Desolate - The Complete Trilogy

by Robert Brumm

  Whatever sort of government we come up with in this new world, the thought of helping shape it really appeals to me. I only want what’s best for Emily and my new baby. I hope they get to live long and happy lives.

  I pulled my bike up to the market, smiling and nodding at the rest of the familiar Friday faces. As I took the bags out of my bike trailer and headed for the dairy booth, hoping to score some extra milk, it occurred to me how truly happy I was. Probably for the first time in my entire life. For once I have it all. I only needed the world to end to get it.

  Speaking of laptop batteries, they shut down the power over an hour ago and the little meter thingy in the corner says I only have 15% juice left. It’s late and I should get upstairs to bed with my wife.

  Maybe I shouldn’t bother dredging up the past, recounting the horrors and the hard times. What’s the point really? I envy my unborn child in a way. He or she won’t be haunted by old memories, longing for loved ones who perished, remembering the old ways of life that are long gone.

  In a way, all of us survivors are broken. The bond that unites us, this unexplained immunity from death that almost wiped out our race, also curses us. We can’t shake the past, the low-burning desire to somehow get things back to normal, as if none of this happened in the first place. I’ve felt it myself. Despite living in this nice house, with my two girls who love me, I can’t completely let go of the notion that there’s something better out there. That if I traveled far and long enough, just maybe I’d reach a city one day where everything truly was back to normal. Two hundred channels on the cable box, online shopping, test-driving new cars, movie premieres, holiday sales, smart phone apps, going on vacation, Hollywood gossip. I have to remind myself none of that stuff was important. It was just clutter we surrounded ourselves with and pretended it mattered. Maybe we ran out of problems. Real problems like finding enough calories to survive and clean water to drink.

  What really matters is people. It’s the one thing from the old world worthy of saving.

  But it’s human nature, I suppose. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Corny cliché, but I’ve found it’s true. That’s how clichés come to fruition after all. Unfortunately, some of my fellow residents can’t seem to shake it. We’ve had a few leave recently. Some take their time to say goodbye and politely ignore our pleas to stay, others simply vanish. I hope they find what it is they think they’re looking for, but I wish I knew for sure they won’t. It would help me sleep better at night.

  Howard Bell

  February 13, 2015

  Who has two thumbs and loves to hear from readers? This guy! Okay, that joke doesn’t really work well in print but I really do love to hear from readers. Reach out and say hello!

  Website: robertbrumm.com

  Twitter: @robertbrumm

  Facebook: facebook.com/rbrumm73

  Email: rb@robertbrumm.com

  Thanks to my editor, Sharon K. Garner. www.sharonkgarner.com

  More special thanks to my beta readers – Bryan Harms, Jill Connley,

  Paulina Tharaldson,Mike Anderson, Max Zaoui, and Atina Tan

  And now…a note from the author.

  I hope you enjoyed reading the adventures of Howard “Don’t call me Howie” Bell (good one, Colby). It certainly was an adventure for me to write. If you’ve come this far, perhaps you’re interested in some of the “behind the scenes” insights behind the story. What follows is probably pretentious, definitely self-indulgent, and most certainly boring. I’m mostly writing this for myself and fans who are really into the story and want to know more. I’d like to think there’s at least one out there (I’m waving at you right now).

  Desolate started out as a very simple desire of mine to write a prison story. I have a couple of irrational fears. One of them involves razor blades slicing open the veins on the top of my feet and the other involves me getting sent to the big house. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket so the chances of me getting sent up the river (I’m going for as many prison clichés as possible) are pretty slim. But what if I committed a crime of passion? What if I was convicted of a crime I didn’t commit? It happened to the A-Team. It could happen to me.

  So, basically, I wanted to drop some poor schmuck who wouldn’t last one day, like me, into the slammer. Then I would sit back and watch what happened to him. I knew what he did to get there, I just didn’t have a story for what happened to him once he arrived.

  To make things a little more interesting, I decided to send poor Howard to a prison camp off the coast of Antarctica. The island is called Desolate Island although I only refer to it by name once. It’s based on a real island off the coast of Antarctica named Deception Island. Like my island, it’s horseshoe shaped and was used for whaling back in the day. Everything else I made up. Apparently the real island is quite the tourist destination because of its natural hot springs.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember why I chose to have the prison camp full of US and UK prisoners, but it’s probably Guy Ritchie’s fault. When I started writing the first book it was shortly after I’d watched Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for the hundredth time. It’s one of my favorite movies and I just can’t get enough of the dialogue of all those colorful blokes from the East End of London. I figured I’d toss in a couple of cockney characters to liven things up, I suppose, and to this day it still makes me cringe. If I had it to do over again, I would tone down Reg’s dialect and probably craft him more like Richard Hammond from Top Gear and leave out all that slang. At the time, it never occurred to me that people in the UK might, you know, actually read this story. As of this writing, I’ve received nary a complaint or criticism from my neighbors across the pond. Either I got Reg’s character spot on (unlikely) or they’re too polite to say anything (likely).

  Howard Bell started out as Ron Jackson. By the time I got to the end I really didn’t care for that name so I made the switch. After the book’s initial release I found out I’d missed a reference to “Little Ronny,” talking about Howard as a child. Thanks to my sister Kathie for pointing that out so I could fix it. Oops!

  What can I say about Carl except that I love that man? I had fun creating that foul-mouthed, racist, greasy, white-trash rapist. I only wish I hadn’t killed him off so I could have played with him some more. Actually, while writing Desolate 3, I considered tossing in a flashback just so I could hang out with Carl again. Perhaps a prequel one day. Whenever I pictured Carl, I always saw him as Viggo Mortensen playing Aragon in the Lord of the Rings. Long hair, scruffy beard, and oh so dreamy. Carl was initially named Elroy. No comment there.

  When I finished Desolate, I never intended to write a sequel. Howard bled out and died there in the snow, and my intent was to let the reader decide what happened next. Liz and the others carried the virus to the mainland?! Cue the dramatic music. At the last minute I decided to let Howard live and tossed him into the helicopter with Liz – just in case.

  I thought about possible sequel scenarios for months. I wasn’t excited about it at all, because the only plausible outcome I saw was a worldwide pandemic that wiped out most of the human race. I’m really sort of sick of the whole dystopia post-Armageddon genre, so that didn’t appeal to me at all. Don’t get me started on zombies, but that’s a whole other subject.

  So I decide to narrow the scope and point the telescope directly at Howard. I’m a big fan of survival stories and I wanted to see how he could cope being stranded in the jungle.

  Quick side note: My love of survival stories is one of the reasons the prison camp was set off the coast of Antarctica. At the time, I was doing some reading about Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s failed attempt to reach the south pole and the incredible story of how he and his crew survived. Fascinating story.

  Why did I pick Jamaica? Looking at a map, I guessed the flight path from Rio Grande to Atlanta would probably pass over Jamaica. If not directly, then darn close. Especially if the pilot flipped out and changed the course because h
e wanted to land.

  The other reason is, I’ve been to Jamaica with my wife, Tammy. I was only there for a week and my experience consisted of riding from the airport in Montego Bay to our resort in Ocho Rios and back to the airport again. There may have been an incident of vomiting on the clothing-optional beach and passing out in our room by 2:00 p.m., but I couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate that into the story.

  The town of Boones Run, Oswald Regional Hospital, and the hotels, resorts, stores, and locations I wrote about are fictitious.

  Ketch, the gun-toting drug dealer who almost killed Howard, was inspired by Breaking Bad, one of my favorite shows. One of the most intense TV-watching experiences I’ve ever had was watching crazy Tuco interact with Walt and Jessie. I especially loved it when they were kidnapped and Tuco intended to take them to Mexico. I tried to capture that same experience– sitting in terror while a dangerous nut in front of you could snap at any time.

  A little note about Jamaican dialogue. Like my ignorant American attempts at writing cockney, I know I took a chance with my Jamaican characters. On one hand, I didn’t want them talking “normal” because it wouldn’t seem authentic. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go overboard and try to convey their accents so heavily that it became distracting. I’ve read some books involving characters from the deep South where the dialogue was almost unreadable and it slowed down the story too much.

  I hope I did a decent job, and I can only apologize in advance to any Jamaican readers out there who must think I’m an idiot. I admit I referred to the Web for some Jamaican slang, and I hope I didn’t muck it up too badly. Irie?

  Speaking of mucking up, I wrote myself into corners many times in the series, especially when it involved medical procedures and equipment. All of it is based on lazy research, personal experiences, and best guesses. I promise I won’t be offended if actual medical professionals point out any glaring errors. That goes for any facts, as a matter of fact. Drop me an e-mail.

  Speaking of writing myself into corners, did you enjoy the cliffhanger at the end of Desolate 2? So did I, but I didn’t know what would happen next either. It’s a terrifying feeling when you’ve published part two of a series, dropped a cliffhanger ending into your readers’ laps, knowing they are waiting for more…and not having a damn idea what’s coming next. This went on for about six months.

  After hemming and hawing, I decided to stop procrastinating and just hammer out a prologue. I wanted to tell the story of what led up to the ship’s crash landing, and give a little more insight into the critter that knocked up poor Howard. Once the prologue was done, I just picked up where I left off. My characters were kind enough to show me what happened next all on their own.

  A love interest for Howard? Oh, brother. Trust me, I didn’t invent Soo Kim just so I could toss in a little romance to please my female readers. I didn’t know how the story would end but I did know I wanted a happy ending. I wanted Howard to live happily ever after with Emily, and I figured he deserved another shot at finding true love. Since my hapless surgical intern, Jake Wilson, needed a little help, in came my nurse practitioner from San Francisco. Soo and Howard make a good couple, don’t you think?

  Dave Penske was another favorite of mine, and I had a hard time steering the story away from him and back to Howard once in a while. By now we can all agree I excel at writing myself into corners and I did a little of that with Dave, Ann, Minnie, and Tre. I tossed them in at the end of Desolate 2 without much thought, and when I started writing the third book I realized I had too many characters to keep track of.

  Instead of taking the time to develop these characters, I took the easy way out and killed most of them off. Minnie almost right off the bat, but I held out on Tre and Ann for a while. Ann was easy enough for me to wrap my head around as a somewhat surly teenaged girl from Canada, but Tre remains a mystery to me. Other than the brief backstory I gave him at the end of Desolate 2, I never really got a good feeling for him–and I think it shows. That’s what I get for creating people and not thinking it through, I suppose.

  If I was going to give Howard a happy ending then it stands to reason he’d need to end up in a happy place. No offense to Jamaica, but I think if I were stranded in a different country at the end of the world as we know it, I would always feel the need to try and get home. So I gave Soo some boat-driving skills and sent them off to Florida.

  I don’t know a damn thing about boats, so I had to rely on some of that lazy research we talked about earlier. There’s an old saying: “Write what you know.” What I know is pretty dull. If there’s a demand for fiction about promoting domain controllers or the correct pin-out for a cat-6 Ethernet cable, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll keep bullshitting and pretend I know what I’m talking about. So all you yacht owners out there can just settle down.

  Why Jupiter Florida, to be the last pocket of civilization? Well, it’s close to Miami, it’s got a cool name, and that’s about it. It certainly isn’t home to any hotshot writers. None at all. I totally made that up.

  As I’m typing this, Desolate 3 – Redemption won’t be released for a while, and I’m already hearing whispers from beta readers on how I left the ending open to the possibility of another sequel. As a writer I’m very flattered that anybody would want more of the story, but I can assure you that’s it from me. What sort of society will Howard and his fellow survivors craft? What kind of woman will Emily grow up to be? What exactly is Dave up to on that private island of his? I’ll leave that up to you and your imagination.

  That’s enough rambling from me. Thanks for reading.

  Robert Brumm

  February 2013

  And for those of you who have read this far…

  Epilogue, Part Three

  Real Admiral Flie sat upright in his chair and stretched his back. Checking the time on his tabletop chronograph, he groaned and spun the chair to face the porthole behind his desk. It had been a brutally long cycle, too many of them all part of a brutally long deployment. Despite what he kept telling his family and peers, the yarwens were catching up and retirement dominated his thoughts of late.

  Fortunately for the weary admiral, the Federate Flagship Dionysus and the rest of the fifth fleet were due to dock at Emperors Station in just a few cycles. After a debriefing session with Fleet Admiral Sche, he would finally go on leave and enjoy some much earned rest. Although he missed his wife and family, he looked forward to a few cycles with his mistress first before heading for home on the planet’s surface. She’d sent him a private message earlier letting him know their reservations for one of the station’s suites was placed. Flie was several yarwens past retirement age but still took pride in his bedroom prowess and felt his excitement rise as he gazed out the porthole.

  The intercom tone ripped the admiral out of his lust-filled daydreams. He sat forward in his chair and mashed the receiver button.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “There are two gentlemen to see you, Mr. Flie.” The voice of his assistant over the speaker had a nervous edge to it. He’d worked for Flie long enough to know the admiral didn’t like being disturbed this close to the dinner hour. “Commander Murfow and Junior Crew Officer Aikon.”

  “Tell Murfow whatever he thinks is so important can wait for the next staff meeting. I’m in no state for visitors.” He drummed his fingers on his desk, impatiently waiting for a response.

  “I told Mr. Murfow those very words but he insists the matter is urgent and he must see you immediately.”

  Flie rubbed his face and sighed. “Very well, send them in.”

  The hatched opened before the admiral finished depressing the intercom button and the two men hurried in. Commander Murfow stood at attention beside the nervous-looking junior officer Flie didn’t recognize and whose name slipped his mind.

  “Apologies for the intrusion, Mr. Flie,” Murfow said. “I have some information I think you’ll find interesting and I thought it best not to wait for next cycle’s staff meeting.”


  Admiral Flie made of a point of not responding right away and eyed both men as they stared straight ahead over his shoulder. A bead of sweat ran down the junior officer’s face. Flie finally sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “And what information is it that you deem so important?”

  “Junior Crew Officer Aikon made an interesting discovery.” The commander turned to the junior officer who looked properly terrified. It was obvious he had assumed the commander would do most of the talking on his behalf.

  “Uh, yessir,” Aikon stuttered. “This morning, I was running deep catalog scans of the systems in the Q sector, per standard procedure. It was uneventful until I came across an old Federate distress signal signature. I triangulated the signal and found it originated from a planet in the R system, several hundred light-yarwens away.” Aikon paused for a moment and risked a glanced at the admiral. Flie just stared at him with no signs of emotion.

  “The signal hadn’t transmitted for quite some time of course, but we think it came from an old Federate research vessel on the planet’s surface.”

  “Junior officer, this is all very interesting but I hardly think it’s an issue that concerns me,” Flie said. “If you have a point, I suggest you get to it.”