Hitchers

Two years ago, on the same day but miles apart, Finn Darby lost two of the most important people in his life: his wife Lorena, struck by lightning on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, and his abusive, alcoholic grandfather, Tom Darby, creator of the long-running newspaper comic strip Toy Shop.

Against his grandfather’s dying wish, Finn has resurrected Toy Shop, adding new characters,and the strip is more popular than ever,bringing in fan letters, merchandising deals,and talk of TV specials. Finn has even started dating again.

When a terrorist attack decimates Atlanta,killing half a million souls, Finn begins blurting things in a strange voice beyond his control. The voice says things only his grandfather could know. Countless other residents of Atlanta are suffering a similar bizarre affliction. Is it mass hysteria, or have the dead returned to possess the living?

Finn soon realizes he has a hitcher within his skin... his grandfather. And Grandpa isn’t terribly happy about the changes Finn has been making to Toy Shop. Together with a pair of possessed friends, an aging rock star and a waitress, Finn races against time to find a way to send the dead back to Deadland . . . or die trying.

Will McIntosh is a Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was published by Night Shade in 2011. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s (where his story ?Bridesicle” won the 2010 Reader’s Award, as well as the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), Strange Horizons, Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and others. A New Yorker transplanted to the rural south, Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University, where he studies Internet dating, and how people’s TV, music, and movie choices are affected by recession and terrorist threat. In 2008 he became the father of twins.