and indicates that he'd prefer to take orders from Anderson. This inadvertently leads to Melody and Ava's feud exploding into a shouting match that ends with Jeff and Ava diving into an ugly fight over their bond with Julia.

That evening, a throng of undead sieges TMHS, splitting the group in half as they scramble for an escape; Jeff, Julia, Melody, and John Squared go one way while Anderson, Jake, Ava, and Rich go another. A chase across the roof leads Jeff's quartet through the ceiling of the gym and into the belly of the school, and they nearly make it out together before Jeff is forced to watch John Squared get disemboweled. Melody and Julia follow Jeff out to his car, circling the driveway until they spot the second half of the group. Anderson, Jake, and Rich get in the car, confirming that Ava didn't make it.

They drive first to the nearest major thoroughfare, finding that both lanes headed toward the nearest check point at I-476 are blocked with a line of abandoned vehicles, so they divert to the police station in the neighboring town of Broomall, which was supposed to be a rescue center but seems to have been recently abandoned under unsettling circumstances. Against Anderson's initial protests, they stop by a local sporting goods store to arm themselves and acquire a district school bus to unburden themselves from travel in Jeff's two-door sedan.

They arrive at the check point shortly before dawn, discovering what seems to have been a massacre with hundreds of corpses before a barricade and dozens of dead soldiers beyond. An errant vehicle trying to merge on the interchange is stopped by the few remaining undead, so Jeff and Anderson rescue the occupant, former nurse Karen DeMarco. The group resupplies at a local supermarket and stops by Jeff's house, where he calls his parents who are vacationing in Bermuda before beginning a trek to the Lima Mall, the last known local rescue center. Along the way, Rich finally begins opening up to Jeff about his life before becoming homeless, but their trip is interrupted when they have to clear the barricades at the Springton Reservoir check point.

Exhaustion catches up with them before they can finish, so the group spends the night at Delaware County Community College, where Melody and Jeff patch up their animosity before the building is attacked by the undead, revealing another small group of survivors holed up in the complex. The groups awkwardly separate, and the next day, Jeff and his compatriots continue on to the mall. When they arrive at yet another deserted rescue center, Anderson abandons his attempts to reconnect with the Guard and ratifies a previously suggested three-way leadership platform of himself, Jeff, and Rich. While the group spends the night at the mall pending their next move, Julia takes an opportunity to get Jeff alone and take their relationship to a long awaited next level.

When the mall is riddled with zombies the following day, the group hurriedly exits and decides to loot a nearby hospital for medical supplies. The mission goes well until Julia is badly cut by an errant swipe from a zombie with a scalpel wedged in its fist; having apparently committed suicide with the same instrument, the zombie's blood gets in Julia's open wound. Julia quickly resigns herself to her fate, asks to be rendered unconscious, and shares one last tender moment with Jeff before being executed by Rich. While agonizing in grief, Jeff contemplates suicide and imagines a conversation with Julia before he passes out.

By the next day, Jeff is a shell of a man, spending most of his time wallowing in reminisces of Julia as the group abandons the hospital and returns to Newtown Square. After Rich indulges Jeff with the story of his divorce and estranged child, Jeff suggests that the group fortify TMHS to survive the worst of the crisis, bedding down in the nearby community center, the former district high school, in order to avoid working and sleeping in the same place.

While scouting the community center, Jeff and Anderson find the body of a young girl who apparently committed suicide, and soon thereafter, they cross paths with Robert Proctor, a disoriented loner. A survey of TMHS the following day yields the discovery that the zombified Steve has remained untouched in the greenhouse, and not only do they find the zombie of John Squared, they also discover the resurrected corpse of Matt Hughes in the basement, believing that he may have led the siege back to them after his ill-conceived exodus. Once they've dispatched all the remaining zombies, other than Steve, they return to the community center, where Karen cremates Julia's body in an old kiln.

The following morning, Jeff is summoned to speak with his friends Alan Taylor and Jack O'Connor, both of whom are surviving in State College, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Jeff's brother Dave. The rest of the day is spent using the abandoned cars around TMHS to barricade the major egresses. When they return to the community center, an ethical and spiritual debate erupts between Rob, Rich, and Anderson. The work continues the next day, with most of the time spent improving internal fortifications before a break in the action sees Jeff pleasantly surprised at some changes in Melody's demeanor. He endears himself less to Karen when he seriously suggests that the group must eventually hunt and destroy the undead en masse.

A news report later in the evening suggests that the epidemic has spread to Europe, but a more pressing concern develops when Jeff finds Rob injecting drugs. An improvised intervention goes south and Rob nearly murders Jeff with his own rifle. To overcome his resulting rage, Jeff single-handedly engages a throng of undead, brutally executing them before dissolving into tears and passing out. With Rob isolated from the rest of the group, they continue working on TMHS the next day, culminating with Jeff and Anderson going to survey the football field and finding their friend Colin Mursak holed up in the concession hut. While pleased to see his friends, Mursak's first and only concern is that his younger sister Elena is still at home with his mom and dad, so Jeff, Anderson, and Mursak undertake a dangerous journey to Havertown that leads to the successful rescue of Mursak's sister and the demise of his infected parents.

An evening news report confirms what Jeff and Anderson intuited from several earlier encounters with the undead: the first wave that left Newtown Square a week prior has grown and is set to return to the area within the next few hours. The group prepares to spend one last night in the community center, but the building is besieged and the group splinters in the confusion. Jeff ultimately ends up alone on the roof of the building where he again strongly contemplates suicide, but his desire to avenge Julia's death emboldens him to fight moments before he's rescued by Mursak and Anderson. They escape to TMHS with rest of the group safely on the bus.

The group takes various positions around the high school to observe the approaching wave of zombies, but they seemingly take no interest in TMHS until a young woman runs screaming out of a house adjacent to the school. Anderson runs out to intercept her while Rich tries to lure the undead away using the bus. When Jeff suggests that the risk of saving this girl might not have been worth taking, Melody savagely dresses down his hypocrisy and storms off, leaving Jeff alone to contemplate what it means to be alive in a world where death is no longer the end.

Conception, Writing & Publication
Way began writing zombie fiction shortly after his introduction to Resident Evil II and Dawn of the Dead in 1998, contributing his earliest work to the Homepage of the Dead fiction section in November of 2000. Way's 2003 winter break following his first semester at Temple University coincided with the basic training holiday furlough of his best friend John Henderson, and when told that Henderson would remain at Fort Knox because he had nowhere else to go, Way immediately invited him to stay at his parent's house. Once reunited, Way introduced Henderson to his zombie fiction catalog on Homepage of the Dead, having recently contributed his sixth story and in the midst of writing a seventh. Intrigued by what he'd read, Henderson suggested they write a story together, and Way ultimately proposed that they conceive two sides of an intersecting narrative as themselves; Way would take responsibility for crafting a plot and writing a first-person narrative as a self-styled collegiate zombie expert while Henderson would pen a first-person account of a National Guardsman. Henderson produced several pages, but Way ended up taking the idea much further, solidifying the nascent novel as a first-person tale related by protagonist Jeff Grey without ellipsis.

Early on, Way decided to embrace George A. Romero's storytelling approach, starting the apocalypse at the beginning and leaving the origin of the zombies a mystery while choosing to canonize the existence of zombie pop culture within the story. Way set the story in his hometown of Newtown Square and sought to keep the geography and locales more or less intact, the biggest change being the addition of a cemetery immediately behind his former high school. Characters were similarly drawn largely from acquaintances of Way and Henderson to ease the burden of their parallel continuity and allow them to focus more on the minutiae of the epidemic. Way began crafting the narrative without determining the scope of the project, unwittingly echoing George R. R. Martin's process of allowing the story to develop over time while stopping frequently to concentrate on unrelated writing ventures. Though the first draft was completed in July of 2004, Way had previously considered that the story was larger than one book, so he began the second novel in January of 2005, simultaneously reshaping the first book as he wrote the sequel.

The combined effort expended on both books increased the writing time by a factor of six as Way continued to alternately plow forward and procrastinate, frequently shifting his focus to other writing projects. His worst stretch of writer's block on Life After lasted an entire year, but he finally finished the first draft of the second book on September 24th, 2008, quickly completing a second draft of Life After: The Arising in November of 2008 and a second draft of the sequel in January of 2009, coinciding with the release of Life After: The Phoenix on Homepage of the Dead. In December of 2009, Way read Earth Abides by George R. Stewart and finally recognized the shape and scope of the story he wanted to tell. This revelation greatly effected the editing of both books going forward, though he wouldn't seriously resume work on any Life After related project for several years, choosing instead to focus on trying to put an unrelated original screenplay into production.

On August 4th 2011, Way definitively decided that his next drafts would be crafted with publication in mind, a conviction borne from a lack of traction with any of his creative projects and a desire to manifest something tangible from years of frustration. During a writing session in March of 2012, Way suddenly realized he had failed to truly make the zombies of Life After his own, leading to the inception of the Undeath Syndrome Surveillance and Diagnosis report, a document conceived by the CDC in the world of Life After that exhaustively detailed the particulars of undead physiology, behavior, and epidemiology. Work on this tome lasted until May 1st, 2013.

By November of 2012, Way completed a fourth draft of his first book and began querying agents and publishers. On January 23rd 2013, he definitively decided to self-publish, following a friend's suggestion to use CreateSpace. Months of research, proofreading, editing, and typesetting culminated in a limited edition release on June 24th; prior to typesetting, Way failed to realize that his first book, which he'd previously worried might be too short, was well over 400 pages long. After another wave of edits to fix spelling and grammatical errors, Way collaborated with friend Ryan Korsak to create new cover art for the intended wide release edition, which he eventually self-published in paperback and Kindle on August 23rd. Among his publicity efforts, Way appeared at both the Philly Zombie Prom and Philly Zombie Crawl in addition to the St. Thomas Tom Zombie Festival in St. Thomas, Ontario.