Life After: Zugzwang

Life After: Zugzwang is a novella considered to be the fifth short in the Life After series, a collection of new adult horror fiction by American author Bryan Way. It is the first novella in the series and the first new story in the series' second trilogy of shorts, preceded by the stand-alone publication of Life After: The Maze.

Synopsis
Risking one's life to help a friend may be a noble endeavor, but what if taking action creates more problems than it solves?

Safely secluded in a large apartment complex of an abandoned college town, a fractious group of ten students struggle with whether or not to rescue someone across campus. When the vote is complicated by both reasoned dispute and petty infighting, Jack O'Connor must strategize the forming of a coalition or risk endangering the group's future survival: if they can't make this simple decision together, how will they react when facing death? Is the cost of inaction more dangerous than an expedition through a town filled with zombies?

Following the events of Life After The Arising, Life After: Zugzwang explores the group dynamic when Jeff's friends hundreds of miles away decide whether to find his brother Dave, giving startling insight to the characters he meets at the end of Life After: The Void as it illuminates how complicated relationships are tested when people are forced to act in a time of crisis.

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

Conception, Writing & Publication
Following the publication of Chronology of the Apocalypse in early 2016, Way dedicated his full attention to finalizing Life After: The Void, which would eventually feature the formal introduction of Jack O'Connor, Alan Taylor, and several other characters who had only been referenced previously; with this in mind, Way went back and started crafting detailed, intertwining backstories for the survivors residing in State College.

With the Kindle Scout campaign for his second book in full swing, Way was offered the possibility of contributing another short story to a Halloween themed follow-up to Chronology of the Apocalypse and considered the possibility of utilizing his newly expanded work, but lacked the critical mass to bring the story to bear and wasn't certain he'd be able to meet the strict character limit.

Despite a firm idea of the story's particulars, Way would not begin the actual writing work for years after the second novel's publication, turning his attention to a series of unrelated screenplays and the production of a television pilot. In the early stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Way 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, followed immediately by his first new entry into the series since Life After: The Void.

The story, as originally written, was by far the longest work of the series after the novels, as Way was determined to include as much of the backstory as possible until he was talked out of it by his beta readers in April of 2021, whittling out approximately 15 pages to arrive at the final product, which was finalized and submitted for pre-order on Amazon on July 22nd, 2021.