Doomsdate

by Laura Piper Lee

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance; Paranormal Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

When a first date between a doomsday prepper and a nerdy film professor goes horribly, zombie-apocalypse-level wrong, the mismatched pair team up on a road trip to safety in this delightfully feral rom-com.

“Frothy fun that manages to hit all the notes that zombie fans enjoy while still managing to pack in a ton of spice and emotions.”—New York Times bestselling author Ruby Dixon

With a new virus spreading and a lockdown on the horizon, Maisie Bennett is determined to check one item off her bucket list: Get laid. But that’s no easy feat for an anxious doomsday prepper who’s never made it past a first date. So when a handsome, stubbly-jawed professor swipes right and agrees to meet up, Maisie vows to act normal—and to leave her taser at home.

Dr. Everett Greer has lost all lust for life after a personal tragedy, but he doesn’t have the heart to stand up the poor woman his best friend catfished to force him back “out there.” Maisie turns out to be surprisingly lovely, but there's something off about her, too, with her clinking cargo pockets, shy smile, and utility belt full of—are those weapons? Unfortunately, their awkward first date goes from bad to doomed when the GI virus that’s trapped half of America in the bathroom starts claiming its first casualties, then reanimates them into flesh-eating zombies. And this is precisely why Everett doesn't date anymore.

As the country spins out of control, Maisie and Everett find themselves an unlikely team of two—well, three, if you count Everett’s cat, Chicken—as they travel north to hopeful safety. Along the way, Maisie and Everett make a deal: she’ll teach the soft, liberal arts professor how to survive, and he’ll teach her how to live—through movies, travel, and, to Maisie’s delight, sex lessons. But when their growing feelings are put to the test, they’re in danger of losing not only their brains to the zombies, but worse, their hearts to each other.

Release date: September 15, 2026

Publisher: Dell

Print pages: 416

Sample

Chapter One

T Minus Five Hours and Thirty-Seven Minutes Until Shit Hits the Fan

Maisie

First dates are inherently terrifying, whether a debilitating GI virus is sweeping the nation or not, but dammit, I refuse to go through another pandemic lockdown a virgin. I slip on my favorite olive-green jumpsuit for tonight—practical, generously pocketed, with belt loops sturdy enough for my utility belt—and consider my facial attire next. I hold up a dainty black mask in one hand and a heavy-duty white N95 in the other. Which one says, I’m cautious, but not that cautious?

I fling the N95 over my shoulder and sigh. It’s been one week since GI-27 hit the United States, and already the country’s grinding to a halt. Schools have closed, hospitals are overrun, and airports shut their doors this morning. With a flight to New York City booked for next week, the first plane ticket I’ve ever bought, that particular joke’s on me. Turns out they won’t fly a plane when everyone on it has uncontrollable diarrhea. Rumors are a nationwide mandatory lockdown is coming tomorrow.

Which makes tonight’s first date critical. It may be my last chance to have sex before I turn thirty. An arbitrary deadline, I know, but it seemed reasonable when I first left the isolated farmhouse I grew up in and headed for the big town of Durham, North Carolina, almost ten years ago. When your doomsday-prepping mother is the only person you’ve exchanged more than five words with since she yanked you out of society at age five, you need to ease into the whole talking-to-people thing. Dating, sex, marriage—those were all distant theoretical constructs when the last guy I met was in kindergarten, pre–the yanking. So, after Mom died and I scrounged up the courage to reenter the world she poisoned me against, twenty years old and completely on my own, I decided to do what I do best: research, make a plan, in a word—prepare. To avoid chickening out, I set firm deadlines for my goals, and I’ve met each one, more or less.

By twenty-five, I’d have a stable job and career.

Done. I’m an actuarial analyst, calculating risk of death every way under the sun for a major insurance company, well paid and working fully remote. Could you get a better job for the anxious, reclusive daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic who taught her that evil men were recording us through the toaster? I think not. Also, RIP Mom, you foresaw the dawn of Alexa and smart devices twenty years early.

By twenty-eight, I’d make a friend.

Done. He’s a seventy-three-year-old Vietnam vet I met online in a virtual course on preservation and canning, but Gramps is like family to me now, sending me pickled green beans, strawberry jams, and mail-order guns I keep having to return. Is it technically cheating that my only friend is a prepper I’ve never met in real life? Maybe, but Gramps understands me in a way normal people cannot. He knows what it’s like to be isolated with nothing but your anxiety and a compulsion to dismantle it through systematic preparation. Plus, his jams are great.

In the way of most procrastinators, I saved the scariest, most exciting goals for last, and now here I am, almost thirty, and I’m still a virgin who’s never left North Carolina. While I at least purchased that plane ticket to New York, I’ve made zero progress in voluntarily allowing another human’s body to touch my human body in a consensual sexual way. I’ve certainly tried. But after dozens of failed attempts, I’ve learned dating is hard, finding someone you want to have sex with is even harder, and it’s about to become impossible now that another cockblocking pandemic is upon us.

Still think the world’s so great? The ghost of my mother’s voice echoes in my head. Pandemics and loser men and insurance companies betting low on the value of human life, pennies to the dollar?

I push her words away. Over time, I’ve come to realize that’s all they are—it’s not her, not really, but the perspective she drilled into my very marrow.

Other people can’t be trusted. Not to help you, not to save you, and definitely not to love you.

Believing anything else will just get you hurt, Mom adds.

But thanks to that thinking, I’m a lonely twenty-nine-year-old virgin with a small armory in the guest room who’s terrified to travel, and I still don’t own a toaster. Suffice it to say, I’m in the market for a new perspective, preferably one that involves getting a life. I didn’t realize that loneliness was something you could still feel when surrounded by people. But ten years later, ten years spent in the real world, the hardest part remains making connections to others.

Which is why I’ve been studying for tonight all day.

I sit at the desk in my prep room, wake up my laptop, and press play on another episode of Dreamsdate.

In this episode, Contestant Shayla has four dates with four potential partners. If she picks the one that dating coach, relationship expert, and happenstance billionaire Gigi Masterson claims is her most compatible match, as determined by interviews, personality testing, and, somewhat distressingly, blood work, Gigi will make Shayla’s dreams come true, which as far as I can tell always means a check for fifty thousand dollars and a trip to the Caribbean.

You can’t beat reality TV for dating practice. It’s real.

“Tell me about your trauma,” Shayla says across the small, intimate table from Date Number 1. “It’s okay, we love it.”

“Whoa, it’s so deep of you to put that out there, before I’ve even told you my name.” The man places a hand over his heart. “This is a safe space, I can feel it.”

“My therapist says I’m very brave,” Shayla says. “And sex-positive. Are you sex-positive”—she squints at his name tag—“Paul?”

Paul nods, very sex-positively, and I blow out a breath, impressed. Shayla’s nailing this date.

I hit pause to take some notes, jumping when an explosion of static bursts from the ham radio’s speakers to my left. Gramps clears his throat directly into his microphone some five hundred miles away.

“CQ, CQ, CQ, this is Gramps, calling for Maisie-girl.”

I scoot my rolling stool toward my radio. The push-to-talk button lights up beneath my finger. “This is Maisie-girl, come in, Gramps.”

“I’ve been thinking, Maisie, and this date’s too risky. It’s gettin’ real bad out there. Is this boy even a survivalist?”

“First of all, he’s a man, and second, no, but I like that about him.” I tap my toes against the floor in a quick rat-a-tat-a-tat, feeling my heart rate spike in tandem. Gramps has been questioning my decision to go out tonight damn near nonstop, and frankly, so have I. When I agreed to this date, school buses still chugged down the roads, people milled about on the sidewalks below my apartment, and you could leave this country if you wanted to. It’s scary how fast all that’s changed.

But my birthday’s next week.

“What’s so special about this boy that you’ve got to go out with him tonight, though?”

“Well, he’s smart, for one, a UNC professor, and he works out, eats well, and seems super normal.” I can’t tell Gramps my most compelling argument—that Dr. Everett Greer is smoking hot, with wavy chestnut hair, hazel eyes behind bookish tortoiseshell glasses, and a tall frame, complete with broad shoulders and a chest you could beach yourself on. The fact that he’s older and a professor to boot checks every one of my admittedly vague sexual-fantasy boxes. There’s a reason I’m still a virgin at twenty-nine, several if I’m being honest, but the biggest is that I have high standards for what kind of person I want to put inside my person.

And Dr. Everett Greer can get it.

Assuming I’m not being catfished. It’s a distinct possibility that’s plagued me ever since we matched on the dating app and started messaging a week ago. The messaging phase is usually when I lose most interested guys, so I’ve learned to keep the other major reason I’ve never gotten laid to myself. As it turns out, men don’t like women who are into survival. It blows my mind, honestly. How is having enough rations to last two years unattractive? But Everett didn’t balk at all when I mentioned practicing competition-level mixed martial arts, and he’s similarly passionate about eating minimally processed whole foods. Perhaps the biggest bonus of all: He’s as desperate to go on this date as I am, virus outbreak be damned.

I really hope I’m not being catfished.