"It's a Cherokee Rose. The story is that when American soldiers were moving Indians off their land on the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much 'cause they were losing their little ones along the way from exposure and disease and starvation. A lot of them just disappeared. So the elders, they said a prayer; asked for a sign to uplift the mothers' spirits, give them strength and hope. The next day this rose started to grow where the mothers' tears fell. I'm not fool enough to think there's any flowers blooming for my brother. But I believe this one bloomed for your little girl."

--Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), The Walking Dead, 2011, "The Cherokee Rose"

Celebrating the strange and unusual, some of the best-known authors of the fantastic explore the myths and legends surrounding a creature both dead and undead...the zombie!

From Anne Rice's chilling portrait of a woman more dead than alive to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's future where nobody dies forever, from Nina Kiriki Hoffman's powerful story of the dead returned for love to Gene Wolfe's tale of computer-driven corpses-here are the spectacular undead tales of the modern age!

Including stories by: Kevin J. Anderson, John Brunner, Matthew J. Costello, Don D'Ammassa, Harlan Ellison, Lionel Fenn Karen Haber, Rick Hautala, Brian Hodge, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Geoffrey A. Landis, D.F. Lewis Frances A. McMahan, A.R. Morlan, William Relling, Jr., Anne Rice, Alan Rodgers Robert Silverberg, S.P. Somtow, Larry Tritten, Lawrence Watt-Evans Robert Weinberg, Gene Wolfe, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro