Immortality
Blog Tour Information
About
the Book
Without warning, something has
gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places of the world, small
pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated extinctions spread,
the world’s eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and chaos. Out of the
ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is evolving and surviving
to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution is operating in ways no
one could have expected and environmental damage may be the catalyst. Once
discovered, this knowledge changes everything.
Praise for Immortality:
Kirkus: “There is enough power in the premise to leave readers reeling. A
novel that will surprise fans of science-fiction and doomsday scenarios...”
Publisher’s Weekly STARRED review: “Bohacz’s vision of a
humanity that faces the need to evolve profoundly or face certain destruction
is as timely as today’s news and as chilling a doomsday scenario as any
ecological catastrophe can suggest...”
Sci-Fi Reader 4 Star review by S.J. Higbee: “This book manages
to do what all the best sci-fi does—provide a thought-provoking, alternative
viewpoint on the business of existence. I recommend you give it a go...”
Discuss this book in our PUYB
Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE
About
the Author
I am Kevin Bohacz the
bestselling novelist of Immortality and a lucid dreamer… Welcome to my dreams.
I am also a writer for national computer magazines, founder and president of
two high technology corporations, a scientist and engineer for over 35 years,
and the inventor of an advanced electric car system – the ESE Engine System
(circa 1978). I was also a short order cook for I-Hop, flipped burgers at
McDonalds, and delivered Chicken Delight. All of those careers and more are
behind me now that I am a full time storyteller, a catcher of dreams. Thank you
for reading my stories and making this all possible.
His latest books are Immortality
and Ghost of the Gods.
Visit Kevin’s website
at www.kbohacz.com.
Connect & Socalize!
Title: Immortality
Genre:
Techno-Thriller
Author: Kevin Bohacz
Publisher: CPrompt
Pages: 389
Format: Paperback/Kindle
Purchase at Amazon
Without
warning, something has gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places
of the world, small pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated
extinctions spread, the world’s eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and
chaos. Out of the ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is
evolving and surviving to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution
is operating in ways no one could have expected and environmental damage may be
the catalyst. Once discovered, this knowledge changes everything.
Excerpt:
Amazon Forest: January,
present day.
The
rainforest had a humid, earthy smell that reminded him of home. Diego was
twenty-two years old and, like most of his village, he’d spent half his life
away from home. The bulldozer he was illegally operating was idling in neutral.
In front of him were a half dozen control levers and gauges. With a worker’s
rough hands, he compressed the squeeze-grip on a lever and pushed forward. He
heard the sound of grinding gears. The tree cutter failed to engage. The huge
dozer was thirty-year-old army surplus. There was a cable problem in the lever
he was working. The problem sometimes caused the squeeze-grip to snap shut when
the transmission grabbed. If he was not careful, the squeeze-grip could badly
pinch his hand. Diego pushed harder on the lever. He could feel teeth missing
in the gears from how the lever bucked back against his push. Without warning,
the gears dropped into place as the squeeze-grip bit his palm. It was like a
vicious dog. An angry welt throbbed in his palm. He cursed the dozer. He cursed
the steaming heat. He’d drunk two quarts of water since breakfast, and lunch
break was still hours away.
The rainforest was alive with insects. Diego had never seen this many in all
the years he’d illegally logged the deep forests. There was a steady drone
which was louder than the diesel engine he controlled. Tiny no-see-em’s, biting
things, had left a rash across the back of his neck that felt like sunburn.
Earlier, he’d scratched it raw but now had a bandanna tied around his neck to
remind him to leave it be. The bulldozer rocked into a depression as the cutter
began chew-ing through the trunk of a mahogany tree. Diego fed more fuel into
the beast’s engine. The dozer’s treads dug in; there was a hesitation. He could
feel the strain building. Tons of steel lurched forward pitch-ing him in his
seat. Another tree tumbled, its branches snapping like rapid-fire gunshots as
it crumpled into the ground. The front of the beast was equipped with a chain
driven saw instead of a dozer blade. The fixture had a pair of serrated edges
that shimmied back and forth like steel teeth. Pieces of shredded green leaves
and bark caught on the teeth’s edges. Diego had long ago decided the beast was
a sloppy eater.
The insect sounds of the forest had stopped. As far as Diego knew, these
insects never stopped. He dropped the beast into neutral then switched it off.
There was
silence.
Out of this
stillness, a faint crackling sound rose from the distance, then disappeared,
and then came again. He listened carefully. It took him a moment to realize the
faraway sound was trees falling. The log- ging company operated a small army of
dozers, far apart now; but by evening they would all meet up, connecting each
of the separate cutting tracks into a solid plot. Diego swung round in his seat
and gazed back. A swath of fallen tropical forest lay behind him: mahogany and
cedar and even some rosewood along with countless varieties of plants and
bushes. The largest trees were left standing so their canopies would hide the
results of his work from the few government scouting planes that were not on
the company’s payroll. Heavy tractors would come through later to drag out the
good logs. He got paid by the yard for mahogany, rosewood, and cedar; the rest
was trash. Today it looked like he would earn a small fortune; tomorrow might
bring nothing. He lit a cigarette and left it hanging in his lips. After
starting the engine, he ground the shifter into a forward gear and moved out.
He drew cigarette smoke into his lungs then exhaled through his nose. No time
to rest. He needed every bit of money he could earn. He didn’t blink as a cloud
of insects flew into his face as their nest was churned into rubbish by his
dozer’s teeth.
The humidity
was so high that water had begun to evaporate into a fine mist. A steam cloud
floated through the tops of the trees blurring the upper canopy into a milky
green. Diego swung the beast around in a stationary about-face. The base camp
was miles behind him by the river. The camp was a dock and tents with ratty
screens. Beside the camp was a tree covered clearing that at night was filled
with sleeping dozers and other heavy equipment. By now, a pot of beans would be
simmering for lunch. A hunk of flat bread and canned beer would complete the
meal. No meat. He’d lived worse. Everything here had been secretly brought in
by river barge, including him and the other labors. With luck, he could cut a
second swath back toward camp and arrive by lunch. Today would fill his pocket with
more than two hundred Reals… a new record.
The logging
ride out of the forest turned out to be easier than the ride in. The trees in
his new path were an ideal size for cutting. Diego began thinking about his
wife Carla and their dream. She’d been anx- ious to come with him into this
hell. He had kissed her and told her no… no wife of his would suffer in a place
like this. In seven months, he would be a father. The foreign company running
this operation was taking good care of her. She’d written last week that the
company had paid for a test with a machine that was like an x-ray but used
sound. The nurse had told her the baby would be a boy. Diego smiled with that
memory… it was a good one. He would have a boy who would grow up to be his
friend. That was a new part of the dream; the old part was still a small house
outside Maceio,
the coastal city where Diego was born. Diego instinctively slowed the dozer to
the speed of a man’s stride.
He squinted
watching a cloud of rain moving toward him along the path he’d just cut from
camp. The rain didn’t appear heavy, but when mixed with ground steam it was
solid enough to bring a false twilight. Nothing could be seen inside the cloud.
The dozer had a roll cage. A piece of corrugated sheet metal had been welded to
the top of the cage as a roof. Diego switched on spotlights. Drops started
hitting the sheet metal with rhythmic pings. The humidity grew heavier. The air
surrounded him like a damp towel. He pulled off his t-shirt and wiped his face
with it. A storm of birds fled from some trees his dozer was about to consume.
Their colored shapes moved past him at eye level like watercolor paints in fog.
Diego cocked his head to one side. He sensed something wrong.
Grinding the
shifter into neutral, he idled the machine. As the noise of his engine simmered
down, he was able to hear the far off sounds of a dozer racing at top speed. He
heard an engine revving at its highest rpm… no, it was two engines. More than
one dozer was racing through the forest. This was very unusual. A hollow
feeling began gnawing inside his chest. He remembered stories of odd things
that happened to people alone in the forest. He heard a different sound like a
wet towel hitting the ground in front of him. He leaned forward, squinting into
the fog. A bird tumbled from the air bouncing off the cab, the sound startling
Diego badly. The bird fluttered, then righted itself on the ground and took
off. He saw another bird fall a couple yards away, then another, and another.
They would roll around a bit, then fix themselves and fly off. This was very
strange… too strange. He now understood why dozers were racing through the
forest. Something very bad was happening. He shoved the dozer into gear and
slammed his feet into the pedals. The beast jumped forward at top power. He
heard muck spitting into the air off the backs of the tread-plates. To devil
with cutting the second track. To devil with the money. He was going to get out
of here as fast as this dozer could race. The treads were clanking at an
accelerating pace as the beast slowly picked up speed. He disengaged the tree
saw to gain a few more drops of power. He plowed through the top of a tree he’d
cut earlier, then another. He was doing close to ten miles per hour. A man
might run faster, but not through this brush and not for the miles that
remained to the camp.
Without
warning, he felt dizzy, an ill kind of dizzy. The fingers on his right hand
went numb, then paralyzed. He tried to move the fingers, but they were limp.
Coldness was spreading up from his hand. The more he tried to flex his fingers,
the worse it got. In seconds, his entire right arm was hanging flaccid at his
side. Whatever had gotten the birds was working on him. He knew it. The trees
kept moving past him in a blur. He realized with an odd disconnect that he was
having difficulty drawing breaths.
He thought
about Carla and the baby. His jaw squeezed tight. His lips formed a grim line.
He would make it for them.
The dozer
glanced off a large tree and kept going. The impact rocked him. He wheezed,
attempting to draw air into his chest. Maybe two miles remained until base
camp. He began veering off the trail. The saw-blade snagged on a mahogany six
feet in diameter. Diego was pitched from his seat. Dizzy and unable to hold on,
he fell from the cab. His shoulder hit a moving tread-plate, which tossed him
off the rig. He was like a paralyzed sack of meat.
“Umph!” He
landed on the ground. He thought how odd it was that he’d bounced. He didn’t
know people could bounce when they hit the ground. The tractor rumbled beside
him. Without his feet on the pedals, the dozer had stopped. The left side of
his face was a mix of blood and dirt. He tried to draw air into his lungs but
failed. His mind felt like it was beginning to evaporate. His entire body tingled.
He felt no pain. The muscles that worked his lungs were no longer responding.
He thought of calling for help, but without his lungs he could do nothing. He
gave up struggling and stared skyward at the treetops and thought of Carla.
Moments later, his heart stopped beating. He felt calm as what was left of his
mind faded into a warm nothing.
New Jersey: January
Sarah Mayfair
opened her eyes. The nightmare was still around her. Her vision was not in this
world but in some other. The nightmare was of underground water, great arteries
of rivers and streams and lakes. Where the liquid pooled, it was cool and deep.
She sensed this water was alive with thoughts, evil thoughts. A teaspoonful of
it teamed with plans of death. She was floating deep under the water, staring
as drowned people glided past her face sinking into the depths of a bottomless
pool. Looking down, she saw a trail of countless tiny bodies slowly pirouetting
as they drifted into the yawning darkness below her feet… Headlights from a car
traveled across a wall of her room. The lights dwelled on a wooden credenza,
then moved on. She followed the glow with her eyes seeing reality for the first
time. The simple act of seeing began to clear the veils of her nightmare. Her
breathing slowed. She realized she was covered in sweat.
Outside, a
subzero wind was blowing unimpeded through a forest of leafless trees and ice
crusted snow. The windowpanes rattled and hummed. Small drafts snuck through
the rooms. She shivered as the drafts caressed her dampened skin. She was in
the living room of her home. She recognized the shadowy details of furniture
and walls. Her boyfriend Kenny was in the bedroom asleep. She remembered
getting up and walking out here to be by herself to think. The nightmares had
grown worse, more of them with each passing week. She was starting to see the
faces of people she knew in these nightmares. She sensed it was some kind of
horrible parade of those who would die. She remem- bered Kenny’s image from the
dream.
Her body stiffened. A disembodied voice was whispering into her left ear. The
words were unintelligible… garbled, but unmistakably evil. This can’t be
happening. She screamed out in frustration and grief at the seeds of budding
madness.
Every muscle in her body
strained and screamed, her lungs burning. She turned the corner and
almost wept with relief. The Explorer was stopped behind someone who had
double-parked in the middle of the street. There wasn’t enough room for
it to pass. The other car’s blinkers were on, the driver nowhere to be
seen. For once, Philadelphia’s narrow side streets were a blessing
instead of a curse.
