For New Orleans native Big Time, one devastating hurricane was enough to last a lifetime. Like many Louisianans, after Katrina he packed up his family, moved west to Houston, and started over from scratch. Finding low-paid work on a computer assembly line on the north side of the city, Big Time and a handful of other transplants - including would-be track star Alan Terrell, single mom Zakiyah Weldele and her daughter, Angela, and others - begin putting down roots. But then, a monster of a late summer hurricane roars into the Gulf heading straight for Houston. For Big Time and the others, deja vu turns to horror as they discover, buried within the storm, an Apocalyptic nightmare of monumental proportions.
Unleashed on Galveston Island only to soon exploit the flooding of the Bayou City and spread inland, a monstrous, ghostly collective emerges from the ocean floor after lying dormant for a hundred years. Cutting a swath of supernatural destruction through the city, the mysterious creature unleashes an infinite array of oil-based tentacles to hunt and devour every human soul it encounters.
Cut off from the rest of the world, Big Time and the survivors of a first assault must rally together as they fight to survive, search for family members, and try to escape the demonic leviathan. They soon discover that they alone may hold the key to stopping the madness, but it will come at a great cost. For each of the survivors, this becomes a test of will but also their humanity as a personal struggle becomes a race to save all mankind from this fiendish abomination.
About the AuthorMark Wheaton is the author of the bestselling Sunday Billy Sunday: A Memoir, called "genuinely twisted and engrossing...may just leave you shaken for days" by Rue Morgue and "a really intense, awesome story" by Badass Digest. His screenwriting credits include Friday the 13th, The Messengers, and Infected. He also co-created the Dark Horse horror comic book The Cleaners with Rahsan Ekedal and Joshua Hale Fialkov. In addition to Sunday Billy Sunday, Wheaton has published a number of bestselling horror novellas including Adversary, Ascension, and the Bones trilogy, as well as the collection Disembodied Spider Meat.
Print editions of Wheaton's stories are available as Unnatural Selection and Four Nails in the Coffin, the latter of which Fangoria called "Remarkably character-driven...Wheaton convincingly showcases his talents as a writer of horror prose...proves here to be a quite gifted storyteller worthy of a reader's time and attention."