Bitten

The world has already died.

Leah Daniels is running out of time to remain human.

Bitten is a bleak and deeply emotional Gothic zombie horror novella about motherhood, infection, sacrifice, and the terrible cost of keeping love alive after civilisation has fallen.

The story follows Leah Daniels, a former tattoo artist and single mother who has spent almost a year hiding with her two young sons, Noah and Michael, in an abandoned coastal caravan park near Weston-super-Mare. With no running water, electricity, heating, or hope of rescue, Leah has survived by teaching her children three essential rules:

Stay silent. Stay hidden. Never open the door unless it is safe.

Then one of the dead comes too close.

Leah kills it before it can reach her sons, but when she returns to the caravan and washes the blood from her hands, she discovers a wound that changes everything.

She has been bitten.

From that moment, Bitten becomes more than a zombie survival story. Told through Leah’s eyes, it is an intimate and brutal account of a mother fighting to remain human long enough to protect her children. As the infection spreads and her body begins to betray her, Leah must confront pain, denial, fear, and the possibility that saving Noah and Michael may require her to destroy what remains of herself.

Set against the rain-soaked coastline of Weston-super-Mare, the novella draws upon Daniel Prescott’s long personal connection with the town, where he has spent many years visiting with his own children. Its deserted caravan parks, shuttered arcades, grey beaches, empty roads, and off-season silence provided the perfect setting for a distinctly British zombie horror story.

Rather than presenting a vast apocalypse filled with military battles and elaborate explanations, Bitten focuses on one mother, two frightened children, and a ruined corner of England where every movement carries risk and every sound could invite death.

Dark, violent, and emotionally grounded, Bitten blends Gothic horror, psychological terror, post-apocalyptic survival, and family tragedy. Beneath the blood and infection lies a profoundly human story about the way fear reshapes a family, the pieces survival takes from those who endure, and the impossible strength required to keep loving when the world has become unforgiving.

At its heart, Bitten asks one devastating question: How much of yourself would you sacrifice to keep your children alive?