It's 9AM

Saturday Special

This one’s on me.

I don’t know about you but I always like it when someone puts a cherry on top.

That’s a euphemism for going the extra mile or doing a little something extra to make someone’s day.

It requires little effort on the part of the giver (or sometimes more) and can put a smile on a face or really turn a day around.

Like paying it forward.

So today I’m sending two links to upgraded subscribers and giving everyone chapter one to Flyover Zombie – the Battlefield Z series.

It’s hot out there, and though yard work calls, it’s a fight between the AC and sweating off five lbs trimming the hedges and landscaping mulch.

Plus some time to knock out 1k words on the next in series, and I ordered a cover for a new sci fi project today. You’re gonna love it.

And the stuff we talked about yesterday, and this week, all lined up to be organized and started.

When you do stay inside today, be sure to check out JACK RYAN on Prime.

If you don’t have Prime, Amazon is running specials for PRIME DAY which is July 11. A good time to give it a try and you can see REACHER 1 and 2, plus THE RINGS OF POWER and a lot more.

JACK RYAN has John Krazinski from the Office in the starring role and I’m a fan. This is the 4^th and last season, so no cliffhangers, and it’s based on Tom Clancy books, so it’s pretty darn good.

Check out the trailer.

When I lived in Florida, I had a set of these chairs and spent a lot of weekends at New Smyrna Beach.

I’d drive out on the sand, park the truck about a half mile from Chase’s on the Beach, and go for a run.

NSB has the distinction of being the shark bite capital of Florida.

That’s because the river empties on one end of the island and sharks like to hang out in the water to eat.

So do fishermen.

I’d run the three or so miles to the rock jetty and sometimes catch the lifeguards pulling a victim out of the water.

Not many bites are life threatening because of the species of shark, which I can’t recall off the top of my head.

Lot’s of stitches though.

Which keeps me out of the water at NSB, but it’s gorgeous with hard packed sand and lots of space.

Plus bikini’s, a perk that always makes running more interesting.

Depending on who is wearing one.

After, I’d plot into a chair and read a book and drink something cold from the cooler just to let the surf pull my cares away.

Hurricanes, sharks, gators, snakes, panthers, and the worst of them all, snowbirds.

Man, Florida was nice.

Where’s your favorite spot to read?

FLYOVER ZOMBIE Chapter One (upgrade to paid monthly and I’ll send you the whole book, plus more)

No one knows how it started. Or if they do, they’re not saying. The Fed’s were building a wall at the Mexico border when it happened. Some smart bureaucrat shifted the resources over to California and moved the construction to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

It took eight days for a million workers to erect a fifteen-foot barrier and eight more to double it the entire length of the state.

They carried the steel plates up into the mountains and blocked off the middle.

A second wall went up along the Appalachian Trail. They were able to contain the outbreak in the middle.

Chicago was gone.

Canada had to fend for itself and the same for Mexico.

But the good old USA had the East, parts of the West and nothing in-between.

Nothing living anyway.

There were plenty of the dead.

1

LOS ANGELES -

“Have you heard from New York this morning?”

“DC protocol,” the tech answered.

His job was simple. Monitor communications from the East, and surviving cities in California for indications of an outbreak.

A multichannel processor routed through airwave bands by the thousands, searching for chatter on cell phone traffic, radio broadcasts, and even CB radio lines. His role was to listen to the chatter and define anomalies.

Plus, do a daily check in with DC, NYC, and other major metro areas.

The daily check in served two purposes.

First, to reassure the people across the country that other survivors were still there after the dark of the night.

Second, to insure the survivors were following standard operating procedures in regards to staying healthy and alive.

“Go grab some shut eye,” the supervisor patted him on the back.

Del Waters, the radio tech stood up from his station and stretched. Even then he kept his eyes on the blinking lights as they raced across the boards, blinking red and yellow until they hit on a channel.

Fast fingers were required to click on the green, so they could listen in, adjust the feed and monitor if needed.

His replacement, Bobby Shannon slid into the seat he vacated and went eyes up on the board.

Assured, Del slapped his shoulder and stepped away.

He wasn’t sure how many times he blinked through the night, but his eyeballs felt like gritty balls of sand. No matter the count, it wasn’t enough.

But they made it through a night without incident, which was a mark in the W column.

Incidents were always bad.

Three nights ago, LAPD responded to a domestic disturbance call. Turned out to be a fight where the woman stabbed her abusive husband, and didn’t call for a body disposal unit because she didn’t want to get in trouble.

At least that’s what they pieced together.

They were both zombie by the time police arrived, and LA lost one of its boys in blue to a bite on the arm before others were able to put both Z down with headshots.

The Council had a rule.

Bring out your dead. Stab them in the head.

“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?”

Del turned from his stretch and watched Jeri fight back a yawn with the back of her hand.

They had been working side by side since the advent of the virus, and he wanted to ask her out someday.

At first, he wasn’t sure they would live that long, and even though he wanted to grab life by the throat and drink the nectar, it was more fun to live with the thought and ignore the action.

Jeri had been a student at UCLA.

Like most people who did not have specific skillset jobs, she was recruited to monitor the wall, monitor the drones, monitor the radio channels.

Just like Del.

If George Orwell envisioned 1984 with Zombies, this would be the world they lived in.

But they were safe.

“It will just keep me up,” he couldn’t bring himself to look into her perfect brown eyes.

And alive.

“Say yes, you fool,” he screamed at himself.

The little voice inside his head pushing him to be brave. “She asked you out.”

“Some other time then?”

She sounded hopeful.

Or did he imagine that.

“Sure.”

“Help, please!”

Bobby Shannon clicked on the blinking green button to bring a young girl’s voice up full.

“Please God, help me.”

Shannon typed in a command code to record the audio, and sent a signal to the satellite to triangulate the position of the call.

“It’s outside the wall,” he called over his shoulder.

Del, Jeri and the supervisor moved to behind his chair. Del fought the urge to start issuing orders, since Bobby looked like he knew what he was doing.

Already a message was being sent to the Council, per SOP. Survivors outside rated their attention.

At the same time, more messages were sent off to DC and NYC.

Information inside the flyover zone was hard to come by, and meticulously documented when they did.

“This is Council Command,” the supervisor lifted his headset and keyed into the channel. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed across the speaker. “Our plane went down.”

“Plane?” his eyebrow shot up as he glanced at Del.

No planes had been allowed to fly since the first outbreak was contained. Air travel spread the contagion too fast.

“We were coming from New York. Help me, please.”

“Miss,” said the supervisor. “Did you crash? Are you injured?”

“We had to land,” she said. “The pilot died, and we went down somewhere. On a road.”

“Got it,” Bobby announced and pulled up an image on the computer screen. “Kansas.”

“Are you in a secure location?”

“We locked the pilot in the cockpit. We can hear him in there. He’s one of them.”

“Miss,” the supervisor scribbled instructions to Del and handed it to him. “Who are you? I’m letting the Council know your situation, but we need more information.”

Del glanced at the note. It said, Get Ballantine.

“Tell my Dad,” she sobbed.

“Who is your father?”

“He’s Roger Ballantine.”

Then she screamed and the radio went silent.