Introduction to Solitude
I like to hike, and I am particularly fond of the Utah desert. The area around Moab—Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and other more obscure Bureau of Land Management sections—are breathtaking, clean, isolated. If you pick the right trails, you can avoid seeing people altogether, for days. Those canyons are where Aaron Ralston famously went hiking alone, got his arm pinned by a falling boulder, and had to amputate it with a jackknife and stagger back to civilization.
I know exactly where I would go to hide during a zombie apocalypse.
When Jonathan Maberry asked me to write a story in his V-Wars monster post-apocalypse series, I decided to write about what I knew: Hiding in the desert while the world falls apart. And it was also a good excuse for me to take a “research” trip out to southern Utah, where I wrote this.