DEAD MAN’S RUN (“Project Havoc”)
Current status: on submission with publishers via my agent.
Joe Miller has one fear: a slow death. There’s not much else to dread after three decades as a “railroad bull” guarding supply trains through Earth’s climate-ravaged wastelands. But according to the doc, a mysterious illness plans to make Joe’s worst nightmare come true. Now, he’s got one last chance to go out in a blaze of glory before he’s put out to pasture: protect a supply train running between two of Earth’s remaining “bubble” cities.
But as raiders launch a merciless attack against the train, Joe realizes he’s not transporting standard supplies—he’s hauling genetically advanced children, and every raider in the wastelands is after them. As the bullet holes and stab wounds mount, the stress triggers a deadly cytokine storm in Joe’s illness. And when even his own command betrays him, Joe realizes he has a bigger problem than his rapidly collapsing internal organs.
It’s a setup, and he’s not meant to survive.
Except now, he can’t die. Those kids need him. And he’s not sure where this newfound affection for the children is coming from, but he’s determined to protect them with his life—however much of it he has left. But to save them, he’ll have to become a one-person army, maneuver the train through the wastelands, fend off an entire horde of raiders, and get the children to the next bubble city… all before his body gives out.
DEAD MAN’S RUN is a standalone sci-fi western mashup complete at 95,000 words. It reads like Fury Road on a train meets The Mandalorian.
Author Holly Jennings 