The Final Chapter Read online

  But in time it would more resemble the lives their memories held.

  The blue dollar took hold and was spurring economic growth. The entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well and shops were reopening.

  The big corporations were taking a bit longer to come back online, and cities and towns more resembled those of the early 19th century.

  Commerce was once again ruled by the mom and pop stores.

  Here and there manufacturing plants were coming back. Within ten years everyone who wanted one would have a working car.

  Within twenty computers would once again be available. Most consumers would decide they were doing fine without one.

  Man was beaten and bloodied by the wrath of nature.

  But he survived.

  Man will always survive.

  *************************

  Thank you for reading my “Countdown to Armageddon” series. It was a fun series to write. I came to know and love my characters as though they were old friends.

  I hope you did too.

  -Darrell-

  **************************

  Those of you who’ve been reading Darrell Maloney’s novels for awhile may have noticed they’re all rooted in reality.

  He doesn’t do zombies because zombies defy logic. Zombies are entertaining but could never happen. Not really.

  However, an electromagnetic pulse bombarding the earth has happened before and will happen again.

  A meteorite impacting with earth has happened before and will happen again.

  The super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park has erupted before and will erupt again.

  Scientists around the world aren’t quite sure what will happen in the years ahead as it pertains to climate change.

  Heck, they can’t even agree on what’s causing it.

  But whether it’s caused by a normal cyclical thawing of the earth or by burning fossil fuels, it’s definitely happening.

  And the one thing the scientists can agree on is that as the polar caps thaw, the people of earth will be exposed to spores and pollens mankind hasn’t seen in thousands of years.

  This, in PANDEMIC, is a story that could really happen.

  In our lifetimes.

  Please enjoy this preview of Darrell Maloney’s upcoming new series,

  PANDEMIC

  Chapter 1

  Scientists knew it was coming for decades.

  At least they claimed to.

  And perhaps some of them did.

  Most of them, though, were as surprised as everyone else when the ice packs started to melt.

  Thus began the great debate on what was causing it.

  Those with a certain political leaning claimed it was greenhouse gases, the exhaust from machines and smokestacks, which was causing global temperatures to rise.

  Others, with different political agendas, scoffed and said it was a natural occurrence of the earth, going through its normal heating and cooling cycles.

  An American vice-president used a poorly thought out choice of words and the term “global warming” was born.

  The term made him a laughing stock with nay-sayers when winter temperatures dropped to all-time records all over the globe.

  A Nobel Prize winning geologist named Martin Sorenson noted that if he’d used the term “global climate change” instead of “global warming” he’d have been taken more seriously and not set a program to combat the problem back many years.

  In any event, and regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the earth was indeed changing.

  The rising of ocean waters, which all reputable scientists agreed would be a major problem, would happen gradually.

  There was plenty of time for seaside communities to build sea walls or elevate homes close to the water.

  The climate itself would also change slowly, allowing human beings a chance to adjust.

  In short, there was no real need to panic.

  Everybody agreed that clean air was important, and the world community continued to work to that end. But the “sky is falling” attitude some had was largely unfounded.

  Dr. Sorenson also famously stated, “We’ll just have to get used to harsher winters and more hurricanes and tornados. But mankind will adjust, just as it always has.”

  Dr. Sorenson maintained that, although some might die from stronger hurricanes and tornados, no one would die as a direct result of climate change itself.

  So followed many years of climate change occasionally making headlines, but largely being placed in the back of one’s mind.

  Meanwhile, the ice packs started to shrink.

  The thaw in Antarctica wasn’t a problem to the global community.

  And least not in ways that would be noticeable.

  The polar bears and sea lions in the area had to change their migration and mating habits, and some had to relocate to colder locales.

  But none of that affected Juan Sebastian in Spain or John Smith in Pittsburgh so it wasn’t given much thought.

  The real problem was in the Arctic.

  Specifically in northern Greenland and Siberia. And at various other places north of the Arctic Circle.

  Ice there was melting at more or less the same rate as the Antarctic, but there was a difference.

  A difference a few scientists and geologists had always warned might be a problem, but which was largely ignored.

  With the thaw, more and more of the permafrost was seeing sunlight for the first time in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years.

  For the first time in recorded history spores and allergens once thought to be extinct were being exposed to the open air.

  But not just any spores and allergens.

  Some were super spores and allergens, having gone dormant before man’s very existence.

  Spores and allergens which man had never been exposed to before.

  Never grown accustomed to.

  Never formed a resistance to.

  Spores and allergens which were deadly to man.

  As more and more attention was focused on rising sea levels and longer hurricane seasons, the real threat was largely ignored.

  The ice pack slowly receded, exposing more and more greenery beneath it.

  The greenery felt the warmth of the sun for the first time in forever, it seemed.

  It slowly dried out, and occasional wind gusts carried it away.

  Some of it made its way into the winds which periodically whipped across the ice pack and was driven south from the Arctic, north from the Antarctic.

  In northern Alaska, a couple hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, an Inuit tribe lived the way their ancestors lived for centuries.

  Each year the spring thaw came. The snow melted, the earth grew green with life.

  The villagers immediately started preparing… for the next winter.

  It was the way of the Inuit, for the season of the thaw was short-lived and labor intensive.

  And if they failed to gather enough provisions to get them through the following winter they’d have to leave their home and scavenge from other villages farther south.

  Villages which had done a better job of preparing.

  This tiny village didn’t even have a name, but its members were a proud people. The elders remembered a time several years before when the green season was far too short, the winter came much too early.

  And the winter was particularly brutal that year.

  They’d run out of seal and muktuk completely. The caribou was down to just a few pounds. They were in danger of starving to death and there was no sign the thaw was coming anytime soon.

  They’d had to dispatch two strong men to another village twenty kilometers away. It was a treacherous journey in whiteout conditions. But they were able to return with two hundred pounds of whale. Enough to sustain them until the ice finally melted.

  It was a humbling and humiliating experience, and one which the elders didn’t want to repeat.

  And so it was they drove
their people hard to collect the berries. To cast their nets and capture as many hundreds of fish as they could.

  To take not their usual seven caribou, but eight or nine if they could find them.

  It was a lot of work and they had a limited amount of time to complete it before the first freeze.

  But this was life in northern Alaska.

  And pride in one’s abilities to survive… and the blow to their collective pride when forced to beg for food from others… was strong.

  They’d do whatever it took, work as many hours as it took, to prevent that humiliation from happening again.

  PANDEMIC, Book 1:

  The Thaw

  will debut on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, selected Hastings book stores, and at other fine booksellers in October 2018.

  If you enjoyed

  COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON

  you might also enjoy

  ALONE Book 1:

  Facing Armageddon

  Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases and had planned for everything.

  It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.

  Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.

  Dave was suddenly alone.

  He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.

  Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?

  This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.

  It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.

  From the author of best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.

  Chapter 1:

  Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.

  Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles rather than rain clouds and foreboding.

  Finally, he’d had enough.

  “Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.

  “I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”

  Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.

  “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

  “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

  “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

  The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

  Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

  Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

  “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

  “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

  Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

  “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

  Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

  “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

  Little Beth made a gagging sound.

  “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

  “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

  Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.

  In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.

  “Okay, here goes.”

  Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.

  It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been Name That Tune champions in another era.

  All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

  Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.

  “Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”

  Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”

  Dave scoffed.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet. Why?”

  “That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet.”

  It was too much for Lindsey.

  “Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”

  She turned to her little sister.

  “Do we have to teach these old people everything?”

  Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.

  Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.

  “Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”

  “No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”

  “I wish you could come with us.”

  “I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Karen get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”

  “Bet I will!”

  Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.

  It was as if he could read her mind.

  “We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.

  He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.

  Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”

  Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”

  Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.

  ALONE, Book 1:

  Facing Armageddon

  is available now on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, selected Hastings book stores, and at other fine booksellers.
/>   Have you checked out Darrell Maloney’s new series,

  The Yellowstone Event?

  Here are some fun facts about the Yellowstone Caldera:

  - It’s a real thing. It really does exist

  - It’s a super volcano simmering just beneath the surface of Yellowstone National Park

  - It has erupted in the past, and will erupt again

  - Scientists believe that when it erupts again it will destroy 20 percent of the United States

  - You do NOT want to be in that 20 percent

  Tony and Hannah are just a couple of high school kids who happen across a woman who will change their lives forever. She’s a carnival fortune teller who warns them of a great calamity soon to befall the United States of America.

  The old woman tells them it will be up to them to tell the world of the impending danger.

  And to save the lives of millions.

  It would be easy to dismiss her warnings as fantasy, except for the fact that she vanishes before their very eyes.

  And so begins a long journey for Tony and Hannah. A journey which involves a great mystery, intrigue and danger. Not to mention threats by a government which should be trying to help them, but instead is trying desperately to keep its secrets hidden.

  *************************

  Please enjoy this preview of

  Darrell Maloney’s new series

  The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:

  FIRE IN THE SKY

  The Yellowstone Event series is available now at Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

  *************************

  “Come on! What do you have to lose?” she cried gleefully as she dragged Tony by his arm through the midway.

  “Um… how about ten bucks?”

  “I’ll give you a kiss.”

  “I’d rather keep the ten bucks.”

  “Excuse me, mister?”