Late For Doomsday

​What would you do in a modern-day nuclear crisis? Would you leave behind your job at the risk of being fired if nothing—which you pray for—happens? Twin brothers Sheldon and Ellis are keeping a close eye on the development of a war between China and the United States. When it looks like it is about to go nuclear, they realize how close they are drawing the line between evacuation and sheltering in place. 

On the eve of the war, one brother is poised to head for their remote desert ranch while the other constructs a hasty shelter for his wife who refuses to leave. Their individual choices are dilemmas that many of us would face if our coworkers and bosses remained unconvinced that a nuclear holocaust was just days away. Can they make it out in time and is a shelter of cobbled together materials enough to protect from deadly fallout? 

Late For Doomsday is a novella that looks at the often neglected aspects of nuclear war in action; evacuation and shelter life. Join the brothers in their gritty tale of survival.

---

Buy a copy today

Excerpt: ​In Media Res

I’m late for Doomsday, I thought, though not quite in those words. At the moment, I would have preferred to wake up naked back in middle school. Slept through Doomsday, great. Something had me by the arms. I wrestled away the blanket and sat up before lunging for the remote control instead of silencing the screeching emergency tone coming from my phone. The power light on the TV blinked slowly five times. It was waking up like me, or more accurately, booting up. Even TVs had computers in them now and they had no sense of urgency. My girlfriend Sam cried out from the other room “Is this real?” She walked into the living room looking at the Presidential Alert on her cell phone.

The phone read: Presidential Alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT TO ENTIRE UNITED STATES. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A TEST. The urge to cuss Samantha was strong now. We should be on the road now. It was impossible for me to fall asleep with the TV on; loud enough to hear it was loud enough for my brain to pay attention and keep me awake. That was precisely why I left it on in the first place.

Except Sam had shut it off and covered me up with a blanket, so instead of just resting my eyes, I actually fell asleep and thus missed the opening salvo of WWIII. An emergency banner was scrolling across the TV, the cable news channel had “USA Nuke Attack in Progress” in Second Coming size font in the lower third, and my phone still screeched. Sam held her phone out.
“Sheldon, is this real?”
​
I looked at my phone and turned off the alert. “‘Fraid so.” I wanted to curse her for turning off the TV and imprisoning me with the blanket, but it wasn’t in my nature to be nasty without good reason. All the pundits I had been following to give me and my brother Ellis advance warning all predicted we would have more forewarning than this. We cut it too close and were on the wrong side of the war.

Buy a copy today

Check out the sequel "Late For Doomsday 2"