From M. Scott Burgess comes a new episodic book-series that reimagines and redefines the zombie apocalypse genre. In the near future, the world has died. With no warning, all technology and communication have inexplicably shut down and zombies have begun to rise. They feed on the living, pulling more to their ranks as they spread at an impossible rate. But hope survives, as a small band of survivors work together to escape from Southern California in hopes of finding sanctuary from this zombie-infested world. Their goal is to find some remnants of civilization but the farther they venture, the more they become aware that the world as they know it has been forever lost. What they don’t realize is that there are things hiding in the shadows, things that are far worse than zombies.Valley of Death is the fifth episode in the series. It continues the story of the survivors as they head north through Death Valley on their trek to the Sierras. All the while one of their own finds himself at the end of his life as he succumbs to the infection of a lethal zombie bite. (23,022 words)