Excerpts from
SAUL TANPEPPER’S DISASTER SURVIVAL SERIES
CONTAIN
Book 1 of the BUNKER 12 series
The bus engine keeps chugging, a low rhythmic thing, like the growl of a half-rabid dog, waiting... waiting. Steady now steady now steady... steady... steady.
The creatures act as if they don't know we're here.
The stink of burning flesh pinches my nose. Their hands sear and blister on the sun-baked pavement. Why don't they feel it? How can they not cry out with pain, or when the broken glass from the shattered windshields slices open their palms?
Because they're gone, Finn, the ghost of my father's voice whispers in my head. Words uttered just seventy-two hours before, words I'd refused to believe until the scene before us resurrects them. Whatever made them human is gone, stripped away by whatever disease now courses through their veins. They're nothing but empty shells now.
Filled with a sickness that seeks only to spread itself. And when challenged, to utterly destroy.
A single touch, that's all it takes. Skin to skin contact. So easy to execute, seemingly so simple to prevent, yet almost impossible to avoid.
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CHINA
Book 1 of THE FLENSE series
The lead boy sneered. His lips were crusted white, just like all the others’, and the rancid smell of his breath cut through the stink of the dead. “They gone, dead. Not dead. You leave.”
Not dead? Angel felt a chill crawl up her spine.
“You should not come here or you be dead, too.”
“Look,” she said after a moment, “whatever it is you’re doing here, we don’t care about that. All we’re trying to do is understand why the government hasn’t stepped in to help. I fear there may be an outbreak of disease, cholera. Surely you must be feeling—”
“There no disease! We not sick!”
Angel’s gaze flicked from one face to the next. The signs were obvious, the dehydration in their sunken eyes, in the bluish tinge to their skin. The split and bleeding lips. These boys were sick, and she pointed it out to them. “You need medical care, antibiotics. When was the last time you had clean water? Or a proper meal?”
But the leader just shook his head. Fear flickered across his face. “You go! Now. Before dark.”
“What happens after nightfall?” DeBryan asked, his eyes narrowing.
The leader turned to him but didn’t answer.
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FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
Book 1 of the SCORCHED EARTH series
Zander’s arms shook with fatigue. He knew he still had to get Song out of the ditch and over the rail. If he could just do that and make it to the tunnel, away from the approaching flames, they might have a chance.
“Where’s Sykes?” Crawford shouted, as another hot gust blasted them.
A shower of embers rained upon the road a hundred feet away. They could feel the heat of the fire but not yet see it.
Crawford ripped his mask off and hurled it away. “Where the hell did he go? Wayne!” he screamed, jogging uncertainly in the direction of the tunnel. “Lieutenant Sykes!” He turned around again toward the Halston end of the valley, and his mouth dropped open. “Oh no,” was all he managed to get out before giant ropes of flame curled around the next bend in the road and began to wrap around the trees.
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