History Literature / BlackTideRising

# ''At the End of the Journey'' (forthcoming, Charles E. Gannon, March 2021 release date)

** In "Social Distance," a group of teenagers are signed up for an intense outdoor survival course by their parents to shape them up after (mostly minor) acts of delinquency. Bring outside of the city when the zombies rise makes this punishment ultimately beneficial for them.

* LifeSavingMisfortune: In "Maligator County," the protagonist observes that tourists would have certainly brought the zombie infection to the area if the owner of the only tourist site hadn't closed it down for a few weeks. The reason he closed it was to devote more time to helping two relatives with health issues.

* WastelandWarlord

** Decker, a character introduced in the third novel, is initially hyper-focused on military law and procedure due to suffering extreme SanitySlippage. [[spoiler:Most notably, he's introduced having kept his infected superior office alive and subdued in his raft because another superior officer told him to take care of them before being killed.]] It's noted that he's actually all but useless outside of a controlled, non-combat environment, because he lacks any sense of initiative. In the fourth novel, he manages to snap back to his senses, at least mostly.

** After the incident at Parris Island, it becomes standard operating procedure for the Marines of Wolf Squadron to treat all Defense personnel survivors as "civilians", regardless of former official rank, until they have managed to determine if they've discovered somebody who has adjusted to the realities of this new post-apocalyptic world or if they've got a (possibly crazed) idiot who can't see past the rules and regulations.
* LemonyNarrator: John Ringo goes full Snicket in ''Strands of Sorrow'' as Faith tights with Trixie at Ft Hood.
* LifeSavingMisfortune: In "Maligator County," the protagonist observes that tourists would have certainly brought the zombie infection to the area if the owner of the only tourist site hadn't closed it down for a few weeks. The reason he closed it down was to devote more time to helping two relatives with health issues.

[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Not to be confused]] with ''Film/DarkTide'' or ''Literature/TheBlackTidesOfHeaven''.

* ArbitraryMinimumRange: From ''Strands of Sorrow'':

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: In general this is the attitude of those clearing the zombies, but in ''Strands of Sorrow'' during one attack against a horde using 40mm grenades fired from Amtracks within the ArbitraryMinimumRange of the grenades, it's mentioned that there ''is'' such a thing as "overkill".

** The short story "Ex Fide Absurdo" has the characters talking about how disappointing it is that the ZombieApocalypse prevented the release of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' Sequel Trilogy. They agree it would have been fun to see those movies unless the filmmakers did something completely stupid like bringing the Emperor back to life, having a DarthVader SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute, or killing off Han Solo. They then proceed to laugh at the idea that any filmmaker would be stupid enough to alienate the fanbase by killing Han.

* TooDumbToLive: Recovered at Parris Island is Colonel Downing, who not only spent the months of the apocalypse simply repeating basic training instead of trying to do more practical things with his recruits, but also takes one look at [[LittleMissBadass Faith]] and proceeds to chew her out as a glorified mascot who has no place in the Marines due to being underaged and not formally trained, before declaring her discharged. This makes him immediate persona non grata with pretty much every Marine and Navy personnel in Wolf Squadron, and causes him to get elaborately chewed out over just how big a mistake he made, demoted and AssignedToAntarctica. Zigzagged in that, once it all dies down, even Faith feels that he was punished a bit too harshly and he is given some redemption.

** The short story "Ex Fide Absurdo" has the characters talking about how disappointing it is that the ZombieApocalypse prevented the release of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' Sequel Trilogy. They agree it would have been fun to see those movies unless the filmmakers did something completely stupid like bringing the Emperor back to life, having a DarthVaderClone, or killing off Han Solo. They then proceed to laugh at the idea that any filmmaker would be stupid enough to alienate the fanbase by killing Han.

* Sofia: 15 year-old daughter of Steve and Stacey, the [[SmartGuy Smart Chick]].

* TakeThat: The short story "Ex Fide Absurdo" has the characters talking about how disappointing it is that the ZombieApocalypse prevented the release of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' Sequel Trilogy. They agree it would have been fun to see those movies unless the filmmakers did something completely stupid like bringing the Emperor back to life, having a DarthVaderClone, or killing off Han Solo. They then proceed to laugh at the idea that any filmmaker would be stupid enough to alienate the fanbase by killing Han.

* GiantSquid: Downplayed. In the fourth novel, a trip to San Diego CA brings a ship of marines into a bay that, due to the millions of infected active, has become a perpetual feeding ground for both [[ThreateningShark Great Whites]] and Humboldt Squid. The latter actually freak out the marines observing the feeding frenzy more than the sharks do. Especially after a particularly nightmarish scene where infected begin falling a near-fatal distance onto a partially submerged deck and begin being dragged bodily into the swarming mass of squids. A native Floridian observer comments that California's beaches probably won't be safe to swim at again for the rest of his life, as Humboldt squid are not only highly aggressive carnivores, but also highly intelligent, and possibly possess social inheritance... meaning that not only are these squids learning to prey on human victims, but they'll teach other squid to do the same.

* GiantSquid: Downplayed. In the fourth novel, a trip to Florida brings a ship of marines into a bay that, due to the millions of infected active, has become a perpetual feeding ground for both [[ThreateningShark Great Whites]] and Humboldt Squid. The latter actually freak out the marines observing the feeding frenzy more than the sharks do. Especially after a particularly nightmarish scene where infected begin falling a near-fatal distance onto a partially submerged deck and begin being dragged bodily into the swarming mass of squids. A native Floridian observer comments that Florida's beaches probably won't be safe to swim at again for the rest of his life, as Humboldt squid are not only highly aggressive carnivores, but also highly intelligent, and possibly possess social inheritance... meaning that not only are these squids learning to prey on human victims, but they'll teach other squid to do the same.

** The short story "A Thing or Two" briefly features Robin, a late middle-aged woman in charge of a backwoods town that survives by largely trading with an extended family of nearby moonshiners for alcohol to use in their makeshift hospital.

* FakeStatic: In ''Islands of Rage and Hope'', when the civilian head of a Dutch-controlled Caribbean island is mentioned by Captain Smith to be screaming about Dutch Marines taken on a mission [[spoiler:to save Prince Harry from London]] by US Marine Corps Colonel Hamilton, Hamilton starts faking transmission problems to not have to deal with it. Smith knows the static is fake, but it serves as sufficient excuse to not further bother Hamilton with the issue.

* ButICantBePregnant: A pair of side-characters who show up in the third novel are a 17 year old boy and a ''very'' pregnant 12 year old girl rescued from a rubber lifeboat. Whilst the women of Wolf Squadron are ready to lynch the boy as a child rapist, the girl defends him, asserting that they never had sex--something that is medically proven. The best guess that the doctors of Wolf Squadron can come up with to explain how the girl conceived is a case of extraordinarily bad luck; the boy happens to be one of those men whose sperm are unusually vigorous, and since he and the girl were both frequently naked and masturbating in a life raft which was perpetually flooded with a low level of high-saline water, not too dissimilar to the fluids contained in the vagina, some of his sperm managed to make it inadvertently into the girl's vagina and thence to her ovaries when she was masturbating.

* RealityEnsues: A lot of what makes this series so distinct is its efforts to put a realistic spin on the ZombieApocalypse. Rather than magical walking corpses, the zombies are [[TechnicallyLivingZombies humans reduced to hyper-aggressive feral carnivores]] by a SyntheticPlague. The virus is also engineered to induce the infected to strip off because a "zombie" who was clothed would ultimately become infected and die due to toxins from a build-up of waste products trapped in its pants. Because the zombies are living creatures, they can be taken down by any kind of damage, it's just a matter of bleeding out.
** The vast majority of female survivors rescued who had male companions turn out to be pregnant, simply because when people are stranded together in close quarters with no other major distractions, sex tends to become a default means to alleviate boredom and stress.

** Social media CEO [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed Mick Mickerburg]] gathered up an enormous yacht filled with his fellow executives, lots of scantily clad women, PrivateMilitaryContractor bodyguards, cooks and luxury items and went sailing off to try and ride things out at sea, like so many others. His bodyguards then attempted to mutiny and rape, rob and kill everyone else and rescue ships that arrive some time later find just two survivors. * FakeStatic: In ''Islands of Rage and Hope'', when the civilian head of a Dutch-controlled Caribbean island is mentioned by Captain Smith to be screaming about Dutch Marines taken on a mission [[spoiler:to save Prince Harry from London]] by US Marine Corps Colonel Hamilton, Hamilton starts faking transmission problems to not have to deal with it. Smith knows the static is fake, but it serves as sufficient excuse to not further bother Hamilton with the issue.

* MenAreTheExpendableGender: The survivors that Wolf Squadron picks up favor women by a fairly high percentage.

* PomPomGirl: The short story "Not in Vain" follows a cheerleading squad during the initial outbreak who are characterized as energetic, yet perfectly nice, with a strong team dynamic and a willingness to sacrifice themselves to make more of the vaccine is infected.

** The final action sequence is a desperate strike into the heart of infected DC in search of ''someone'' who outranks her, because her administration will get everyone killed within weeks and the military refuses to enact a coup.