Survival of the Fittest - The Last Hope for the Human Race

Since leaving the Marine Corps Mikal Ingvar had built a very successful small business building new homes and doing remodeling jobs throughout Northern Ohio. But, like millions of other small businessmen, when the American economy went into a tailspin, his business suffered. Then, when inflation turned into hyper-inflation while unemployment rose to over 50%, he lost his business, his home and struggled to even feed his family.

America, and his, situation only got worse! Jobs weren’t scarce, they were non-existent and the cities had become combat zones because people dependent upon the government were on the edge of starvation while the National Guard and Military couldn’t even begin to restore order. Both had been gutted by America’s politicians over the years in money saving efforts that translated into further government largess, while it lasted!

Broke, with his home going on the auction block in just a few weeks, Mikal receives a call from an old friend he had served with in the Corps with an offer of a job for him and a few of his friends. But to begin work they must travel almost half way across the wreckage of America to Wyoming!

As bad as the cities are the countryside is also in trouble. Farmers have joined together to fortify one of their farms, so they could survive the depredations of the ravaging gang bangers, protect their farms and their families. Outside of major cities, where the government can still maintain the fiction that the dollar is worth something, barter is the rule while you are solely responsible for your own safety. Law and order exists only when you are capable of self-defense!

Ing, his friends and their families leave Cleveland slightly ahead of the gang bangers final victory. Their plan is simple to take back roads, avoiding cities, across the country until they reach their destination in Wyoming. All three men had been Marine scout/snipers when they had been in the service and, in better times, had continued to exercise their skills with a rifle. Now they sincerely hoped that they wouldn’t need those skills because if they did their families would also be endangered!

But, after surviving a minor skirmish with a group of gang bangers, things begin to become weird when they help a group of farmers kill a group of predators that the world hadn’t seen in over sixty million years, fierce carnivorous animals that look like dinosaurs! Only they aren’t dinosaurs. The blood is the wrong color and the brightly feathered monsters feathers are tougher than armor!

The group continues on despite the increased danger. Frankly their only hope of long term survival is to get to Wyoming and establish a new life because they really have nothing left back in Cleveland. But the dangers keep multiplying because the number and variety of the predator monsters continues to grow.

Then they find out the real reason Ing's friend had offered all of them a job. They are the only hope Earth has of defeating an Alien race that has already begun to conquer Earth. The only problem is that these Aliens have never lost a battle in over sixty million years!

Invaders from another world have used demonic technology to raise an unholy conquering army of the living dead. These necros destroyed Jubal Slate’s home and everyone he loved. Now the only thing left for Slate is payback. No matter how far he has to go or how many undead warriors he must slaughter, Slate and his motley band of followers will stop at nothing to end the reign of the aliens.

Tom McArthur: Once a carefree individualist, he was coaxed into a position of influence and leadership by unexpected opportunity and kept there by his sense of honor. He finds himself far from home and family, separated by hundreds of miles of impossible terrain, gangs of armed bandits and a hostile government.

Lynn, his wife: Beautiful and intelligent, strong willed and voluptuous, she resents Tom's abandonment of her and their children for a distant political career. Now, with nothing but her courage, wits and willpower to work with, she must fight to keep herself and her children alive.

Lance: Young, handsome and lonely, trained as the ultimate warrior, he drove himself into poverty and alcohol with the memory of an unspeakable evil he was party to. Will he find love and redemption or destroy those around him?

Who will live? Who will die?

What will emerge when things fall apart?

Revised Edition October 2012

The world's financial system is collapsing and this crisis is being used to begin the coup in America that will finally end the "American Experiment".

Two related groups of prepared citizens have run to their survival retreats, one in southern Ohio, the Compound, and the other in eastern Kentucky, the Farm, with the intention of hiding until they know if the coup is successful, or if everything simply goes out of control. The Compound is commanded by a retired Marine Lieutenant General known by his Seal Team name, Iceman. The Farm is commanded by his older son, a retired Marine Colonel known also by his Seal Team name, Mack. Both groups share the same goal, to survive whatever is about to happen.

Over the first week they quietly watch as things begin to deteriorate both in America and around the world. Because the government has terminated the internet and cell phones while actively monitoring all land telephone lines, along with controlling all television signals, their information sources are limited to the CB radio and shortwave radio signals. Nevertheless, these signals are sufficient to allow the real truth to be told. A nuclear war has started in the Middle East and, in America; massive riots have begun in the cities. Then, as they watch everything irrevocably slide out of control, someone, somewhere makes a mistake.

In the mid-70's the first space based kinetic energy weapons platform was put into space. This system, along with its sister systems that were put into space by the other major powers, consists of platinum rods with a guidance package and a booster rocket. They are designed to impact the earth’s surface with a force roughly equal to that of a forty megaton hydrogen bomb, only without the radiation.

Because of the limited amount of time available to respond if these platforms were attacked all of the major powers had made their systems automatic and computer controlled. Whatever happened that caused these systems to fire the result was that in less than an hour over half of Earth’s population die’s as the kinetic energy weapon systems rain tens of thousands of missiles onto the planet’s surface destroying military targets, cities and infrastructure everywhere.

With the electrical grid destroyed, along with most major cities, all military bases, and the supporting infrastructure of our civilization, the citizens in the Compound and the Farm now find themselves attempting to help as many survivors as possible. While they have limited supplies available to them, they still reach out to their neighbors with offers of help and the information the neighbors will need to help them to also survive what is coming.

As they experience the rapid cooling off of the planet because of the vast amount of debris thrown into the mesosphere, which is preventing the suns energy from reaching the surface, they are also fighting to keep the supplies they have accumulated from being taken by their enemies. Since they know that they are now facing a multi-year winter, loss of those supplies is nothing short of a death sentence.

When the coup began, only a few weeks before, the governments new enforcement arm, the Citizens Army for Liberty (CAL), which has nothing to do with citizens (except to discipline them), or liberty, but is an army, was introduced. With their food, military supplies, and bases destroyed along with the cities they had been in, CAL is forced to forage for the food it needs to support its men, regardless of just who they have to kill to accomplish their goal.

The citizen survivors are forced to defend themselves against the depredations of CAL while preparing for a "nuclear" winter, a multi-year winter that the world hadn't seen since the start of the last Ice Age!

Six years ago Civilization died under a hail of kinetic energy weapons, leaving the stunned survivors around the world to struggle through five years of almost continuous winter. Most people starved to death, many resorted to cannibalism but eventually starved to death anyway. Only a few survivors were prepared enough, strong enough, or ruthless enough, to survive the unending worldwide cold. Nobody survived unscathed.

Now, in the sixth summer after the war, the sun has reappeared, the snow has departed and the weather appears to have become more normal. After giving profound thanks to God, for the first time in years the prepared survivors have been able to sow their fields and allow their herds to grow, while they prepare for what they have little doubt is coming.

What is coming are the other survivors, the ones that survived mainly by using human beings as cattle. For the most part they have no cattle, their fields are planted with old hybrid seed that will barely produce food and then only once. But what they do have is an abiding faith in Allah, the satisfaction of finally having an American Caliphate, a warrior culture, and weapons, many weapons.

The only way the Caliphate can grow and prosper is for them to take for themselves what the survivalists have. The only way for the survivalists to survive, is to protect what they have and they are more than willing to do so. The survivalists are also well armed and the General had hand-picked most of his men so they aren’t teary-eyed, turn the other cheek, Christians but are warriors also.

Civilization has ended, but the fight continues only all four of the horsemen of the Apocalypse have been riding throughout the world and shall continue to do so. Conquest, War, Famine and Death now have a new deadly friend, Pestilence, only their new friend appears to be man-made and redefines the word deadly.

The saga continues while the survivors are also working desperately to stave off a new dark age. Most cities are now huge lakes, the coasts have been stripped to bedrock, and even the large amount of supplies the survivalists had stored is running short. They are also in a race against the Caliphate to secure whatever resources will help them to reclaim their nascent civilization.