Skin on My Skin (24 page)
Authors: John Burks
But the freedom is short-lived and she’s soon thrust into the world of the Court, the secret society that has run the Game for the last five hundred years. Mia is adopted by the Queen of the Game and groomed to takeover
Mia, however, is a child of the Cave. The Game pulses in her blood. When she runs afoul of her adoptive mother she is thrust back into the world of the Game. This time, however, she is not a child who will be rescued. This time she must survive the Game on her own or perish to its evils. And this time there is more than just the Game working against her.
When the oil finally ran out the world teetered on the edge of the apocalypse. Wars raged over the few remaining supplies and mankind huddled in the cold darkness, waiting for the lights to go out forever. Without the oil modern civilization came to a standstill and famine, disease, and crime raged. But one man, billionaire and war hero General Simon R. Benedict, pulled the world back from the edge of destruction, introducing a mysterious new clean burning and apparently infinite power supply known as nRgy. nRgy soon powers everything, from cell phones to automobiles and airplanes. Benedict’s company ushers in a new golden age and within years he becomes the most recognizable and revered man in the world.
But the new golden years come at a price and Benedict’s company ruthlessly protects a dark secret. nRgy is produced from the ghosts of the recently deceased and Benedict will stop at nothing to not only protect his company’s secrets, but increase his power supply - even if that means mass murder.
There are cracks in his empire, though, and the dead cannot be controlled forever. Now ingrained in every aspect of society, from the cars on the highways to the cell phones in people’s pockets and the computers that control everything, the ghosts are presented with an opportunity they’d never had before nRgy - they can return to the land of the living. The ghostly revolution begins in Sin City, home of Benedict’s nRgy Corporation, as the dead forge metal and flesh into mechanical zombies, vessels of war to carry them in their conquest of the world of the living.
The onslaught of the dead is unstoppable as every man, woman, and child who fall are quickly folded into the machine, their flesh melded with machine to build even larger instruments of horror, their very souls the power source. Las Vegas quickly succumbs to the dead and five survivors--a truck driver locked in his own personal hell, a mother with a dark past, a guilt-ridden cop, a son on a quest against his father, and soldier brought back from another time--are left to try and stop the contagion before it spreads further into the land of the living.
Eight short stories from the Apocalypse(s).
Message Board - Hell has come to Earth and humans are on the verge of extinction. One boy, though, may have the key to saving the world.
The Butcher’s Children - In a world without sickness and disease if you don’t have insurance you can’t get sick. And they only take the healthy ones at the Butcher.
Rush - In order to save us from ourselves the future invades the past, but time travel always comes with a price.
NecroHead - The dead are rising and taking over the machines, human or otherwise.
The Last of the ‘An - A species hunted to the verge of extinction. Can the last one be saved?
The Trouble with Neo-Savages - After the fallout settles, on the plains of Oklahoma, a Cavalry troop hunts cannibalistic Neo-Savages led by a mad witch doctor.
The Beach at the End of Their World - If Man dies on another world who’s after life does he end up in?
The End of Hope - Left behind after Earth is abandoned, one of the survivors is desperate to prevent another calamity.
Bad Jump
- A Story from the Teleportation Wars
(Free at major retailers)
7500 Words – A Short Story from the universe of The Teleportation Wars
It was supposed to be an easy jump. Captain Ryan Carter and A-Squad were supposed to teleport into the wastelands of North Dakota, scout an abandoned National Guard installation, and then teleport home. Easy.
But nothing is never easy in the wastelands left by Teleportation Wars. When squads are lost in the wastelands the entire base
When Base One’s Jump Master intentionally teleports A-Squad into the heart of nuclear ravaged Houston, Texas, Ryan knows that the Jump Master is a traitor. At the very least he’s stranded A-Squad in the wastelands, away from their families, with no way home. Worse he knows that the entire population of Base One is at risk from the crooked teleportation operator’s treachery and he is sure an attack on the base is imminent.
With only limited supplies and their teleportation-enabled weapons, A-Squad has to find a way back to Base One before the traitorous Jump Master has a chance to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to salvage in the post apocalyptic world of the Teleportation Wars.
The Teleportation Wars - Book One - Cop
When Dr. Caprock Werner leaked the method for cheap and easy teleportation technology onto the Internet, he thought he was dragging the world back from the edge of economic meltdown and ushering in a new golden age for mankind. He was sure he’d ended man’s dependence on ever dwindling stocks of oil. He envisioned an end to war, famine, and poverty. Werner saw the eons old dream of utopia finally coming true for man.
What Dr. Werner never imagined, though, was the new wave of crime and atrocity his technology would unleash. Drugs run freely as smugglers simply teleport them to their destination. Murder and assassination are easy and anonymous. Bombings become a simple matter of teleporting one object into another, the atoms of both objects rejecting each other and resulting in a miniature nuclear explosion.
Governments across the globe struggle to battle the rising tide of teleportation crime. Ryan Carter, a member of the Houston Police Department’s elite Teleportation Crimes Unit is on the frontline of that daily battle. He knows, however, that the crimes are only the beginning. War is coming and it will be a war unlike anything the world has ever seen.
Albert Einstein was half right when he said World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. What the scientist could not have known, however, was that those rocks would be teleported driven bombs.
Tattoos, Blood, and Tony Lamas
After months of hiding out in the South Texas bush, with nothing but cows and his old dog Scooter to keep him company, all Cross Cain wanted was a hot meal, a smile from a pretty lady, and enough gas to get his old Jeep down the road just a little bit further. But as was often the case with the occasional good guy and frequent outlaw, trouble had a way of finding him whether he wanted it or not.
At Miss Melody's Diner, a greasy spoon in the middle of Nowhere, Oklahoma, Cross thinks he's found not only the hot meal, but the smile from a pretty lady named Summer. Her skin is a living canvas of ink, an eclectic collection of tattoos writing a story that Cross, after so long in the bush, is all too willing to read.
When the diner is besieged by dark forces intent on ripping the patrons limb from limb, Cross springs into action, intent on protecting Summer from the ghostly apparitions that appear to be hell bent on taking her back to the grave with them. But who are the ghosts really after? Who is the victim and who is the aggressor? And why do Summer's tattoos move like that?