Collapse

The sweeping sickness, a global pandemic.
Billions lie fallen, gripped by an unknown affliction.
Hope is all the few survivors have. Hope that the collapsed will recover and wake again.

But waking is when the real nightmare begins.

A mystery illness sweeps the globe. Swifter and more virulent than anything ever recorded, enfolding the earth like a savage hand snatching a child's marble.
The City Flu in Britain. The Sweeping Sickness in America.
Misnomers, semantics, swirls of the matador's cloak, the names don't matter. There isn't time for that. Normal life is slipping its gears, sliding into unknown territory. The illness is never properly classified, identified or studied. The descent into disaster is too fast, the effects so debilitating that the impact is already catastrophic. Put simply, vast numbers of people become too ill to work and so things stop working.

Horror is here, and greater horror lies ahead.
Because the collapsed aren't just unconscious, they're changing.

Cities lie strangely silent. Roads oddly deserted. In the countryside, the fields are empty of humanity, once more the preserve of the beast. The power is failing, the twittersphere going quiet, the fires burning unchecked. After a few unbelievable and devastating days, civilisation stands on the brink of collapse, on the precipitous edge of a fall that will be beyond comprehension.
The smouldering dawn of an Apocalypse.
A tiny percentage of the population remains unaffected.
With incalculable numbers lying unconscious, those lucky enough to be immune are left with the impossible task of coming to terms with the situation, of grasping a horror that that is continuing to reveal itself.
Recovery is still possible. The fallen may recover from their coma-like condition, their increasingly mutated state. If they come back, civilisation can be salvaged from catastrophe.

But when the collapsed come back, the true Apocalypse will begin.

Collapse is the story of a handful individuals as they attempt to retain their humanity ...and survive a post-apocalyptic world where, more often than not, all you have left is yourself. A world where monsters swarm every street, and horror haunts every thought.
The first novel of the new Ferine Apocalypse series. Stories of survival in the face of unrelenting fear. But what cost survival? What cost living beyond Apocalypse?
The immune, those that remain unchanged, have very few choices left, and none of them are good. As the Banjo Man says, days are dark and living ain't what it used to be.
Mankind has dropped down a rung on the food chain. If you were fortunate enough to escape infection, you've just become a food source. And your world, the ordinary world, has changed beyond all recognition. It's become a savage place, where every step may be your last and being eaten alive may not be the worst thing that can happen. Being dead may be a better option. The Ferine World has new rules and those rules are in a state of flux. Blood flows freely and justice is governed by the mutable law of tooth and claw.

In the midlands, Sam Scott, an ordinary woman confronted by a far from ordinary situation. The only thing she has worth saving is her sanity.
In a village on the outskirts of Birmingham, George Lowton, a twelve year old boy forced into an unthinkable act by unimaginable circumstances. His last chance an unreachable brother, separated by a few miles that seethe with the stuff of nightmares.
In London, Joe Byrne, a man tortured by the past, daunted by his own failings, and appalled by a future where danger looms at every turn and horror hides behind every corner. More appalled yet by his very own personal monster, the inadequacy that lurks within him.
Apocalypse: Vision of violent events comparable to those foretold in the book of Revelation.
Ferine: Bestial. Resembling, a wild animal. Untamed. Savage.