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    Unsuspected
    Unsuspected
    Unsuspected
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    Unsuspected

    By Joshua Winters

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    The city of San Antonio, it's the second most populated metropolis in Texas, ranked as the seventh in the whole United States. With its outstanding record in criminal law, fire fighting, and search and rescue, you'd think the city was ready for everything. However one stormy night the unpreparedness of an entire city, as the majority of it sleeps unsuspecting, may send hundreds to their graves, as eleven characters fight to survive, and save others.
    Will an arcade addict with no future, a group of L.G.B.T. youths, two parents out on the town, a young adult home alone with his dog, an elderly Alzheimer sufferer, an overnight dog hotel employee, and a bar manager throwing a party for all his close friends be able to survive one of the worse disaster to strike Texas in its history? Will there be anything left of the Alamo City when dawn rises to greet the survivors?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoshua Winters
    Release dateAug 20, 2013
    ISBN9781301539628
    Unsuspected
    Author

    Joshua Winters

    Joshua Winters is an independent author in search for a career in his favorite field, fiction writing. He currently lives in San Antonio Tx with his son and mother, working low wage.

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      Book preview

      Unsuspected - Joshua Winters

      Unsuspected

      Joshua Winters

      This written work, fictional characters, fictional locations, and cover art are,

      Copyright Joshua Winters 2013

      Smashwords edition.

      Version1.4*

      No unlawful replication of these works, please respect an artist’s rights to put food on the table for his family. If you have received a copy you have not paid for please consider purchasing the story at Smashwords.com or from your EBook retailer

      Dedication

      This novelette is dedicated to Jaiden Noah Gilbert-Winters, my son who has given me reason to live and write, to try to make a better life for both of us.

      The Epilogue is dedicated to the late storm chasing team of Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young, who are hopefully chasing their love of tornadoes and weather in the afterlife.

      Thanks

      A hearty thanks to Ellie Riley-Winters for helping me with an issue on the cover art.

      More thanks to my mother who has had to put up with me more than she should have.

      And a special thanks to all my friends and family who came to read and my fans from my former life of fan fiction on the internet.

      Prologue: Twelve Hours

      It was noon, the sun baked the semi-humid early November day of San Antonio Texas. Harry spent most the Saturday cruising the highways, a way he found peace, to be reclusive and ignore most people in the world. Sometimes he became so sick of people, of how they pestered him to do things, to get things, or needed to chat. He was in retail and that was sometimes too overwhelming, the spewing of words and spit, sir can you this, sir may I buy this?

      Or even worse the foul smelling ones that got real intimate and wanted you to know their whole life story beginning to end. It sickened him, it drove him mad, it made him want to scream Get your shit and leave!

      But he couldn’t, not and still be able to keep his job, earn the money which he needed if he wanted to move out and get his own place where he could be alone. Oh his parents weren’t so bad, they knew when to give him his space, but he imagined a world in which he lived in a place where nobody interacted with him, a time of peace as infinite as his time away from work allowed.

      Today he’d head home to do chores as his parents disappeared for their monthly night out, for now though it was just him and the purr of his little white Mercury Cougar's well kept eight-cylinder engine. A semi roared by his open driver side window, snapping him awake by blaring its obnoxiously loud air horn to warn him he had been drifting out of his lane.

      Thoughts broken he looked around, his destination undecided. To the west large clouds that bubbled in their cotton appearance promised a night of strong showers. He’d made the mistake of being caught in one of south Texas’s super thunderstorms before, where rain poured so heavy sight was reduced to just beyond the windshield and being in it created a sense of breathless claustrophobia. With a sigh, he made his way for the next off ramp, planning to grab bar-b-q before he hit home. He just hoped the waitress wouldn’t speak all over his food.

      ****

      One rolled around as James stepped out of his day job and into the sultry, humid day, a day where you the wetness upon your head might be sweat or condensation. As he walked from one of the dozen of bars he helped manage, swiping the sweat off his forehead with a white handkerchief, he played over his list of afternoon activities. He had Sunday and Monday off, so he could spend those days recovering, tonight the plan was to get blasted. What better way to party than inviting a group of your friends to a bar you manage and can get any drink for dirt cheap, or often for free? He flipped open his Kyocera, the little bronze phone opened to a secondary screen and qwerty keyboard, a keyboard named after its shape, modeled to have its letters arranged the same as a computer’s keyboard, starting with the first six letters, which where, not by coincidence, its name. He couldn’t stand those touch screens without a physical keyboard, how could you tell what you where typing without looking? No wonder so many kids died these days from texting and driving.

      James walked and felt the texture of the keyboard, without looking he texted his friends reminders before closing it and bringing up his contact list on the phone’s face. He used the arrow keys to select a saved number and brought the phone to his ear, Yes, this is Mr. Sundry he waited as they transferred him, a young man answered in an apologetic tone despite that, to his knowledge, nothing had gone wrong. Is everything going to be ready at its time? the man said it would, Good. Hey, it looks like it may rain tonight, hell, we need it, any reason that would be trouble for your driver?

      The man said no, James thanked him and hung up the phone, running his hand through his slicked back, short, black hair, as another one reached for his packet of Camels, tonight would be a good night, he could feel it.

      ****

      Alex was an arcade addict, since dawn he'd been at is usual joint to get his fix of aging digital games and he’d be here till they closed around midnight. Sometimes he’d come with friends, often he’d come alone. One of his closer friends asked him once that instead of spending that much cash in this old street side arcade why not get a Playstation or Xbox? The truth was no home consoles left him as satisfied as a good old arcade game with a stick and a few buttons, nor was he as good at them as he was at these. Lanky, thirteen, a future school dropout, gaming became

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