The Incident

The first thing the reader will see in this book is a classified message sent to The President of the United States informing him that a research platform has exploded in outer space and what the disastrous consequences will be on Earth. A solar flare will blanket the Earth and there is a projection of a 90% fatality rate among Humans who are not under some type of cover when the solar flare appears. Chapter 1 takes place in the Oval Office. It is apparent from the discussion that goes on The President and his top men were aware that the explosion was not of a research platform, rather a nuclear weapons platform. The platform was built and funded by a group simple known as The Society. After building the platform, they made a gift of the platform to the United States under the guise of it being a research platform. The explosion was scheduled to occur a week before it actually happened. The explosion happened on New Year's Eve. This forces The President to scramble to contact his loyal supporters and to move the evacuation calendar up a week. As The President leaves for his shelter, the book shifts to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In Chapter 1, we meet one of the heroes of this two book series, Charles Radbourn, who works as a private investigator. Luckily for Charles, he went to bed early as he normally does on New Year's Eve. When he wakes up, he finds he is a much different world than the one that had existed when he went to sleep. In addition to the usual skills a good private investigator has, Charles has a special ability. Due to an injury which occurred during his one game career in the NFL, which caused his brain to be somewhat changed, he has an enhanced ability to read a person's tells. A tell in an unconscious act that anyone does when they are lying. As you might imagine, this ability comes in very handy in his line of work. Charles hopes to be and is eventually reunited with his off again, on again girlfriend, Regina Lambert. Reggie is a woman with a very mysterious past. As the book continues, we find out why someone with Reggie's talents and background is working in Carbondale. The majority of the novel takes place in Carbondale, IL, which is the home of Southern Illinois University. Charlie and Reggie battle Zombies, Mutants, and a host of bad guys as they struggle to complete the assignment they have been given. The assignment is to gain entry to Woody Hall, located on SIU's campus, gain access to a secret computer room, and recover some classified messages that are on the machine. Once their mission has been completed, they make a harrowing escape to the group that Reggie actually works for.