by Daniel Wilde
“We’re going to the surface . . . together . . .”
“With Street and Angel,” I added.
Anta laughed, a deep, happy laugh. It sounded wonderful. “Even with those two around, I think we can find a little alone time, don’t you?” After a pause, she added, more seriously. “We’ll help each other get through this.” Then she leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. I could get used to this.
We’re going to the surface, together. Anta will be with me, but that’s almost as scary as rising to the surface.
There’s still a little shyness between us. But we can work out our relationship, slowly—because there are too many other things to do right now. We’ve got to get ready for our expedition to the surface with the ‘first string’, as Street calls it. And with so much going on, our budding relationship will continue to take a back seat for awhile.
My feelings for her, and my inability to do much about those feelings right now, are irritating, like a pebble in a shoe. Even if the pebble doesn’t hurt at first, it keeps rubbing and rubbing until it hurts so bad you have to finally sit down, remove your shoe, dump the pebble out, and then throw it far away out of spite. Yeah, that’s what this feels like. But I don’t want to get to the point of pain. I think I love her.
In the meantime, it appears that our world will survive! Barely. It’s amazing that less than five months ago, my life and the lives of ten and a half billion people were silently, unknowingly creeping toward a disaster that none of us knew existed, or could have ever fathomed. The greatest disaster since . . . when? Noah and the Flood? What fragile lives we lead.
Now, however, we see a light at the end of this short and disastrous tunnel. Life will go on. We’ll find anybody still living, although it may take months or years, or maybe even lifetimes to do so. What remains of our lives, however, is yet to be seen. Will the remaining population of our world, whatever numbers of us still breathe, be able to come together and form a new world? Will we be able to recreate the peace and harmony that had existed until only months ago?
What of the handful of people stranded on the Moon? What’s to become of them? And I still have a nagging concern about how the plague got free in the bunker just on the verge of a vaccine. I don’t know. I have doubts and suspicions. I know enough about human history and human nature to understand that we, as humans, will fight to survive. Unfortunately, our fighting is often amongst ourselves.
Maybe we’ve learned from lessons of the past. Maybe this human tragedy will bring us together, unlike tragedies of long ago. Maybe, ultimately, we’ll be able to live meaningful lives, once the sorrow and despair run their course. I really, really hope so.
Tomorrow we rise!
The premise of this story is that Germany planned to test a lethal strain of Bacillus anthracis, the etiologic agent of anthrax developed by Japanese scientists, against unsuspecting villagers in Northern Africa, then use it against Allied forces during World War II. I don’t know whether anything like that ever happened. In other words, I made it up. While many of the pieces of information included in this story are factual or based upon factual events, and I have attempted to be as accurate as possible in regard to those events that actually occurred in the past, much of this is the fiction of my mind. This story is not meant to be an historical treatise or anything like it. It is just a story. And it is fiction.
Of course, I spent a great deal of time researching past events. But I cannot vouch for any of my sources. I don’t know whether they are accurate or not. With that in mind, my reading leads me to believe that Nazi Germany’s biological weapon research program was severely limited throughout World War II due to Adolf Hitler’s strong feelings about such weapons. Many of the books and websites I’ve read indicate that Adolf Hitler, German Führer and Reichskanzler, and supreme commander of the German Armed Forces during World War II, initially prohibited the development of biological weapons as a result of his own devastating experiences with chemical weapons during World War I. Again, I don’t know whether that’s accurate, nor does it really matter for purposes of this fictional story.
If my unverified sources are accurate, however, it would appear that Hitler’s stance on the issue of biological warfare appears to have been unpersuasive. As was the case with other issues during that time, it seems that Hitler wasn’t influential enough to compel strict obedience and, with the support of high-ranking Nazi officials, it seems probable that German scientists eventually began biological weapons research. Most historians and political archives (at least those that I looked at) agree, however, that German success with biological weapons was minimal at best.
Joseph Goebbels, German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest associates and most devout followers, accused the British of attempting to introduce yellow fever into India by importing infected mosquitoes from West Africa. I don’t know whether that occurred—I wasn’t around in those days. But several sources state that the British were, indeed, experimenting with at least one organism of biological warfare: Bacillus anthracis.
It appears, again based upon my readings, that only the Japanese successfully used biological weapons during World War II—against Allied forces in China between 1937 and 1945. Although I haven’t come across any other use of biological weapons during World War II, it appears that many countries had active research and development programs, including the United States and the former Soviet Union. It wasn’t until late in the 20th century that the super-powers signed a chemical demilitarization agreement to destroy stockpiles of Mustard gas and other biological weapons that were aging and corroding in storage facilities around the globe, threatening to escape into unsuspecting neighboring communities.
(because it’s my book and I can write as many “author’s notes” as I want)
Long before this book was written or even conceived (back when I was 13 years old), I began writing a book about a group of teenagers who had to survive during a Second Great Depression. My friends (Justin Bath and Brian Martin) helped me write it. In the story, six boys left home to live in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah. They were going to build cabins and hunt for their food. It was going to be an incredible story. We got about 14 pages written, by hand, before we got bored. We had girls to flirt with and BB gun fights to engage in. Seriously, there isn’t time for everything.
Nevertheless, in my young teenage mind, I thought that, even though the reality would be awful, it would have been an amazing adventure. That short-lived dream died, but the idea never left me. Eventually, the dream of writing a book returned. It took me four years to write this book. It took another two years to write the sequel. It may not be the best story ever written (perhaps top 5 :) ), and the writing style may not be everyone’s favorite, but I’m proud of the result.
While this story is vastly different than the original concept 27 years ago, and hopefully a bit more polished, the concept of surviving against the odds is the same.
I had a lot of help getting the story ready to publish, and each of the following people deserve my thanks. Perhaps this little tribute is enough for all of these people to feel loved and appreciated, but I’ll probably send them a free copy of this book too—I’m pretty generous like that.
Anyway, thank you Steve Wilde (or, as I call you, “Dad”). Dad spent hours and hours helping me edit and polish the story. Some of the great ideas, like the hurricane dispersing the disease, were his. That part is pretty cool. So, hat’s off to Dad for that!
Thank you Ron Beach for financial and emotional support. Ron’s praise and support encouraged me greatly, and his cash was quite useful as well.
I also had a few people test-read the book and offer valuable insight into the various facets of the plot and characters. These people also contributed to the editing process in various ways. Thank you Jamie Richens Kirkham, Susan Niedert, Jac Cooper, and Brandan Morgan. My daughter (Sage) and my son (Roston) also tried to read it and g
ive me feedback, but in the end, they decided that their own agendas were more important than mine—typical teenagers.
Thank you to my son, Roston, who spent a cold weekend in the desert with me taking pictures, one of which ended up as the cover for this book. Those are even his footprints in the sand!
I also want to thank the guys at IndieBookLauncher.com for their help getting a cover designed and this published and out there for you to read.
Finally, I want to thank my wife, Chandi. While she didn’t offer much help with the story itself, she happily (I think) listened to me talk about it over and over and over again. She encouraged me and let me stay late at the office to write since doing so at home would have been fruitless (remember, I have a lot of kids).
Now, go read the second book. It’s even better. I know that self-endorsement is no endorsement at all, but seriously, the second book is better. Take a look below at these awesome passages from book 2, “Tomorrow We Rise”! (You see what I did there? Last line of book 1 is the title of book 2. Clever, huh?!)
“Look,” she replied, shining the flashlight onto the floor at her feet.
I peeked around her shoulder into the hallway, placing my hand on the door frame. My little finger slipped into a small hole, about the size of a pea. Dried blood stained the floor immediately at our feet, and the walls on both sides of the hall. Anta and I each took a small step backward away from it. Several seconds later, having gathered my nerves, I quietly stepped around Anta and entered the hallway.
A short way down the hall to the right I came upon the shadowy remains of conflict. Two long streaks of dark, dry blood ran parallel to each other along the hallway floor for several meters. At the end of the left-most streak sat a lone Adidas tennis shoe. Just beyond the shoe, a silver Smith & Wesson handgun lay on the floor in what was once, surely, a large puddle of blood. It looked as though a body had been dragged down the hallway.
“What do you think happened here?” Anta asked, quietly.
“Everything’s still clear from our vantage point,” Hasani said quietly though Shift’s MEHD. “Nothing outside yet. Wait, the door’s opening. Looks like your guy.”
“Keep an eye on him,” Shift said. “If you see anything approaching, even a long way off, let me know ASAP so I can get him out of there.”
“Got it. He’s at the rear tires now. He knows what he’s looking for, right?”
“Yeah, we went through it carefully,” Shift answered.
“Okay, he’s moving forward now.”
“Everything still look good out there?”
“Yeah, still good . . . No, not good. I can see them. They’re moving very fast.”
“Andrew!” Shift called out through the MEHD. “Get in here now!”
Andrew didn’t hear Shift issue the warning. Communications had just gone down, but nobody knew it yet. Andrew was alone, unknowing, and the Skins were almost on top of him.
Andrew saw them before they saw him. He wondered why he hadn’t been warned as he saw the horde of demons climbing over rooftops and coming around the buildings on both sides of him. Then they saw him. Andrew was already running toward the bay doors. If he could get there, if he could get inside, he would be okay. His heart raced and his blood pumped as he approached the doors. But the horde was moving too fast—they could smell his blood. They were right behind him. He turned and fired several shots into the throng as he ran backward toward the doors. Moments later, he ran into the door, cracking his elbow on the hard metal casing. Still firing, he reached behind him, sending pain up through his elbow and into his shoulder. He was searching for the sensor. He almost touched it.
“Oh shite!” Hasani cried out as he watched the naked human-like beasts swarm over the man below on the tarmac. The man had been so close—he was almost there. But the Skins were so fast. Hasani had never seen anything like it. He’d heard what the others had told them about the Skins, but seeing it was something entirely different. Then the man rose from the ground, reached out his hand, and touched the door sensor. It opened.
“They’re inside!” Jonas yelled down the corridor to the people coming toward him. “Run!”
I’m Dan. I’m writing this myself because I couldn’t persuade anybody to make me seem as awesome as I hope to make myself appear.
I grew up in Taylorsville, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. My teenage years were spent skiing, golfing, mountain biking, hiking and camping (and attending high school now and then). After high school, I spent two years in Scotland on a religious service mission. During college, I met and married Chandi; we started our family shortly after that. I graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in mass communications. Since the best job I could possibly hope to land with that degree would be writing obituaries, I went to law school in San Diego, California. Boogie boarding became my favorite pastime. I graduated from law school in 2007 and was offered a sweet job at a small firm in St. George, Utah, in the southwest corner of the state. I practice law in both California and Utah.
I’ve been in St. George with my family for 10 years now. It’s hot here. I’m perspiring just thinking about it. But my life couldn’t be better. I’m a husband and a father of six. My wife and kids are amazing and keep me busy and young-ish. My wife is hot. I’m a lawyer, a pianist, a percussionist, a Sunday School teacher, a soccer dad, an armchair quarterback, an outdoor enthusiast, and now, an “author”. In the very little free time I have, I camp, cliff-jump, kayak, golf, do yardwork, and hike with my family. On the rare occasion I have free time after all of that, I write. That’s why it took me so long to get this story out.
Keep up with me at www.danielpwilde.com, or www.facebook.com/danielpwildeTKS, or e-mail me at [email protected].
Today We Die (The Killing Sands, Book 1)
Kindle Edition
Converted by IndieBookLauncher.com
Kindle edition ISBN: 978-1-77342-014-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-77342-015-8
Copyright 2017 Daniel P. Wilde, all rights reserved.