A. L. Kaplan

Tag: disaster

  • ALONE

    Does the punishment fit the crime? Tell me what you think.

    Lightening flashed across the sky, strangely overlaid across the blue, cloudless view. Half-formed figures and houses appeared along the riverbank. Children laughed as they splashed in the water. There was a village here once, full of life.

    “Please. Not again.” The words barely made it past his tightening throat.

    Thunder rumbled in the distance. He fell to his knees, trembling. The heavy sack he wore dug into his shoulder. But that wasn’t what caused the churning inside him. It was happening again, just as it had every day since the storm. Unable to stop it, he watched as thick, roiling clouds and an orange wave poured across the valley, obliterating the town.

    Children screamed over the roar of the fire. Their anguished cries penetrated past the hands clamped over his ears. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, the image burned into his vision. Nor could he block the smell of burned flesh.

    Tears streamed down his face, untouched by the surrounding inferno. Firestorm was his creation. His fault. And it was his order that deployed it. He was the one who turned the world into a blackened, ash filled landscape.

    “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

    No one offered forgiveness. There was no one left to hear the words. Still sobbing, he pulled a seed out of the sack and pressed it into the barren soil. One seed for every life lost. Doomed to relive the destruction he caused until life returned. A millennia of toil. That was his punishment.

     

    Don’t forget to pick up your copy of Wolf Dawn and Star Touched.

    Wolf Dawn 13

     

    Gifted with the ability to wolf-talk, Kara has lived with the wolves since she lost her memories eight years ago. Now at sixteen, snippets of her past send her searching for answers. But the warm welcome she receives in the human village hides more danger than life with the pack.

     

     

     

     

     

    Startouched AL Kaplan

     

    Eighteen-year-old Tatiana is running from her past and her star-touched powers. Her power to heal may be overshadowed by more destructive abilities. Fleeing the persecution of those like her, Tatiana seeks refuge in a small town she once visited. But this civil haven, in a world where society has broken down, is beginning to crumble. Will Tatiana flee or stay and fight for the new life she has built? Only by harnessing the very forces that haunt her can Tatiana save her friends and herself.

  • The Day of Reckoning Has Arrived

    View the Star Touched Book Trailer Here

    For those of you who are really into the science in science fiction, here is what happened. If those kinds of details don’t interest you, just skip the rest of this paragraph. The meteor that hit earth in Star Touched was smaller than the nearly six-mile-wide meteor that scientist believe caused the dinosaur’s extinction, but not by much. Hitting in the Atlantic near the conjunction of three tectonic plates, this impact triggered massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Basically, it really shook things up in nearly the worst possible way. All those earthquakes caused numerous tsunamis, one of which smacked into the eastern America. Volcanic eruptions spewed tons of junk into the atmosphere.

    The Day of Reckoning and the days following devastated earth’s population, changed the coastline, and altered the climate. Were it not for clear sky day, it is unlikely life would have continued as we know it. It also created the star-touched, people capable of accessing incredible power.

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid-chicxulub-soot-earth-science/

    https://www.psi.edu/epo/ktimpact/ktimpact.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39922998

     

     Startouched front cover2

    STAR TOUCHED

    Eighteen-year-old Tatiana is running from her past and her star-touched powers eight years after a meteor devastates earth’s population.

    Her power to heal may be overshadowed by more destructive abilities. Fleeing the persecution of those like her, Tatiana seeks refuge in a small town she once visited. But this civil haven, in a world where society has broken down, is beginning to crumble. Will Tatiana flee or stay and fight for the new life she has built? Only by harnessing the very forces that haunt her can Tatiana save her friends…and herself.

     

     

  • An Important Job

    Soot billowed up with every step Jim took. He tightened the rag covering his face and trudged on. Nothing could keep the noxious partials from seeping into every crevasse of his clothes. Before he was even halfway to his destination his skin felt gritty and uncomfortable.

    Satellite dishes studded the barren landscape. Most of the huge white structures sported mounds of debris. They were meant to detect incoming enemy missiles so the projectiles could be destroyed before obliterating humanity. Disaster came anyway, but not from an attack.

    He closed his eyes, remembering the day the world ended. Explosions roared across the planet, jettisoning debris from the bowels of the earth into the sky like an unkempt pimple. Earth’s skin contorted with waves. Yellowstone vanished in seconds, along with most of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

    It was only by some strange twist of fate that the satellite dishes survived. Even Jim’s survival was a quirk. A colleague called in sick last minute, putting Jim at the monitoring station when the super volcano erupted. Designed to withstand a nuclear holocaust, the underground bunker was well protected and stocked. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the country.

    Jim climbed up into one of the dishes and pulled a shovel from his pack. There was no one left to fire missiles, but it was still his job to maintain these machines. With each shovelful he removed debris, letting bits of his sanity drift in the breeze with the dust.