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Product Description Return to the zombie apocalypse wasteland that is the Rot & Ruin in this short story collection from Jonathan Maberry. Benny Imura’s zombie-infested adventures are well-chronicled in the gripping novels Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Flesh & Bone, and Fire & Ash. But what else was happening while he was on his quest? Who were the others navigating the ravaged landscape full of zombies? Bits & Pieces fills in the gaps about what we know about First Night, surviving the plague, and traveling the land of Rot & Ruin. Eleven all-new short stories from Nix’s journal and eleven previously published stories, including “Dead & Gone” and “Tooth & Nail,” are now together and in print for the first time, along with the first-ever script for the Rot & Ruin comic books. About the Author Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure; and he writes for adults, teens, and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV, including V Wars, which is a Netflix original series. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including the X-Files books, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Hardboiled Horror, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. He lives in Del Mar, California. Visit him at JonathanMaberry.com and on Twitter (@JonathanMaberry) and Facebook. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Bits & Pieces FROM NIX’S JOURNAL ON FIRST NIGHT (PRIOR TO ROT & RUIN) My name is Phoenix Riley. My friends call me Nix. I was born right around the time the world died. A plague turned everyone into zombies. Actual living dead. No one knows where it started. Or how. Or why. It spread fast, though. By the time people realized that there was a problem, the problem was biting them. Then everything went crazy. There was a day the survivors call First Night. That was the point at which no one could ignore the problem. No one could say that it wasn’t really happening, or even if it was, it wasn’t happening here. It was happening everywhere. The year I was born, the United States Census Bureau estimated that there were 6,922,000,000 people alive on planet Earth. My mom says that probably a billion people died on First Night. And over the next few days and weeks, nearly everybody died. They used to have something called the “Internet.” Before that went down, the estimates of the global death toll were at three billion and climbing. After that there were no more news reports. There was no one left to report it. And after the power grids failed, there was no way to report it. The world went dark and it went silent. Except for the sound the dead make. Moans. Like they’re hungry. And they are hungry. All the time. They want to eat people. Animals, too. They’ll eat anything alive. That’s why the world’s so empty. The dead rose and they ate everyone. Well, not everyone, I suppose. My teachers say that the dead killed enough people for everything to fall apart. My history teacher said the outbreak destroyed what he called “the infrastructure.” Which is police and government and hospitals and like that. My health class teacher says it was disease, malnutrition, and bad water that killed most of the others. Problem is, no matter how someone dies, they come back to life as a zombie. Everyone. Which meant that the survivors kept having to run to find a safe place to hide. And to find food and stuff. To find medicine. Mom ran. She took me with her. I used to have a dad, and brothers. I never knew them. I was too little, and when Mom ran . . . she was running from them. Or from what they had beco