Darrell Maloney

It's several months after the eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano, and the world is a vastly different place. Six hundred thousand Americans were killed and millions more have been displaced, scattering to the far corners of the world. Many of them went to Alaska or southern California: two vastly different places with vastly different charms, but one very important thing in common. They're both very far away from the smoking hole in the ground which was once Yellowstone National Park. The whole world has changed. Much of it is still covered with poison ash; ash which will be around for at least a generation. Ash which will shorten the lives of everyone, and not just Americans. People halfway around the globe will be forced to breathe microscopic particles of the ash for many years to come. And everyone will ultimately pay a heavy price. Jenn and her "chitlins" settle in the Mojave Desert near Victorville, California. Gwen and Melvyn and Tony and Hannah choose Etlunka Lake east of Anchorage. And each of them will be terrified when they learn their nightmares aren't over. That a secondary eruption is in the making. This, the final chapter of the Yellowstone saga, focuses not on the dead but rather the survivors. And how they cope in a terribly damaged new world.

Frank and Josie are on the move after breaking away from her family's refuge in the tiny town of Plainview, Texas. They know the odds of making it to Junction are against them. But staying in Plainview was no longer an option, for life there had become untenable. They're forty miles away before they realize they've brought a stowaway with them. Farther south friends of Frank's are also on the move. Mayor Al is having a medical emergency. His only chance of survival is at a trauma hospital some two hundred miles away. Normally it wouldn't be a problem. But these aren't normal times, and the four feet of snow on the highway is going to make the journey a seemingly impossible task. But then again, things are never easy anymore...

It's been more than a year since the blackout, and seemingly forever since Dave Spear set out in a desperate search for his family. His quest has never been easy. He's been beaten half to death and almost murdered several times. And he's watched good friends die. He's been robbed of his most prized possession: an SUV he got running again using parts from his Faraday cage. But this former Marine gave as well as he got. The Corps taught him how to kill. And he's done plenty of that. Now Dave and wife Sarah are walking more than a thousand miles on foot, from Kansas to San Antonio and back to their prepper stronghold. With just a month to go, though, Sarah is ill and near death. Daughter Lindsey has a badly broken and infected leg. They have to face facts. They won't make it to San Antonio before winter sets in. The best they can do is to make it to Blanco, where Dave's good friend Red is the town's only law. Red will let them winter in Blanco and set out again in the spring. If only they can make it there alive.

America's been bloodied but not beaten. An estimated twenty million people have died, but an exact count may never be known. The entire country is buried beneath poison ash and many still aren't accounted for. The survivors are hurting, but they must find ways to keep going. Good old American ingenuity goes into high gear. The farmers find new ways to grow crops on poisoned land. Truckers find new ways to get vital cargo to where it needs to be. In every city the residents find new ways to grow what they need and to help one another pull through. Meanwhile it seems everyone in America is moving. The evacuees are moving as far as they can from the smoking hole in the ground which was once Yellowstone National Park. The federal government is spending money it doesn't have... nothing new for them... only this time it's using the money to build new cities in isolated places in an effort to help with the largest resettlement project in the history of man.

Even when faced with record-breaking high and low temperatures, storms of severity never before witnessed by man and expanding hurricane and tornado seasons, scientists cannot agree on what's making our climate and weather patterns go haywire. In recent years the problem has been deemed more political than scientific. In the halls of Congress, finger pointing is the order of the day. One camp blames the few scientists who still deny climate change as being bought and paid for. Nothing more, really, than paid lobbyists trying to protect the fossil fuel industries in the face of a decreasingly-deniable problem. The other camp says the vast majority of scientists who've concluded that climate change is a real thing are merely trying to further a liberal agenda. To finally strengthen pollution standards and reduce carbon emissions to levels which have had them salivating for years. Everybody wants cleaner air. But conservatives claim that obtaining that clean air will shackle big oil and the coal industry and raise costs for everyone. "Clean air is nice," they say. "But we don't want the nation to have to pay five dollars a gallon for gas to get it." And therein lies the crux of the problem. Each side is too busy blaming the other side to actually deal with the problem. It's far more important that their side doesn't get blamed for whatever ugliness is coming. But what if both sides are missing the point? What if both sides are spending so much effort blaming the other side that they've lost sight of the fact that people are dying unnecessarily? And that the problem could very possibly get much worse unless they stop sitting on their hands and do their jobs? Most people assume it's the damage from more powerful hurricanes, tornados and floods that's the biggest hazard of climate change. But what if the problem is none of those? What if the biggest hazard from climate change is something different? Something the scientists haven't even considered yet? Something that has the potential of eradicating humanity itself? "Pandemic" delves into one such possibility...

The snow has started to melt. The survivors can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But getting there won't be easy; nothing's ever been easy. In Plainview Josie is badly beaten by her brother. She and Frank have decided to move up their escape attempt. A few weeks later they find themselves outside in what many would describe as a winter wonderland. But they don't have to travel four hundred miles through three feet of snow. To Frank and Josie it's more a wintry hell. A tragic suicide at Joint Base Lackland changes everything. But the general court martial of two high ranking military officers is moving forward at breakneck speed. And at Eden South a stricken Mayor Al sends Marty on yet another hazardous mission.

Dave should have known better. He'd accomplished his mission. He'd found his family and rescued them. They were together again. There'd been nothing easy about it. He'd been shot at, beaten almost to death and had to detour two thousand miles to California and back. But he'd accomplished his mission. Now he made a major blunder: he let himself relax. He let himself believe the worst was over. That the trip back to Texas would be easy by comparison.Nothing's ever easy in the new world. The thousand mile journey ahead is full of traps. Death awaits and bad men hide around every corner. After everything he's been through, he should know better.

Yellowstone has erupted. Most of Wyoming is gone. A total of seven states have had their landscapes changed forever. A smoking hole in the ground covers thousands of square miles. The destruction stretches into southern Canada, and every one of the lower forty eight United States is touched in some manner. Millions of tons of poison volcanic ash are pumped into the air, where most of it floats back to earth to contaminate farmland and fresh water for years to come. The great Alaskan migration begins. So does the great boatlift as hundreds of thousands of terrified Americans find new homes overseas. No one, from sea to shining sea, is left untouched. And the worst is yet to come. For this is a disaster which will take millions of lives and decades to overcome.

The second freeze is well underway. Depending on one's point of view the world is a winter wonderland, or a wintry hell. In tiny Plainview, Frank and Josie prepare for their escape from the Dykes clan. At the former prison in Eden, Marty and the others grieve. They've lost three of their best men to marauders and suicide. Marty reluctantly accepts a position as Eden's new security chief. It's up to him now to make sure they're not overrun a second time. At Joint Base Lackland in San Antonio the base populace takes sides. Hardliners consider their two "rogue" colonels guilty of mutiny and want them put to death. Most others disagree, and a young captain named Wright tries his best to save them from the firing squad.

Scientists knew it was coming for decades. At least they claimed to. And perhaps some of them did. Most of them, though, were as surprised as everyone else when the ice packs started to melt. Thus began the great debate on what was causing it. Those with a certain political leaning claimed it was greenhouse gases, the exhaust from machines and smokestacks, which was causing global temperatures to rise. Others, with different political agendas, scoffed and said it was a natural occurrence of the earth, going through its normal heating and cooling cycles. Whatever was causing it didn't really matter. What mattered was that it was happening. And those scientists who believed the rising sea levels or more severe and more frequent storms would mark the worst of it were very wrong. The deadliest result of climate change, the one that threatened to wipe out all of mankind, would come from a place no one expected.

Beneath Yellowstone National Park a super-volcano has started rumbling. It's been there for a very long time, though most Americans are not aware of it. Every three hundred thousand years or so it erupts with devastating consequences. Scientists say it's getting ready to erupt. Naysayers say it's a hoax. The Interior Department closes the park and orders an evacuation. Most people comply, and those who don't stay behind knowing they're risking a very violent death. Millions will die. And the lives of every survivor will be changed forever. There really is a super-volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park. It really has erupted in the past and WILL erupt again. And when it does scientists say it'll take up to twenty percent of the United States with it. You do not want to be in that twenty percent.

It's been just shy of seven years since the first wave of electromagnetic pulses bombarded the earth and began the turmoil. Most people couldn't cope, for they no longer had the skills their ancestors had. No one grew their own crops anymore. Few knew how to hunt and fish and trap small game. They lived off boxed food and canned goods. And they died in great numbers. Some, though, survived. They weren't tougher than the others, necessarily. They were better planners. They were the ones who were willing to learn new things. By the time the canned goods and boxed pasta were gone, the planners already had their grow spaces established and thriving. They were raising livestock instead of butchering it on the spot. And they were working hard to protect what they had from others who'd take it from them. The group of people in Scott Harter's south Texas compound was such a group. They suffered like everyone else. But they also persevered. This is the final chapter in their story. It takes place five years after we last saw them, and tells the tail of a recovering world. And a group of friends and family who've defied the odds and thrived.

It hasn't been an easy journey for Dave Spear. On his cross-country trek he's been shot at, beaten up, robbed, waylaid and left for dead. But it was all worth it. Now he's on the verge of finally reuniting his family, separated during a worldwide blackout and by circumstance. As he nears the tiny town of Ely, Kansas, though, he's not aware of the trouble which awaits him. The Dykes brothers' bunker has been overrun and is now under the control of very bad men. He's already found and rescued his youngest daughter Beth. Now, to gain the freedom of his wife Sarah and older daughter Lindsey he must find a way to attack the fortified bunker and to kill the men inside. Without harming any of the innocents. If anyone can find a way to accomplish such a mission, it's Dave. He's not only a former Marine. He's a father who's tired of fighting and wants his family back. And he won't take no for an answer.

THE FINAL CHAPTER IN THE "RANGER" SERIES. The city of Lubbock is slowly adapting to a world without power. The citizens are relearning the ways of their ancestors and coming up with innovative new ways to survive. The students of Texas Tech University, stranded far from home by circumstance, are taken in by local citizens. Together they work to bring a city back from the brink. The small contingent of Texas Rangers finds the man who shot Randy's partner and makes him pay. This final chapter has everything from cops patrolling on go-carts to curmudgeons trying to stand in the way of progress to Randy and Sarah's efforts to help a wayward waif named Rachel. Lubbock's got a long road ahead of her. But she'll survive.

The world's frozen over again and everyone is struggling in his or her own way to survive. Frank's still stuck in the tiny town of Plainview. The snow pack is four feet deep now and he's not going anywhere anytime soon. But he and Josie are becoming closer and he's okay with that. Inside Salt Mountain four hundred miles to the south Mark and Hannah are anguished. Hannah's convinced not only that Frank is dead, but that she is somehow responsible. Eden South is overrun by brutal men who hold seventy five hostages. Marty's best friend Lenny is the first to fall. But he won't be the only one. And at Joint Base San Antonio, two surgeons who made an error in judgment await court martial and a possible sentence of death.