I’d always wanted to write my own post apocalyptic scifi romance series and last year I decided to place the story on a remote colony planet in the Sectors (my interstellar civilization). We’ve been following the characters through three books now and this latest release focuses on Cody the cyborg soldier and Tamsyn the rancher. In this installment of the story the team continues their efforts to (a) reach their veterans’ acres stake further north, where they have supplies waiting and may be able to contact their offworld commander and (b) find out why this zombie outbreak happened on the planet in the first place. And if there’s anything that can be done to resolve the situation!
Of course any road trip in the midst of an apocalyptic situation is going to have difficulties and obstacles…
In this book we revisit a few places other characters passed through in the side novella ESCAPE TO NOWHERE but the primary characters’ experiences there are different from what occurred in the novella.
For one really spooky scene at the hot springs, I drew on a lake where my family used to vacation in upstate NY when I was a kid. There was a pond connected to the lake that was always murky and eerie and when I was writing this scene for Tamsyn, I kept a mental picture of that spot in my mind. I gave myself the shivers with the scene, I have to admit.
There’s a callback to the interstellar zoo in New Damarkal in this book – I’m always fascinated by what happens to zoos when a huge catastrophe hits. I’m so fascinated in fact I do have a future novella in mind for this series which would involve a new character, a zookeeper. But I won’t be writing that for quite a while because after the next and final book of the primary series, RESOLUTION I need a break from zombies! Anyway, the New Damarkal zoo is inspired by the many many trips my family made to the LA Zoo, although of course it doesn’t have alien creatures or zombies, thank goodness.
Cody is my first cyborg and I hope I captured his backstory well enough…
And Tamsyn has to make some hard decisions in this book and I had a lot of emotions writing them…
There isn’t a cliffhanger ending but a Happy For Now, with obviously more challenges ahead. I hope to finish RESOLUTION and release it in late April.
Excerpt – here’s the relatively brief callback to the New Damarkal zoo (which features in an incident in ESCAPE TO NOWHERE):
At first glance New Damarkal seemed normal as its towers rose on the horizon but Cody’s drones revealed the truth as there were smoldering fires, several toppled skyscrapers strewing rubble everywhere, masses of bodies in the streets and infected at every turn. Aside from crudely painted gang signs Cody saw no sign of human presence and for all he knew the tags had been made prior to the virus outbreak.
It was a much needed relief when his drones sent him a holo of quite a different scene.
“Take a look at this,” he said to the other two occupants of the APC as he projected a holo into the clear space.
It was a large park in the center of the city, with badly overgrown landscaping. A small herd of tantoreans moved through the brush with stately grace, stopping to grab leaves from lower branches. There was a large alpha male leading the group, standing 12’ tall or so, and three females, who spent their time watching over a calf. The baby was clumsy and into everything and the mother and aunties were constantly nudging him or her back into their midst.
“I guess they escaped the zoo,” Jeff said as he watched the scene.
“Or the keepers let them out,” Ryan guessed as he leaned down from his post in the gun turret to watch. “Those birds sure aren’t native to Randal Four.” He pointed at a flock of brightly colored birds fishing in the park’s pond, undisturbed by the proximity of the hulking tantoreans.
After a millisecond of research Cody told them, “New Damarkal was renowned for its interstellar zoo and botanical gardens. The list of species is long. Lot of predators.”
“Great,” Jeff said with a laugh. “More hazards to watch out for. Any snakes? You know my feelings about those.”
“Take your pick.” Cody displayed holos of slithering creatures of all types which he found on the zoo’s website cache.
“No thanks. If you don’t want to walk the rest of the way to the base, you’ll shut that off.” Jeff’s tone was mock serious and Cody complied. His captain had a mild case of PTSD from a mission where he’d been trapped in a pit of snakes and he didn’t want to upset his friend.
“I’m glad the poor animals weren’t left trapped in their pens to die though,” Jeff said as the APC raced onward at its best speed. “Even the snakes.”
“I’ll remind you when we’re facing off with some Aldebaran vipers or a nice Komodo dragon from Old Earth,” Ryan said. “Wait a minute, what’s happening now?”
Cody diverted a portion of his attention to the holo from the park. A swarm of infected was making its way across the green and the tantoreans were obviously upset. The small group began trumpeting and their eyes went red. The bull stomped his feet and broke into a headlong run at the swarm, his small herd on his heels. Cody braced himself to see the infected tear into the animals but on the contrary, the tantoreans left a wide swath of destruction in their wake, tossing infected like straws with their trunks and tusks, trampling others into the soft ground. The tantorean bull was on a rampage and the infected had absolutely no sense of self preservation so they kept marching in their shambling fashion, ignoring the devastation the animals were wreaking. Nor did the infected attack the herd, not even the vulnerable baby.
“Let one human stroll by right now and the swarm would be all over him,” Jeff said, watching the scene closely. “So why aren’t the infected attacking the tantoreans? They’re warm blooded and known to be highly intelligent.”
The group of tantoreans ran out of sight into another area of the park and the remaining infected continued their progress.
“Doesn’t make much sense,” Cody agreed. “The infected are too dumb now to remember how to open a door so how do they distinguish between a human and any other animal, as far as when to attack?”
“If they were designed to hunt humans exclusively,” Jeff said in a speculative tone. “That would explain a lot.”
“But it’s a virus infecting the person,” Ryan objected. “Could you design a trait like that into a virus?”
“I couldn’t,” Jeff said with a laugh. “But I wouldn’t put it past some brilliant alien madman scientist to try. How much further to the base?”
“Twenty minutes,” Cody said, closing the park holo and redirecting the drone. He sent it to the zoo for his own satisfaction, to check the enclosures and verify the animals were no longer there. As the APC proceeded through the devastated city, he gave part of his attention to driving, more to the intel from the other drones and a sliver of his bandwidth to the zoo. There were a few carcasses here and there across the zoo grounds but it did appear most had been set free at some point. He looked forward to reporting the news to Tamsyn—and Melly and Mike of course. It was so rare these days to have any good news to share and he knew Tamsyn worried about her own livestock, so she’d surely be pleased to hear the zoo animals were living life large in the Randal Four countryside.
The road to the base’s gates was crowded with abandoned civilian vehicles, which the doughty APC knocked out of the way. Eventually they came to a barricade of military vehicles which had blocked desperate civilians from reaching the dubious safety of the base itself on whatever fateful day these events had occurred.
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JOURNEY (PLANET OF LAST RESORT BOOK THREE) by Veronica Scott
Cyborg soldier Cody Wayne never expected anything more in life than endless missions with his team. Then they were sent to a remote colony world on an undercover mission, which rapidly became something else entirely as they found the planet in the middle of an apocalyptic outbreak. The mysterious epidemic created millions of ‘infected,’ victims who rose from the dead with only one purpose – to create more of themselves and eliminate ordinary humans. Attempting to reach a safe haven halfway across the globe, Cody and his team have ended up on an isolated ranch, where only the woman who owns the place has survived. She calms every nerve in his re-engineered body and makes his heart long for what he never thought he could have. Tamsyn Wendover endured and survived the death and destruction of her small town and the loss of everyone else on her ranch. She just wants to live in solitude and mourn. Then the team of Sectors Special Forces soldiers arrives, seeking a place to rest and repair one of their vehicles. She’s immediately drawn to Cody and his attention pulls her out of her self imposed emotional retreat. Could he be the life partner she’s always dreamed of? But loving him is going to come with hard choices, including leaving her ranch to travel with the team, a doctor and her young brother as they seek answers to the tragedy which has befallen her planet. Will Cody and Tamsyn choose each other in the ruins of the colony? And if Tamsyn decides to leave the shelter of her ranch, can she cope with the dangers and challenges of the ravaged world her home has become? Their shared journey will be fraught with peril but is the love between them enough to overcome the risks of the road? This is a 72K word novel and can be read as a standalone. There is no cliffhanger but the book ends on Happy For Now note.
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