Four prelude novels. Seven years. One unreliable narrator.
Seven years, from Day 0 of the outbreak to the game's opening scene, told by Mike in the first person, one dated day per chapter. Short, fast chapters with daft titles. He is not a reliable narrator about his own heroism.
Book 1 · Day 0 to Day 182
Mike spends the first month certain it will all blow over, and the next five working out what he does instead.
Book 2 · Day 185 to Day 730
The routine becomes a reputation, and the reputation makes him a target.
Book 3 · Years 3 to 4
The heaviest book of the four.
Book 4 · Years 5 to 7
It ends where the game begins.
Mike is seventeen. He lives alone in a second-floor flat in Driftwood Heights, delivers protein powder on a skateboard for an app that thinks he rides a bike, and is extremely sure everything will be back to normal by Tuesday. Then the sirens start stacking up.
Six months of rails and rooftops, neighbours and bad decisions, bottled water as currency, and a seventeen-year-old slowly admitting it isn't going to be fine by Tuesday.
Coming to Kindle, published under the narrator's own name, Mike Aracter. The books are written in American English, because Mike is.
From the books
The pharmacist's daughter, and the slow burn running through the prelude novels. Sharp, sarcastic and the closest thing Mike has to a moral compass. She flirts with him constantly and he never notices. She gave him the courier bag he still carries.
From the books
A Greek chef and former soldier in Mike's building who cooked for whoever was left. When he saw Mike swinging a stolen katana at the Jolted, he taught him how to use it properly.
The books and the comic run in parallel. Mike's story is in the books; Node's is in the comic. They don't meet until the game, though they come close more than once.