Journey Into the Flame: Book One of the Rising World Trilogy - Softcover

Williams, T. R. R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476713367 ISBN 13: 9781476713366

Verlag: Atria, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

In the tradition of The Celestine Prophecy comes the first book in a gripping post-apocalyptic trilogy involving the search for ancient books whose secrets hold the key to humanity’s survival.

In 2027, the Great Disruption shook the world. An unexplained solar storm struck the earth, shifting it four degrees south on its axis. Everything went dark. Humanity was on the verge of despair. Then a man named Camden Ford discovered a set of ancient books called the Chronicles of Satraya.

Thirty years later, the world is a different place. Thanks to the teachings of the Chronicles, hope has been restored, cities rebuilt, technology advanced. The books also have a different owner: Logan Cutler, who inherited them when Camden mysteriously disappeared. But when Logan auctions off the books to pay his debts, they fall into the wrong hands. The Reges Hominum, a clandestine group that once ruled history from the shadows, is launching a worldwide conspiracy to regain control.

Soon Logan realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. With the help of special agent Valerie Perrot and the wisdom of the Chronicles as his guide, he embarks on an epic quest to get the books back before it’s too late.

Abounding with questions about humanity’s secret past and its unknown future, Journey into the Flame will not only take you to the start of an incredible new world, it will also take you deep into the greater mysteries of the self.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

T. R. Williams divides his time between Seattle and Chicago. He is a scholar of ancient texts and loves to ponder the mysteries of life.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Journey Into the Flame PROLOGUE
JULY 21, 2030

Every mile Camden Ford drove east from Oklahoma City along old Route 40 provided a fresh reminder of how little remained in the wake of the Great Disruption. The long drive home to what was left of Washington, D.C., gave him more than enough time to contemplate his mortality and the dangers he faced for the next thousand miles. He wished he could let his mind wander to football, kayaking, girls—all those things nineteen-year-old boys used to be able to enjoy. But he had to stay alert. You never knew what you might encounter on these near-deserted highways, and he had to make sure he arrived at the safe house in Clarksville before sundown.

He removed his cap and rustled his dark brown hair, allowing the wind blowing through the open window to provide a bit of cool relief on this hot July day. Weary from a long day of driving, he took off his sunglasses and surveyed the landscape around him. The world he’d grown up in was gone; the Great Disruption of 2027 had seen to that. Very little had changed since those catastrophic days three years ago. Vehicles of all sorts lay abandoned along the road. Once-thriving farms were deserted, their fields untended. Roadside restaurants now served only dust to a stray passing wind. Camden slowed the car and grabbed his camera from the backseat, which was cluttered with survival gear: a cobbled-together water purifier, a gas mask, and a few vials of Androstenediol, an experimental anti-radiation medication. He took a few pictures of the abandoned farm and the forsaken town he was driving through. Pictures for posterity, he told himself. If there even would be a posterity. He sped back up as he glanced one last time at the town in his rearview mirror.

Camden had been sixteen when the Great Disruption occurred. He remembered that it had started with social and political unrest. Bombings were commonplace, as were assassinations of corporate and political leaders. The chaos escalated when an unexplained Carrington-class solar storm struck the earth, knocking satellites out of their orbits and taking down communications systems and electrical power grids. The world went dark.

Like other leaders in the U.S. government, Camden’s father, a high-level administrator and engineer in the Department of Energy, rounded up his family and fled the devastation and mayhem in the nation’s capital. They took refuge at their cabin in rural Virginia. Then, on December 21, 2027, also without explanation, an even more devastating natural disaster occurred: the earth began to shift four degrees south on its axis. Over the next three months, weather patterns changed, bringing rain to the deserts and drought to the rain forests. Earthquakes shook all seven continents as oceans unleashed tsunamis. In one short year, humanity returned to the Dark Ages.

Camden slowed again as he approached exit 1-85. He saw a man sitting beneath a road sign, his head leaning back against the signpost. The gun in the man’s right hand and the bloody wound in what was left of the right side of his head told Camden all he needed to know. Another suicide.

“People are just giving up,” his father had said a few months ago, sounding sad and frustrated. “The conveniences of everyday life are gone. There’s no electricity, no gas for their cars or fuel for their heaters, no food to buy. Most people don’t know how to fend for themselves; they never needed to. And now there’s no real government to speak of that can help them. These people choose death over life because life is hard. But we cannot judge these people. Only God can judge them, son.”

God, Camden wondered as he pressed on the accelerator and sped up once more. Where is God in all this?

Camden’s family had returned to Washington in the spring of 2028. A small group of dedicated government officials, business leaders, and social activists had congregated there in a “peace zone” surrounded by barbed-wire fences, U.S. Army tanks, and other heavy weapons. They’d come in an effort to restore order and rebuild the country, which, according to estimates, had lost half of its population. Camden’s parents had helped to establish the World Federation of Reconstruction, and for the past two years, Camden had worked alongside them. Last year, having become trained in water purification, he’d started traveling to reconstruction zones all over the United States, assisting local leaders in restoring water systems. He had just completed a ten-week reconstruction assignment in the secured area of what had once been the city of Dallas, and he couldn’t wait to get home. He would spend at most a week with his parents, and then he’d go off to help with the reconstruction effort in another city. Although the WFR had accomplished a great deal in two years, focusing its efforts on the nation’s cities and metropolitan areas, wide swaths of small-town and rural America still lay in ruins, and the people who lived there believed the government had forgotten them.

As Camden passed a weathered road sign informing him that he was entering the state of Arkansas, he saw some activity in the distance. A crew of workers was at the side of the road near a WFR transport truck, while a white pickup was idling nearby. When Camden saw a wing and parts of a crashed airliner scattered in the field behind the workers, he realized a cleanup crew was collecting human remains.

The sudden series of solar storms that had hit the earth in 2027 had brought down more than seven thousand aircraft. Some of the planes had crashed into the seas and high mountains, never to be recovered, while others had plunged into populated areas, killing thousands of people. As Camden slowed down, he grabbed his camera and took a few pictures of the piles of bags at the roadside awaiting pickup. There was a part of Camden that was numb to these grim sights, but he was still glad he hadn’t been assigned to a cleanup crew.

A worker a good distance away from the rest of the crew waved at Camden before he placed a skull in a bag. As Camden waved back at the man, a loud shot rang out. Then another, and another. Camden saw the workers up ahead falling to the ground. More shots followed. The road crew was under attack, and he was driving right into it.

Four bearded men in ragged clothes were crouched behind the hood of the idling white pickup truck, firing rifles at the workers. Two federation security officers lay prone in the field, returning fire. But the crossfire was short-lived; the exposed security officers went down, spraying their last shots into the sky. The entire WFR crew was being slaughtered.

Camden slowed the car and reached for the gun he kept in his backpack. Suddenly, the car shook, and glass was shattering. A bullet had hit the edge of his windshield. Camden slammed down on the accelerator. The engine roared, and the car screeched forward, bearing down on the gunmen as two of them reloaded their rifles. He ducked right and then left, struggling to control the car as bullets shattered the back window and ripped into the side of the car.

This is it, Camden thought, as he sped past the white pickup. His old car couldn’t outrun the truck. But just as he took in the deep breath he thought might be his last, the shooting stopped. In the rearview mirror, Camden saw the four gunmen pulling boxes out of the cleanup crew’s transport truck. Of course. They wanted the supplies more than they wanted him. Still, Camden kept his foot pressed hard on the accelerator for what seemed like a hundred miles.

I’m such a coward! Camden pounded his fist on the steering wheel, wishing he could have helped the workers. But it had all happened so fast. He was no hero.
...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1476713367
• ISBN 13: 9781476713366
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland