So Monsters We Became

Benjamin is something the old world made and the new world fears.

Trafficked as a child and sold into a covert medical program, he became the only successful subject of a human reanimation experiment. Patient Zero. The spark that ended everything.

He survived the lab, the slavers who came after, and the brand they left on his skin. Now, he wanders the wasteland, haunted by the grating, persistent hallucination of Dr. Ellis – the woman who tortured him to godhood, and whose corpse was tossed into a basement years ago.

Bear is a monster.

In a world made up of little more than smoldering ash and infection, the only safety to be found is in the arms of the depraved. And there is none more depraved than Bear. When cannibals abduct his youngest sister, he doesn't panic. Monsters don’t panic. Monsters hunt. He carves a path through the dead and the damned, spilling entrails and emptying skulls.

When those same cannibals mistake Benjamin for easy prey, he levels them. In the blood and wreckage, he finds a child. Small. Alone. Miles from safety. He becomes her only chance at survival. He doesn't want this responsibility. He takes it anyway.

He swears to keep her safe. For a while it works. And then it doesn’t.

When his past catches up to them and both are taken by the same slavers he once escaped, Benjamin knows exactly what waits for them. He survived it once. Joy won't. War is on the horizon, and Ben must choose between his freedom and her life. He will have to ignite the blue flames that make him a god to save the only person who has ever treated him like a human. Healing won’t be enough; bloodshed is required. He has to hope that Bear is exactly as relentless as Joy said he was.

So Monsters We Became will appeal to readers of Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts. It is a Literary Fiction novel of approximately 90,000 words.