Lergion of the Damned: Excerpt

Legion of the Damned

Dreadland Chronicles Book III

The horrors of the past meet the brutality of the present as four young 

boys come of age while exploring a post apocalyptic world.

There should be others with him, he thought as he rolled over onto his back to find three women cowering in the opposite corner of the cage. Their clothes were torn and dirty, the result of the celebration his captors had thrown the night before, coming to the cage sitting far from the warming flames of the fire, taking each woman in turn back to the group where their screams vocalized the brutality that was visited upon them.

He had watched helplessly as each of the women was taken from the cage, powerless to do anything to help, consoling himself with the lone bottle of whiskey he’d found in his pack. 

One of them whimpered as Billie-Bob tried to sit up, fireworks of pain igniting within his head as his hand slipped in the liquid covering the floor of the cage. They were moving south as the morning sun breached the eastern horizon, spreading its warming glow across the countryside. His teeth chattered as he sat up, and he hugged himself to conserve what warmth remained in his body.

It was then he spotted the forth woman lying on her belly beside him. Her dress was torn, her bare back exposed to the elements as it rose and fell with shallow breaths. Her head was turned towards him, one arm covering half of her face as she chewed at her wrist. Blood stained her cheeks, crusting the tip of her nose as she worked diligently, gnawing at her own flesh. Her eyes burned with despair, unseeing, focused on a point somewhere that existed only in her mind. Blood flowed from beneath her arm, and Billie-Bob realized then that it was her blood that covered parts of his body.

He looked down at his blood covered arms, the shoulder of his shirt soaked through. He reached for her, wanting to stop her, but she shrank away from his hand as her gnawing intensified.

A gout of blood splattered against the wooden front of their prison, she had succeeded in severing the main artery in her wrist, enduring a pain he could only begin to imagine as she sought out the comfort death could provide. Her wrist fell away from her blood crusted lips as the waning light of her life fled from her eyes.

She had escaped the despair that awaited all of them, but in so doing had placed them in mortal danger. Billie-Bob had never been this close to someone when they died, and he watched in fascinated horror as a mottled gray color quickly spread across her exposed flesh. A growl came from deep within her chest as she pulled her arms under her body, and struggled to lift herself from the floor. Fabric tore as she pushed herself up, and her dress fell away from the mottled flesh of her body. He felt no desire at her nakedness, only revulsion, tempered with fear.

Ever so slowly she turned her head to look at him, her blood crusted lips pulled back to reveal bloodied teeth as she ran her tongue along them. The women in the corner behind him whined as the woman pushed herself up to her knees and turned to face them with cataract coated eyes.

To be continued! 

Read the first book in the series.

All Roads Lead To Terror

Click on cover for more info or to order!

Synopsis:

The horrors of the past meet the brutality of the present as four young boys come of age while exploring a post apocalyptic world.

On the day of his birth the dead walked and society crumbled. His mother took one look at him and pronounced him Meat. He survived, she didn't.

Fourteen years have passed and obscurity means survival in an increasingly dangerous world. For the survivors compound at Bremo Bluff that obscurity is threatened when a savage band abducts a group of children from the compound.

Accompanied by his three friends Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob, Meat embarks on a quest to rescue the children. A journey that will lead them into adulthood, with a brief detour through the Dreadlands, as they confront the harsh reality of a brutal world beyond the barriers that had served to protect them.

In the dead city of Richmond Meat and his friends will confront a savage cult of children who worship a creature of the night. These creatures, once considered the nightmare imaginings of a fevered mind, are now awake in a world where the population that once served as their food source has been severely reduced.

Awake and very, very, hungry.

Legion of the Damned will be available for pre-order 

beginning March 1st with a special pre-order price. 

Sign up to be notified when I release a new book

 and receive a free copy of my novel

White Walker

When she was ten she made a promise to that which inhabits the winter storm. Now she's twenty six and pregnant, and the White Walker has returned to collect his due.

You will also be automatically entered into the monthly drawing for a personally autographed print copy of one of my books each month you remain.

Get your free book  

HERE!

Writing what you don't know.

While writing the first book of the Dreadland Chronicles, coming of age in a post apocalyptic world, I was confronted with a small dilemma. Most of my fiction takes place around where I live, in Western Maryland, an area I’m intimately familiar with. Though sometimes I run across a place that surprises me right in my own back yard.

In All Roads Lead to Terror, book one in the Dreadland Chronicles my main character Meat, and his three closest friends, Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob travel to Richmond Virginia to rescues a group of young children who had been taken by a savage band of survivors.

I’ve been through Richmond several times, and when I was driving a truck I’ve delivered several loads to different businesses in that city. But I didn’t have the intimate knowledge needed to create a realistic setting for my characters. Realism in my fiction is very important to me, I believe it’s imperative that the reader feel like they’re actually at the location I describe. With that in mind I use real world settings as backdrops for my characters.

Faced with this dilemma I turned to Google Earth. The program contains a little gem called street view, where one can go down to street level and view 360 degree photographs of the actual street and buildings that lined it. That was how I learned Chef Mamusu’s Africanne Café was located across the street from an Enterprise rental store. The café was a small place, the main entrance right on the corner. A drive thru bank had been built directly behind the café with the entrance on one street and the exit on the street that ran perpendicular to it.

Something else happened while I was researching their path through Richmond. Two blocks down the street from that corner café stood a nondescript row of buildings. One in particular had been painted white. Above the single glass door the word hope had been written in black paint. Around it that same sentiment was repeated in a multitude of different languages.

It’s gone now. I’ve gone back to look, and the wall of the building that was once white has been repainted a drab brown. But when you stop and think about it, it’s strange really that given my mindset as I worked on the first book in the series, struggling to get the story just right. It’s important, at least to me, that the story be right. Hovering on the verge of just giving up and working on something else, that I should run across a message like that.

It was a message that not only gave me the desire to continue the series, but also offered up the answer every writer struggles to uncover as we write. The underlying theme that transforms the story from simply words on the page to a living thing that breaths with a life of its own. That message of hope has become the cornerstone of the foundation that the Dreadland Chronicles rests upon. Hope is what these four boys offer in a dangerous, post apocalyptic world.

All Roads Lead to Terror

Click on cover for more info or to order!

Synopsis:

On the day of his birth the dead walked and society crumbled. His mother took one look at him and pronounced him Meat. He survived, she didn't.

Fourteen years have passed and obscurity means survival in an increasingly dangerous world. For the survivors compound at Bremo Bluff that obscurity is threatened when a savage band abducts a group of children from the compound.

Accompanied by his three friends Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob, Meat embarks on a quest to rescue the children. A journey that will lead them into adulthood, with a brief detour through the Dreadlands, as they confront the harsh reality of a brutal world beyond the barriers that had served to protect them.

In the dead city of Richmond, Meat and his friends will confront a savage cult of children who worship a creature of the night. These creatures, once considered the nightmare imaginings of a fevered mind, are now awake in a world where the population that once served as their food source has been severely reduced.

Awake and very, very, hungry.

Also available through these fine online retailers.

    Barnes & Noble  
   

 Itunes

    Kobo   

Books A Million
   

 Smashwords 
  

  Createspace