In
this excerpt from chapter two, in the middle of the night Josie has
been shaken awake by a loud rumble. It’s happened before, so she’s only
mildly concerned. Unable to get back to sleep, she shuffles has shuffled
off to the kitchen for a snack:
As
she sat at the kitchen counter, spooning pudding into her mouth, the
bowl on the counter started to vibrate. Dishes rattled in the cupboard.
Knickknacks fell off the shelf. Another tremor?
There
had been dozens of them over the last two years. Sometimes the damage
was a big deal, but most of the time everything was back to normal
within a few hours. Last week, a tremor had caused the entire facility
to go offline for two days. Nobody was allowed to shower. The
temperature hovered around fifty degrees. No videos to watch, no
computer games to play, no ebooks to read. Horrible. No way did she want
to live through that again. The lights blinked on and off again,
leaving her suspended in darkness with a chocolate pudding in her hand.
“This is not good.”
Alarm bells began to ring throughout the facility.
The
sound of people running down the public corridor made her drop the
spoon on the floor. She flung open the front door. The sound of chaos
instantly increased tenfold. Dim emergency lights cast everything in an
eerie blood red glow. Entire families were running down the hallway,
dressed in heavy clothing, carrying their emergency backpacks, fear
etched across their features.
“This
can’t be for real,” she whispered. Her bladder wanted to faint. Her
sister lived in the pod across the hall. Its door swung open and there
was her brother-in-law, Dante Armstrong, standing there in his boxer
shorts. Dante was of African descent—somewhere near Ghana was all he
knew. Until just now, she had never seen him without his shirt. His
impressive height and muscular build made him an imposing-looking man.
His five-year-old son, Nicholas, stood behind him and peeked around his
father’s hip, while Dante held three-year-old Shasta on his hip.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Josie yelled across the hall. “Where’s Jo?”
“She was called to an emergency meeting a few hours ago.”
“Mom was too.”
“Jo
just called me,” Dante spoke rapidly. “She said this is the big one.
The bunker has split in two and there are hundreds of secondary
fissures. It’s total chaos below. The main control room is on fire and
the entire city could crumble at any second.” His words were like
ghostly punches to the gut, taking her breath away. “They’ve done
everything they can, but it’s not going to be enough. She’s going to
meet us at the main hatchway.”
The acid taste of bile coated her throat. She took a step back into the pod where things used to make sense.
“We have to evacuate,” Dante said.
“To where?”
“The surface.”
“We’ll die up there,” Josie said.
“We’ll die down here.”
Josie shook her head vigorously, retreating further into the pod.
“Jo
made me promise to get you out of here.” Dante’s eyes were sympathetic,
but his voice strained with impatience. “I’ll carry you over my
shoulder if I have to.”
She’d
debate the matter more, but Dante was the kind of man who meant what he
said. If she refused to leave, he would stay, putting himself and his
children in grave danger.
“Okay,” she said, feeling weak all over. “I’ll go, but let me grab a few things first.”
“I’ll give you three minutes,” he said. “I need to get a few things, too. We’ll go up to the Pringle exit together.”
The
last survivors of the human race are riding out nuclear winter in an
underground bunker when disaster strikes. Forced to the surface
centuries ahead of schedule, what they find blows their minds. Who can
explain it? Two social misfits work together to unravel the mystery.
After
living in a posh underground shelter his entire life, Lars Steelsun is
plunged headfirst into a mind-blowing adventure on the surface of the
Earth. As Lars and his displaced bunker mates are led across the
grasslands by Mayor Wakeland, a man of questionable sanity who claims to
talk with God, they discover a primitive world where human beings are
no longer welcome. Even more mystifying is the emergence of new senses
and abilities from within. Learning to use them has become a priority,
but his biggest challenge comes from the vivacious Josie Albright. Her
lust for glory is going to get them both into trouble. Sparks fly when
her gung ho ways clash with his cautious personality. Can they overcome
their differences to find love and a homeland for their people?
May not be suitable for younger readers. Contains mild profanity, sexual situations (infrequent), and violence.
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Genre - Epic Fantasy
Rating – R
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