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My short will be part of the Agorist Writers’ Workshop anthology “Fire and Faith”.

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Sign Up for my Author Newsletter and be entered to win a free book.

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Sign up for my author newsletter and be entered to win 1 of 5 e-copies of “Life As We Knew It” (Book 1 of Transformation Project – an apocalyptic series).

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Winners will be announced Friday, November 29.

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The world as you knew it is gone. Who is your neighbor?

Isolated amid a crippled country, the people of Emmaus strive to survive through Midwestern grit and ingenuity as winter looms and desperate people threaten the town’s borders. Distant opportunities beckon, food and medicine dwindle, and disease flares. With starvation just around the corner, a time of gathering in begins. Not everyone’s going to live to spring.

Shane Delaney prides himself on his ability to stay cool in troubled times, but he can’t save everyone and now it becomes clear he may not even be able to save himself. 

When the world as you knew it goes off the rails, who would you bring home?

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

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The medical center held the priority for fuel, so had lights, kept low to save electricity. The patients all slept. Shane went into the room where Mike slumbered under a heavy dose of sedatives. His temperature still ran high. Shane looked at the blood-tinged pus in the bag hanging beside the bed. The yellow-green color didn’t bode well for his friend’s survival.

God, we could use your help here.

Where did that come from? Driving through a mortar barrage, he found a rudimentary belief in the god he’d so long denied. Shane found it convenient to blame the eternal crap bag for all the evil in the world, but he didn’t expect him to be a cosmic sugar daddy. That kind of delusion belonged to people who thought the meddlesome old man in the long white beard loved them. He knew if his parents’ god was real, he’d lose no love on a monster like Shane. God’s love of monsters stood in the way of Shane even believing in him. Men like King David, with hundreds of deaths on their hands, didn’t deserve heaven.

I deserve death.

Did Mike? Probably a card-carrying member of the asshole in arms did, yeah. Did Alicia deserve to be alone, pregnant and unprotected in a world now spun out of control? All of morality pivoted there for Shane. He knew he deserved death by painful torture, but he also knew that would hurt his parents deeply and the knowledge kept his 9mm in its back holster and not in his mouth. He had to do his best to not hurt himself while they still needed his skills.

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Julian headed off in the direction he’d indicated, carrying two gas cans, the wrecking bar he used for self-defense trailing out the back of his coat like a metal tail, his feet crunching dried leaves.

The empty street of clapboard houses and neat hedges on narrow sidewalks gave Perry the creeps. It felt like one of those horror movies where you find a deserted town and then the zombies climb out of the cellars. He popped the hood and methodically worked his way through the fluids – oil, transmission, brake, steering, and radiator. The truck’s age made windshield wiper fluid unnecessary. They needed to find a gas station with a working air hose. That back left tire looked a little squishy. They needed to get more trade goods. Perry had always been an honest man and it didn’t come naturally to think about stealing, but there might be stuff in these houses they could exchange for what they needed. Joseph had enormous resources that he couldn’t access in the current circumstances, but surely Ren Sullivan’s fortune didn’t go poof when the electrical grid fried. He’d have to talk to Joseph when he and Katharine came back.

He heard a scrape of a sole on pavement a split second before he felt the barrel of a gun in his right kidney.

“Don’t move! Hand over your keys.”

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The night of the pulse, Geo Tully and Wes Marcus were in the basement of Wes’ aunt’s home that had become their safehouse.

Wes, a wiry com tech barely old enough to shave regularly, held up a photo album that showed a man standing in front of the post-World War 2 bungalow with a shovel. The front door stood behind him, but not the view of the house that Geo recognized. The articulated arm of a backhoe could be seen on the edge of the frame.

“The porch is an addition,” Geo acknowledged.

A Navy Seal from Kansas, Geo towered over his Seattle-raised compatriot. They’d thrown in together when Bunnell & Wilson’s Knights Industry division seized control of the city by murdering military personnel. Wes’ uncle Fred had been an urban survivalist before he died a few years ago and his aunt Connie had died in Portland’s bomb attack. Their house had been a safe haven for two fugitives, so far.

“And look at how deep the hole is behind him.”

Geo turned to the front wall of the basement. The shelves had kept him from investigating here. They appeared to be attached to the wall, but when he ran his hand along the back edge of the shelving unit, he found a throw-bolt. He pulled it down and tugged on the shelves, swinging them out away from the wall. Hinged on the far side, they glided on hidden casters. Behind the shelves an open space stretched the length of the porch. Geo tried the light on the ceiling, but it didn’t turn on. He used the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the small room. A ham radio sat at one end, covered with plastic, while storage boxes filled the other end.

“I knew that tower had to still have a use.” Wes squatted down to look under the table the radio sat on. As an Army communication tech, he knew radios. “He left it disconnected. It’ll take me a moment.”

The light bulb in the main basement flared and popped off. Wes smacked his head on the underside of the table. Geo’s phone light went out.

“What’s that smell?” Wes stood, sniffing.

“My phone just fried, I think.”

They fumbled around in the dark to find the stairs and make their way to the kitchen. Duke, the Labrador retriever, stood in the living room, staring at the window and whining.

Geo peeked out the curtains as the neighbors came out on their porch, staring around.

“You smell that?” Wes asked. “I’m going to go check for fire.”

“Do you hear that?”

Duke whined louder. Raucous voices filtered in through the glass. Geo watched as the neighbors ran off their porch. Wes swept the front door open.

“What the hell?” Geo growled.

“They need help.” Wes ran into the street.

“Stay, Duke,” Geo ordered and followed his stupid partner into the street, where the neighbors could get a full view of their high-and-tights. They’d agreed they wouldn’t do that, but Wes had forced them all in. A municipal bus sat at the corner, smoke pouring out of its windows as the people inside tried to get out, screaming, kicking, punching at the glass, but when one window shattered, it just fed the fire that doomed them.

Wes ran to the rear passenger door and tried to pull it open, convulsing and chewing his tongue, smoke rising from his body.