The Reading Warehouse

That was the day Death ceased her collection of souls.

Instead of claiming people on the day of their death, human beings are doomed to remain trapped inside their decaying bodies until a sliver of the brain dubbed the 'soul region' rots away. When the government's only solution is to set up Containment Zones in each state to handle the burgeoning undead demographic, what were intended to be peaceful, country club settings for the deceased quickly fill above and beyond capacity, to the point that each Containment Zone more closely resembles a third world slum. Slums filled with our dead and decaying loved ones...

Parker Wallace May wasn't ready to die, but when one inhales too much smoke from a house fire, that's exactly what tends to happen. He never imagined ending up in a Containment Zone at his age, and definitely never imagined his living wife would abandon him and never return his calls. But when Parker receives news from the outside that his wife is getting remarried, Parker sets out to do the one thing no one has ever done before...break out of the Containment Zone...

To do this, Parker goes to work for a ruthless undead mobster smuggling in and selling an illegal drug called Phanex that reacts with the soul region of the dead's brain, giving them a taste of the life they once had but exacerbating their decay with each use...

Can Parker escape the Containment Zone and get back to his wife? Or will Parker succumb to the alluring qualities of Phanex, planting the seeds of his own demise in the process...