Elton John once sang, "And all this science, I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week." That's how it is when you're a Crash Diver: you don't need to understand blue holes or how they differ from wormholes and black holes or what a mobius mirror does-only that it must work, every time-because, at the end of the day, that isn't your job. Your job is to be a guinea pig: to be shot into the vortex at near light speed and experience what effect blue hole-assisted mirror travel has on the human body and psyche. Your job is to penetrate to whatever depth they've set the mirror-and, if you're lucky, to enter that mirror and get bounced back. It hasn't always been like this. Before there was Zebra Station-with its luxurious gravity centrifuge and its row of black and yellow delta divers hanging like bats from the launch jib-there was Blue One, a sparsely-manned outpost which had sent the first human souls into the maw of the blue hole, men who had come back white-haired and emaciated, debilitated-mentally and physically-mad. The Crash Diver Program changed all that. From now on only specially-trained pilots would be sent into the Hole, pilots who had the benefit of the first men's experiences as well as spacecraft designed specifically for the task. A lot was learned in a very short time-one of these things was that men who entered the vortex experienced a series of hallucinations, or Dive Visions, in which they briefly felt they had become someone or something else: a soldier in the Holy Roman Army, say, or a person of the opposite sex. Some even purported to have become animals or alien lifeforms-it was the latter which had apparently driven the men of Blue One clinically insane.

Crash Dive

"You're worried about him, aren't you?"Williams didn't turn around. "Yeah. I guess I am." He exhaled cigar smoke. "It's not like him to be so .""Morose?""Yeah. I guess that's it. You know, he's been at that pond almost since we got here . just drinking and staring . completely oblivious. Remember how I told you that neither of us could recall our previous lives? Well, maybe he's recalling ." He paused, struggling to find the right words. "A different state of being. A different incarnation. I think he was a man once. A man who lived for a very long time.""A lonely man, then .""Yes. Sort of a last man standing. And I think when we met . he rediscovered something he'd been missing for a long time.""Friendship. Someone to talk to, " she said."More than that. A reason to live. I-I've felt it myself. All those weeks, months, spent walking alone. I told you about Tanelorn. Well that was what we called our reason to live . our reason for putting one foot in front of the other. Because without that .""'Gazelle Theory, '" she said."What?"She laughed a little. "Something my husband used to say. It means, 'move or die.'"He laughed a little himself. "That's good. 'Move or die.' Whether it's a physical death or an emotional one." He stared at Ank in the gloaming before another hand touched him, this time Luna. "Is Ank all right?"

A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend: "Blues for a Drifter" - A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend (A Serialized Novel), #4

And then we waited, watching the trucks with their billowing flags slowly move along the ridge, watching them go. Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show / With some smart-ass New York Jew / The Jew laughed at Lester Maddox / And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too . I heard gunshots-nothing major, just some idiot in the Tucker train shooting at the sky. So I went to the park and I took some paper along / And that's where I made this song . And then it started, the Apache firing two Hellfire missiles which hit a group of pickups at the start of the train and instantly blew them to pieces, glass and shrapnel flying, a body tumbling in the air. We talk real funny down here / We drink too much, we laugh too loud / We're too dumb to make it in no northern town . Two more missiles fired, this time at the other end of the train, blowing pickups and blue flags into the air, sending a cab higher than anything else-like the turrets of those Iraqi tanks in the first Gulf War-hurling a Rugged Terrain tire along the ridge, which eventually rolled down the hill. We're keeping the niggers down . More missiles, like scaled-up bottle rockets: hitting the column like hammers, making fireballs of King Cabs and beds of people; spitting from the chopper's hardpoints like fireworks, like flairs, incinerating skin and catching hair on fire, I knew, and didn't care, obliterating pennants and banners. We're rednecks, we're rednecks / We don't know our ass from a hole in the ground . Until he'd finally fired everything: Hellfires and Hydras, Stingers and Spikes, all of them hissing and screaming, finding their targets; all of them lighting the ridge up like the Fourth of July, or maybe the volcano at The Mirage, in Las Vegas, each making our world safer and saner and more secure-more righteous, more lost. Each bringing smoke and silence and peace-like the lights in the sky themselves-to the war-torn hills of Earth.

The Once and Future Kings

First came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the dinosaur apocalypse ... How did it all begin? That depends on where you were and who you ask. In some places it started with the weather-which quickly became unstable and began behaving in impossible ways. In still others it started with the lights in the sky, which shifted and pulsed and could not be explained. Elsewhere it started with the disappearances: one here, a few there, but increasing in occurrence until fully three quarters of the population had vanished. Either way, there is one thing on which everyone agrees-it didn't take long for the prehistoric flora and fauna to start showing up (often appearing right where someone was standing, in which case the two were fused, spliced, amalgamated). It didn't take long for the great Time-displacement called the Flashback-which was brief but had aftershocks, like an earthquake-to change the face of the earth. Nor for the stories, some long and others short, some from before the maelstrom (and resulting societal collapse) and others after, to be recorded. Welcome to the world of the Flashback, a world in which man's cities have become overgrown jungles and extinct animals wander the ruins. You can survive here, if you're lucky, and if you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time--which is everywhere, all the time. But what you'll never do is remain the same, for this is a world whose very purpose is to challenge you, for better or for worse. It is a world where frightened commuters will do battle with murderous bikers even as primordial monsters close in, and others will take refuge in an underground theme park only to find their worst enemy is themselves. Where ordinary people-ne'er-do-wells on a cross-country motorcycle trip, a woman on a redeye flight to Hell, a sensitive boy stricken with visions of what's to come--will find themselves in extraordinary situations, and a gunslinger and his telekinetic ankylosaurus will embark on a dangerous quest. A world where travelers will be trapped with an unravelling President of the United States and a band of survivors will face roving packs of monsters and men in post-apocalyptic Seattle; where rioting teenagers will face deadly predators (as well as their own demons) while ransacking the nation's capital; where a Native-American warrior will seek to bury his past--and offer an elegy for all the Earth--in what remains of Las Vegas. In short, it is a world where anything can and will happen. So take a deep dive into these loosely connected tales of the Dinosaur Apocalypse (each of which can be read individually or as a part of the greater saga): tales of wonder and terror, death and survival, blood and beauty. Do it today, before the apocalypse comes.

Beyond the Flashback: The Flashback/Dinosaur Apocalypse Trilogy, Book Three - The Flashback Trilogy, #3

After the Flashback: The Flashback/Dinosaur Apocalypse Trilogy, Book Two - The Flashback Trilogy, #2

The final book in the Flashback Saga ... They streamed out from the tree line in a veritable blitzkrieg, the guns of the tanks rotating and firing, the foot soldiers alternately taking cover behind vehicles and squeezing off bursts, the raptors and triceratops and stegosaurs charging-as Red and Charlotte and Roger and Savanna continued shooting and the children ran ammo and Bella lit the gasoline trenches, as Gojira and the clerk prepared shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. As hundreds of others joined the battle belatedly and began to kill and to be killed. And then they were there; they were at the gates, and the triceratops and stegosaurs had waded into the burning trenches and begun serving as bridges-sacrificing themselves so that the raptors and the foot soldiers could cross-even as a column of bulldozers fanned out along the perimeter and prepared to break the lines for good: dropping their blades-which rattled and clinked against the hail of gunfire-revving their engines, spewing black smoke."Bayonets!" cried Red as the raptors fell upon them, thrusting his own so that it skewered one of the dinosaurs like a shish kabob even before he used its own weight and momentum to swing it over and behind himself.

Flashback Twilight - The Flashback Saga, #4

She supposed it was what they-or at least Sting of The Police-would have called synchronicity: that twangy guitar and soft-pedaled keyboard emanating so clearly from the RV's speakers as she ascended the vehicle's aluminum ladder. All she knew was that the song matched her mood perfectly, absurdly, as Karen Carpenter sang, Such a feeling's comin' over me / There is wonder in most everything I see .She gained the RV's roof and looked around: at the motor homes being corralled in the parking lot of Bluebeard's Cove, at the velociraptors gathered like spectators outside the fence, at the brontosaurus mulling its cypress leaves nearby and the pterodactyls circling in the blood-red sky and the volcano spewing lava not thirty miles away. Not a cloud in the sky / Got the sun in my eyes / And I / Won't be surprised if it's a dream .

Flashback Dawn (A Serialized Novel), Part 4: "Charlotte" - Flashback Dawn: A Serialized Novel, #4

A two-way radio seated in a battery-charger on the counter suddenly squawks to life, and Beth jumps. She catches bits and pieces of a broken transmission-something about having "secured grid 12" and "Zebra Base confirms I. A. C. entering grid 7"-before an old woman snatches it up, turning it off, and apologizes for the noise. The two women quickly warm to each other as Beth pays for a room and is given a key. The old clerk encourages her to use the pool before "Andy" closes it for the night. Beth says she will, indeed. As she leaves, the woman asks, "How's it feel?"Beth just looks at her. "I'm sorry?""Your bundle of joy, there. How's it feel?"Beth is taken aback. "But I'm not even showing!"The old woman smiles. "It shows in your eyes. Your face.""It's terrifying, " Beth says at last. "Being an expectant mother . isn't at all like what I expected."The woman seems to think about this. "Nothing ever is. And nothing's ever easy, or cheap. But make no mistake: that's a gift from above you got there."

Get It Out of Me | A Horror Novel

When a black road grader begins stalking the streets of Schenectady, NY, its residents soon find that the road to Hell is paved ... in blood!Detective Rowe: Let's go back now-to when you first saw it move. Is that all right?Westbrook: Sure. Like I said, I'd just woken up from the dream when I heard it, just rumbling across the field where they'd been working on the road-Detective Rowe: The I-890-North Schenectady Corridor. Westbrook: Sure, I guess. So I went to my window-you know, to see what was going on, and saw it sputtering to a stop near the office trailers and other equipment-which were all covered in snow-just shutting down with a rattle, like it had been running for a long time. That's when I first noticed it, how clean it was-there was no snow on it at all. Like-Detective Rowe: But it was there when you went to sleep, isn't that correct?Westbrook: Yes, of course. Covered in snow. It hadn't moved since December, when they had that accident-you know, where the worker was killed. Detective Rowe: Clarke. The foreman. I seem to recall they had several accidents; including when they rammed into that layer of concrete. Westbrook: (inaudible)Detective Rowe: What?Westbrook: The Meyers. James and Mia. That's where the concrete was at. I used to talk with them sometimes, before the accid-Detective Rowe: You knew them?Westbrook: Before the traffic accident. The one with the semi. Last summer. Detective Rowe: Yes, I seem to recall that too. Something about them accelerating out of control-Westbrook: I think they did it. Detective Rowe: I'm sorry?Westbrook: The bugs. Detective Rowe: The . bugs. Westbrook: (inaudible): In the concrete. Where the Meyers buried them. At least, until the road grader came along.

Death Grader

She focused on her breathing, trying indeed not to hyperventilate, but feeling as though her heart might punch through her chest at any moment. The spot where he had touched her seemed to burn and freeze at the same time."You don't remember . do you?" His brown eyes suddenly twinkled and he shook his head. "No? You don't remember calling on me in the depths of those first awful nights, when you were at your most exposed, when you were at your most vulnerable?" He stroked her long, brown hair with an almost impossible gentleness; it was as though a cool-warm breeze rifled it rather than his fingers. "When it was just you and the boy . alone, scared. Cold. Hungry?"She began to shake her head almost violently, her breathing and heartrate accelerating once again."Oh, yes, " he said, squinting, smiling. "You did. All the world did. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You called on many during that time, in those hours and days and weeks after the Flashback-you wouldn't have been aware of it. And you cursed the One who had brought it upon you . who had taken your husband and your daughter; who had taken so many husbands and daughters. It's okay. We-we don't judge. Not like them, " He looked at the hazy sky and the alien-colored lights, at the sun itself which was a white disk in the smoke. "Not like Him."

A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend: "The Slim Hand of the Past" - A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend (A Serialized Novel), #8

First came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the dinosaur apocalypse. How did it all begin? That depends on where you were and who you ask. In some places it started with the weather-which quickly became unstable and began behaving in impossible ways. In still others it started with the lights in the sky, which shifted and pulsed and could not be explained. Elsewhere it started with the disappearances: one here, a few there, but increasing in occurrence until fully three quarters of the population had vanished. Either way, there is one thing on which everyone agrees-it didn't take long for the prehistoric flora and fauna to start showing up (often appearing right where someone was standing, in which case the two were fused, spliced, amalgamated). It didn't take long for the great Time-displacement called the Flashback-which was brief but had aftershocks, like an earthquake-to change the face of the earth. Nor for the stories, some long and others short, some from before the maelstrom (and resulting societal collapse) and others after, to be recorded. Welcome to the world of the Flashback, a world in which man's cities have become overgrown jungles and extinct animals wander the ruins. You can survive here, if you're lucky, and if you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time--which is everywhere, all the time. But what you'll never do is remain the same, for this is a world whose very purpose is to challenge you, for better or for worse. It is a world where frightened commuters will do battle with murderous bikers even as primordial monsters close in, and others will take refuge in an underground theme park only to find their worst enemy is themselves. Where ordinary people-ne'er-do-wells on a cross-country motorcycle trip, a woman on a redeye flight to Hell, a sensitive boy stricken with visions of what's to come--will find themselves in extraordinary situations, and a gunslinger and his telekinetic ankylosaurus will embark on a dangerous quest. A world where travelers will be trapped with an unravelling President of the United States and a band of survivors will face roving packs of monsters and men in post-apocalyptic Seattle; where rioting teenagers will face deadly predators (as well as their own demons) while ransacking the nation's capital; where a Native-American warrior will seek to bury his past--and offer an elegy for all the Earth--in what remains of Las Vegas. In short, it is a world where anything can and will happen. So take a deep dive into these loosely connected tales of the Dinosaur Apocalypse (each of which can be read individually or as a part of the greater saga): tales of wonder and terror, death and survival, blood and beauty. Do it today, before the apocalypse comes.

The Big Empty - The Flashback Cycle, #3

He fell silent and doubled over as someone punched him in the stomach, then toppled completely as someone else shoved him. And then, suddenly, there was a cry-a cry that sounded as though it had come from Ank and yet utterly different from any Williams had ever heard. A warbling, frightened, pitiful cry-the kind an animal might make if it were sinking into tar while surrounded by predators."Marshal?" said someone. "That came from the Lonestar Corral.""Then that means we've got 'im cornered, " said Rimshaw, and shouted, "Johnson! Let 'em into the armory! Let 'em all in!" And to everyone else he said: "Get your weapons and meet me at the corral. And someone fetch Creebald and Teller. I don't care how sick they are. I want them by my side.""But, Marshal, I just came from there, " said Johnson, pausing. "And they're plumb gone.""What do mean, gone?" snapped Rimshaw."I mean they ain't there. They're not at the Rio Grande. No one's at the Rio Grande."Williams craned his neck on the ground to observe Rimshaw's reaction, and what he saw sent a chill up his spine, for it all but confirmed what he'd begun to suspect. For as Rimshaw stared at the man coldly, his eyes black as coals and his face pale as the dead, his tongue slipped between his lips like a snake's and was just as quickly sucked back in.

The Quick and the (Jurassic) Undead

It was the first night of the Sacrificium, a night of sacrifice and death, a night when the black coins tendered in the Lottery would be tendered back. It was also the Hora Mille Semitis, the Hour of a Thousand paths-for that is the day the Sacrificium had fallen on this year-the hour when best friends might become enemies, when lovers of longstanding might betray oaths, the hour in which anything and everything was possible. And the alignment was felt: from the upper echelons of the capitol to the poorest quarters of the downriver provinces. For the message of Valdus' rebellion had spread-whether it was a tract nailed to a door before quickly being torn down or a blast in the night that caused the power to fail in entire regions. It was a night for dreaming and for huddled collusions, for the breeze to course through rustling leaves, for long dead hearts to awaken and start pumping blood. The Sacrificium had once more come to Ursathrax, but so had the Hour of a Thousand Paths, and Valdus' Revolution, and something else, something elusive but impossible to ignore, nebulous, but as real as the River Dire, which seemed to have stolen into the world on the wind itself.

Dark World: An Epic Fantasy

Welcome to the Big Empty, the world after the Flashback, a world in which most the population has vanished and where dinosaurs roam freely. You can survive here, if you're lucky, and if you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time--which is everywhere and all the time. But what you'll never do is remain the same, for this is a world whose very purpose is to change you: for better or for worse. So take a deep dive into these loosely connected tales of the Dinosaur Apocalypse (each of which can be read individually or as a part of the greater saga): tales of wonder and terror, death and survival, blood and beauty. Do it today, before the apocalypse comes. He hesitated before peeling off a wedge and placing it in his mouth, at which he closed his eyes and seemed to melt, hanging back his head, working his jaw in a circular motion, reopening his eyes-pausing suddenly. "What?" I asked. "What is it?" He tilted his head, peering into the branches. "Isn't that strange?" I followed his gaze into the tree but, alas, saw nothing. Which, of course, was precisely the problem; there was nothing-no oranges, no leaves, no uppermost branches, it was as though someone or something had picked the treetop clean. "Someone has a helluva reach, " said Maldano. I looked around the lot: at the lichen-covered Public Market and the Jersey Mike's Subs with the Prius in its window, at the Vietnamese Nail Salon and the El Buzo Peruvian Restaurant. "We should split up, canvas the area. Make sure-there's nothing else." "Yeah, " said Maldano. "I think you're right." I headed for the Public Market. "Make a sweep of the strip mall. I'm going to check out that grocery store." He laughed a little at that-which caused me to pause. "Orders-Hooper?" I half-turned, but didn't make eye contact. "Sorry?" "I mean, in all this? This Big Empty? This 'world tenanted by willows . and the souls of willows?'" There was something in his voice. Something subtle, something contentious. "Call it what you like, " I said, and continued toward the market.

Livres