J. L. Bourne - Day by Day Armageddon 02 Beyond Exile

Praise for J.L. Bournes

DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON

There is zombie fiction and then there is crawl-out-of-the-grave-and-drag-you-to-hell zombie fiction. Day by Day Armageddon is hands down the best zombie book I have ever read. J.L. Bourne blows all other zombie writers away. Dawn of the Dead meets 28 Days Later doesnt even come close to describing how fantastic this thriller is. It is so real, so terrifying, and so well written that I slept with not one, but two loaded Glocks under my pillow for weeks afterward. J.L. Bourne is the new king of hardcore zombie action!

Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Patriot and The First Commandment

Day by Day Armageddon is a dramatic spin on the zombie story. It has depth, a heart, and compelling characters.

Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Awardwinning author of Ghost Road Blues

Day by Day Armageddon claws at the readers mind. Bournes journal is a visceral insight into the psyche of a skilled survivor.

Gregory Solis, author of Rise and Walk

Also by J.L. Bourne

Day by Day Armageddon

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by J.L. Bourne.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition July 2010.

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Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Illustrations by Jason Snyder

Manufactured in the United States of America.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-7752-5
ISBN 978-1-4391-7753-2 (ebook)

For more information about Permuted Press books and authors, please visit www.permutedpress.com.

The first volume of Day by Day Armageddon took us deep into the mind of a military officer and survivor as he made a New Years resolution to start keeping a journal. The man kept his resolution and brought to us the fall of humanity, day by day. We see the man transition from the life that you and I live to the prospect of fighting for his very survival against the overwhelming hordes of the dead. We see him bleed, we see him make mistakes, we witness him evolve.

After surviving numerous trials and travails in the first volume of Day by Day Armageddon, the protagonist and his neighbor John escape the government-sanctioned nuclear annihilation of San Antonio, Texas. They eventually find themselves holing up in an abandoned strategic nuclear missile base known by the former occupants as Hotel 23. After their arrival they receive a weak radio transmission: A family of survivors are taking refuge in an attic, with untold numbers of undead below. A man named William, his wife, Janet, and their young daughter, Laura, are all that remain of their former community. After a miraculous rescue, this family joins forces with our protagonist to stay alive. But that may not be enough in a dead world, an unforgiving postapocalyptic place in which a simple infected cut, not to mention the millions of undead, can easily kill them, adding them to the overwhelming undead population.

The situation brought out the worst in some...

Without warning a band of brigands, seeing targets of opportunity, mercilessly assault our survivors inside Hotel 23, planning to kill them for the shelter and the vast supplies inside. Narrowly pushed back at the end of the novel, the survivors fear these men might return in much greater numbersunless the countless millions of unrelenting undead close in around them first.

This novel begins where the first novel left off, with our narrator and a few survivors of an unimaginable worldwide cataclysm taking refuge inside Hotel 23. Follow them as they continue their journey into the apocalypse and just imagine for one moment that any one of them could be you.

Welcome back and lock your doors...

J. L. Bourne

23 May

0057

I started feeling physically better the day of the twenty-first. The attack from the raiders had really busted me up. I got out of bed, drank a gallon of water (over the course of a few hours) and stretched a bit. I asked John what it looked like topside. He didnt want to say much of anything so I followed him up to the control room to look for myself. The previous night John had rushed out in the darkness and pulled the bag off one of the cameras and dashed back inside. There were undead about and he didnt wish to be out for long amongst them.

More undead inhabit the area around where the fence was damaged. They are like water, flowing to the point of least resistance. My painful burns are healing, but they were not that awful to begin with. Just a few blisters on my face and other places. Our victory in the last encounter with the insurgents was largely due to chance. What if they hadnt been convoying cross-country with a fuel truck? We would have probably been executed, unable to overcome their numbers. Outnumbered not only by the undead but by those who wished us dead. I feared the insurgents nearly as much as the creatures. In theory they could at least outstrategize us by putting their heads together and brainstorming on ways to force us from this compound. We do not know how many tangos remain; however, I am sure they still dwarf our numbers.

On camera number three I could see the charred bodies of men walking about the wreckage of the diesel truck and trailer...

Men that I had killed.

That night we went outside and put them down. To avoid muzzle flash, I snuck up on them from behind in the darkness with NVGs, selected single fire on my carbine and popped them in the back of the head with the barrel almost touching the skull. After every depression of the trigger I saw them react to the noise and start moving toward the sound, blind in the darkness. They could still hear, even though many of them had nothing that resembled ears. I repeated this seventeen times before they were all laid to rest.

We noticed that three vehicles had not been harmed badly in the fuel blast from the other night. There was a Land Rover, a Jeep and a late model Ford Bronco a hundred yards from the charred grass zone. John and I approached with caution. Upon closer inspection I discovered that both of the Jeeps front tires were blown and the window glass was spiderwebbed and concave.

Fifty meters farther were the Land Rover and the Ford. As I approached the Land Rover, I noticed that it appeared to be in very good condition and had no previous owners inhabiting the interior. Bonus. John and I walked up to the door; I opened it and checked the interior more closely. It smelled like pine, probably from the tree hanging on the rearview mirror. We got in and carefully shut the doors just enough for the latch to catch. I reached down to the ignition and turned. It roared to life. I suppose I would leave the keys in it too in a world like this. I looked down at the flimsy plastic tag on the key. It read: Nelms Land Rover of Texas.