Life After Death (#1)

Life, Death, Panic! - For Amazon Prime

Author's Note

In celebration of Amazon Prime Video's newest series Panic, I am thrilled to be teaming up with Amazon Prime Video and Wattpad to write this exclusive chapter that puts my characters from this story into the world of Panic!

I hope this chapter intrigues and inspires you to learn more about Panic. Visit the #PanicWritingContest on Wattpad for the chance to put your creative writing chops to the test and learn more about the show!

To find out more about the contest, prizes, and how to enter, check out the #PanicWritingContest here: wattpad.com/AmazonPrimeVideo

Don't forget to watch the series premiere on May 28th, only on Amazon Prime Video, here: http://primevideo.com/

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Months before meeting Max...

Panic had started as nothing more than a small-town tradition amongst a group of wide-eyed teenagers. A simple and uneventful dare to jump off the top of the town waterfall at the end of graduation. Over the years, the game developed a mind of its own, racking up a prize pool in the tens of thousands, a jackpot that people gave their lives in the pursuit of. However, Panic had always been destined for greater things. In truth, it was the kind of game that thrived in the unpredictable wasteland of the apocalypse. No police. No rules. Just... Panic.

Lizzie was only in town for one reason, the grand prize. Gone were the days of competing for materialistic gains that could come with a suitcase full of cash. Post-apocalyptic Panic was far more primal. They were fighting for the chance, no the right, to survive. Each competitor had been putting in one can of food for the past year for the chance to enter the games, winner takes all. For Lizzie, that would be enough to feed her sick grandmother for a decade. Not to mention the medical supplies that the game makers had donated this year.

They had only completed one challenge so far, but twenty of the 100 entrants had fallen. It wasn't so much the games themselves but the clickers surrounding them that offered up so many gruesome casualties. As Lizzie arrived at the scene of the second challenge, it seemed as though that would be the case once again.

She had heard stories of some of the old games and this one certainly seemed to pay homage to the roots of the competition. The Plank. While it used to be a rickety old beam placed across two water tanks, high enough in the air to result in certain death should someone fall, the times had changed. The plank was now just five metres or so off the ground and, while this change may have seemed generous by the judges, it actually made the challenge more sadistic than ever.

The fall would no longer kill you. It might not even hurt beyond a twisted ankle or grazed knee. But then again, it wasn't designed to kill you at all, it was designed to keep you alive. For this year, the planks were suspended thirty metres across a pen filled to the brim with the undead. Fall and it wouldn't be a quick death, you would be eaten alive in the most gradual and agonising of fashions, tooth by tooth, bite by bite.

It did not surprise Lizzie to see that a number of her competitors had already expressed their distaste and left by the time she arrived. Of the eighty that were due to make the perilous walk across the plank, only forty of so had remained to see the challenge through. In all honesty, Lizzie would likely have turned on her heels and left Panic in her dust if not for the fact that she needed the food and medical supplies for her grandmother. This was bigger than her.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" a voice boomed out from a microphone to Lizzie's right.

Diggins, the emcee for the final ever pre-apocalypse Panic games. He had been at the forefront of the continuation of the tradition even after the undead plague. Perhaps it reminded him of a simpler time, maybe he was looking to profit off the contestants, or possibly commentating Panic gave him a sense of power he could no longer get from everyday life. Lizzie wasn't sure and didn't particularly care. All she knew was that his voice meant impending death.