Plague Dance by Michael Barnette
A Dragon Dance Cycle novella>br> Immortal Heroes Series
Release date TBA through Shadowfire Press


Plague Dance by Michael Barnette

Blurb: After a mutated strain of Ebola ended the world as we know it, Staff Sergeant Deshawn Roberts finds himself alone and longing for companionship.

Cory Wilson, one time office worker, finds himself a captive of Roderick, King of the Lone Star Empire. It's a life of slavery worse than death, and Cory escapes to find himself on the run.

Brought together by chance, can these two men survive in the harsh reality of post Collapse America, and will they find the love they both crave?

Excerpt A torrent poured forth from the darkened sky, the pounding drops intermingled with the chattering sounds of hail on the windows. Bursts of lightning shattered the night, bright as the explosions in an embattled city.

Deshawn Roberts stared out at the fury of nature, wondering who else might be out there witnessing the storm. Wondering if he might be the only one left after the outbreak of Ebola tore through the country leaving millions dead.

Millions that included almost everyone else on the base where he'd been stationed.

Other than himself he didn't know who else might have survived the pandemic that had swept the US-- the entire world--and left more people dead than living.

The barracks where he'd lived with the rest of his platoon was empty, the rest of the men he'd liked, and those he'd tolerated-- one he'd outright detested-- were dead. Lying in the mass grave he'd managed to dig with a backhoe from a construction site, a subdivision that would never be finished.

There was no one left to do the work, and no one alive to buy the half finished houses anyway.

Of the hundreds of people who'd lived at the base, he was the only one left.

Him and the echoing silence.

He braced his forearms against the window sill, stared out at the raging storm.

Lonely.

He craved the sound of a human voice. The camaraderie of other soldiers, of men he knew, missed.

A few others had survived, a couple men from a different platoon, one of the officers. But they'd gone to find their families and no one had tried to prevent it. Not after captain Ferrel had killed himself in the bedroom of his home, surrounded by his Ebola murdered family. There wasn't much point in saying anything to them about duty or remaining to guard the base. Not after the government collapsed.

That's what the media had begun to call it in the last few struggling days of the United States. The Collapse. The end of civilization as everyone knew it. Even then the reports of warlords rising to power were coming in. Men-- women too-- carving out a niche in the desolate land.

He wondered if any of the men had reached their homes. Wondered if they'd found anyone alive if they had.

Deshawn sighed, gaze riveted on the wild night, the storm torn desolation beyond the glass and came to a decision.

At first light he would load up a Humvee with supplies and head out. There wasn't any reason to remain at the base. No one left to care what he did or whether he remained loyal to his oath as a soldier.

And sooner or later other survivors would show up. Survivors he might not want to meet. Like those warlord types that the last few newscasts he'd seen talked about. He'd heard a few radio broadcasts after that, the station running on a generator for a few days. The last disc-jockey left for hundreds of miles talking himself hoarse, passing on any information he received, broadcasting rumors about the self-proclaimed King of the Lone Star Empire, some former military guy named Roderick raising an army and capturing people. People he forced to work for him, women he turned into slaves, the pretty ones forced into lives of slave prostitution.

Then the station went silent. Either out of fuel for the generator or silenced by one of the warlords, Deshawn didn't know and he'd probably never find out.

It hardly mattered in the long run.

The world had gone from a thriving global economy, from civilized high-tech to a barbaric age in the span of under a month's time.

There were some really bad customers out there, prowling the post-Collapse landscape. People he had no desire to meet. Nor any desire to join in their egomaniacal quest for power.

"Rain, rain go away," he murmured to himself before turning from the hammering rain and hail to get some sleep.

Sure as sunrise, the next morning he climbed out of bed, loaded up the Humvee and rolled out into the new world created by the Hand of Fate at a wink from Old Man Death.

---- Set in the same world as Apocalypse Dance, Gift Wrapped Dragon, Games Dragons Play and the soon to be written Hawk's Dance, Tiger Dance and Apocalypse Dragon, Plague Dance features all new characters in this world setting.

Availabl now at Shadowfire Press
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