An Apocalypse and Then Some, page 1
AN APOCALYPSE AND THEN SOME
A TEENAGER'S GUIDE TO SAVING THE EARTH: BOOK 1
CRAIG ROBERTSON
ALSO BY CRAIG ROBERTSON:
* Podium Audio produced audiobooks are (or soon will be) available for all the below titles except the standalone ones.
For specifics as to the correct order for reading the Ryanverse, click here.
BOOKS IN THE RYANVERSE:
THE FOREVER SERIES (2016)
THE FOREVER LIFE, Book 1
THE FOREVER ENEMY, Book 2
THE FOREVER FIGHT, Book 3
THE FOREVER QUEST, Book 4
THE FOREVER ALLIANCE, Book 5
THE FOREVER PEACE, Book 6
GALAXY ON FIRE SERIES (2017)
EMBERS, Book 1
FLAMES, Book 2
FIRESTORM, Book 3
FIRES OF HELL, Book 4
DRAGON FIRE, Book 5
ASHES, Book 6
RISE OF ANCIENT GODS SERIES (2018):
RETURN OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 1
RAGE OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 2
TORMENT OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 3
WRATH OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 4
FURY OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 5
FALL OF THE ANCIENT GODS, Book 6
TIME WARS LAST FOREVER SERIES (2019)
RYAN TIME, Book 1
LOST TIME, Book 2
FRAGMENTED TIME, Book 3
SHATTERED TIME, Book 4
FINDING TIME, Book 5
HEALING TIME, Book 6
THE TIMELESS VOID (2021)
RYAN’S GAMBIT, Book 1
RYAN’S PHANTOMS, Book 2
RYAN’S ENIGMA, Book 3
RYAN’S UNDOING, Book 4
RYAN’S REBOOT, Book 5
RYAN’S RESOLUTION, Book 6
THE WHALES OF TIME (2023)
Ryan In UnWonderland, Book 1
How Ryan Saves Time, Book 2
Saving Alice Ryan, Book 3
NON-RYANVERSE BOOKS:
A Teenager's Guide to Saving The Earth
An Apocalypse and Then Some, Book 1
How to Survive Surviving the Apocalypse, Book 2
Is This Apocalypse Over Yet?, Book 3
TIME DIVING
Letters From Hell, Book 1
Purgatory’s Best Shot, Book 2
Heaven Says Wait, Book 3
Into the Nexus, Book 4
ROAD TRIPS IN SPACE SERIES (2019):
THE GALAXY ACCORDING TO GIDEON, Book 1
THE EARTH ACCORDING TO GIDEON, Book 2
THE AFTERLIFE ACCORDING TO GIDEON: HEAVEN, Book 3 (Due Out ... Eventually)
OLDER, STANDALONE WORKS:
THE CORPORATE VIRUS (2016)
THE INNERgLOW EFFECT (2010)
WRITE NOW! THE PRISONER OF NaNoWRiMo (2009)
ANON TIME (2009)
AN APOCALYPSE AND THEN SOME
A TEENAGER'S GUIDE TO SAVING THE EARTH: BOOK 1
by Craig Robertson
All that stands between us and extinction is a middle school kid. Who's taking bets?
Imagine-It Publishing
El Dorado Hills, CA
Copyright 2025 Craig Robertson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the author.
ISBNs: 979-8-9905046-4-6 (E-Book)
979-8-9905046-5-3 (Paperback)
979-8-9905046-6-0 (Hardback)
Cover design by Alexandre
http://www.designbookcover.pt/en/
Editors:
Michael R. Blanche
Beth Lynne
Forest Olivier
Formatting Services by Drew Avera
drewavera@gmail.com
First Edition 2025
It is my great good fortune to be able to dedicate this book to the best woman on earth, my wife, my love, my BFF, Karen. Channeling Wayne Campbell, I'm not worthy ... but I'm not going anywhere either!
A glossary of terms is available at the end of the book.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
GLOSSARY:
And Now A Word From Your Author
ONE
"Christopher, honey, it's time to get out of the car," my mom said for the third or fourth time.
But I ask you, why even count? I was staring into the pit of hell itself in its most horrific incarnation. Middle school. And my allegedly loving mother was about ready to set her right foot on my butt and eject me from the family car. She, who once pushed me out of her own body, was now not just willing, but actually anxious to force me into a day fraught with certain failure, humiliation, and irreversible psychological damage. And for all that, I was still supposed to buy her a Mother's Day card each and every year? Where is justice when it is needed? Sure, it was only the first day of my seventh-grade year, but already I was the victim here. Let's face it, I had been fully trapped into a system of my betters where they and their whims of fate ruled my existence. If I'd have known what an anarchist was, I think I’d have become one then and there.
"I think I'm sick, Mom," I tried yet again to sell to her. "I mean I am sick," I corrected. Gotta give this pitch some heft.
"I think someone's just nervous about the start of a new school year."
"No, Mom, seriously, I think I have a tumor. And the tumor's so bad, it has a fever."
"Well, here's some encouraging words of wisdom, hon. That's not how tumors work. But if you go to class and study hard, then you can become a doctor. Once you are, you'll realize just how silly what you just said was."
"I forgot my ... my ... homework," flew from my lips unbidden. Come on, I was a panicking kid here.
"There is no homework due the first day of school, sweetie. Now get going before the bell rings." Then, because my life only seemed like it couldn't get worse, Mom rolled down my window and shouted to Bev Thompson as she passed by, "Oh, Beverly, hi. May I ask a favor of you?"
Some quick history. Bev and I had been in school together since kindergarten. Back then, we talked to each other some and played at the park if we ran into one another. But by fourth grade, whatever relationship we had was up in smoke. She was a girl. I was a boy. Nuf said. Now Bev was–let us agree–rapidly maturing into womanhood, while I was still swimming in the kiddy pool of life. I don't think we'd spoken in two years. Okay, back to the complete tale of the destruction of my life.
"Oh," Bev said with the enthusiasm of the greeter at a mortuary, "Mrs. Alan.” That was it. No, hello, or nice to see you. No, just the absolute social minimum. I slumped down as far as I could. Of course, that didn't help. It was more an instinctive than intentional stab at a safe haven.
"Chris here is nervous about the first day," my cheery mother continued. "Would you be a good friend and walk him to class?"
Was there a pistol in the glove box? I didn't recall ever seeing one, but blowing my brains out sounded so good just then. I reached to check for sure, but my hand got slapped out of the air. Nice visual there, Mom. Now Bev thinks I'm a spaz as well as a loser. A loser spaz. A lopazer.
"I need to be somewhere," Bev said, totally devoid of human emotion. With that, she marched away.
"Well, pooh, I'm sorry your friend didn't have time to help," Mom decried.
"No, Mom, she needs the time to go spread the word that I'm six times more geeky than I was last year to everyone else at Delta Middle School. Maybe she's going to the office to use the PA system? She's a very focused individual."
"Very funny," Mom dismissed with a slap of my thigh. "Now get out and have a great day as a seventh grader."
Don't get me wrong. I loved my mother. But she could be so clueless. Or cruel; I wasn't sure yet which it was. She didn't even know that the words great day and seventh grade cannot be used in the same sentence. Not in the same universe. I opened the door and walked away without a word or a look back. So, naturally, Mom hit the horn–long and hard. Then, when every pair of eyes in the state were then looking, she yelled, "Love you, Christophernny," and waved as demonstrably as if she were flagging down the HMS Titanic to stop and pluck her from the frigid Atlantic Ocean.
Why wasn't it possible to telekinetically self-immolate? I sure wished that was a thing.
And then the second bell rang. Perfecto. I was officially back in middle school, Bev was texting the cosmos that I was a pathetic moron, and now I was late. Maybe I should use the scissors my mother carefully packed in my pencil case and rip the seat of my pants open. Why leave one stone-of-humiliation unturned? Why not indeed?
I headed toward the office to get my tardy slip. Why drag it out by hoping my homeroom teacher would cut me some slack? Mr. Gibbon–name spelled exactly like the howling monkey he was–had a proven lack of compassi
As I was waiting in the long line to report my guilt and beg mercy from the office staff, the daily announcements blared overhead. Darn, even getting in trouble didn't spare me the misery of being subject to that drivel.
"Mr. Alan," a flat, desiccated voice called me back to the lamentable here-and-now.
I looked up to see and examine the nasal passages of Mrs. Snively. She was the wizened old crone standing in an open field the day they built Delta Middle School's office. Hence–since no one dared ask her to move, lest she turn them into a toad–she became the receptionist.
"Right on time as predicted," Mrs. Snively condemned in her faint lower-class British accent. She ripped off the tardy slip and started to hand it to me. Of course she released it shy of my hand so it fluttered to the floor. Same scary clown, same circus-of-the-damned. "You delinquents never change," she sing-songed as I stooped to retrieve the slip. "And that's what penitentiaries are for," she said once I faced her again. The lady was such a pillar of public education.
I walked away without a word or a look back. I was twelve. I did that a lot.
One silver-lining to my black cloud of a morning was that, at the time I got back to Gibbon's homeroom, the bell rang. I had just enough time to hand him my tardy slip, experience his disapproving grunt, and then I was OTD–out the door. My bleak day would have three lowly-placed highlights. Lowlights? One was lunch. The second was hearing the final bell, releasing me from the stalag. The third was where I was presently headed. Grace Chang's Computer Science class. Well beyond rational expectations, Ms. Chang–who always insisted I call her Grace, but I never did because she was old, like twenty five–was a great teacher and a cool woman. I know. How'd she end up teaching middle school? Some blood-debt needed to be repaid? She'd killed a bunch of people and it was this or the electric chair? Who knew? But I sure counted myself fortunate to have her as an instructor.
As I neared Room 222, my stomach, against all odds due to its already low position, sank further. The Line of Shame, it would seem, had been re-instituted this year since it had been so fun the last year. The Line was where ten to fifteen jocks lined up either side of the entrance outside Room 222. Their self-appointed mission was to razz, torment, and otherwise make miserable anyone nerdy enough to be enrolled in Computer Science. Unfortunately, Grace, bless her heart, was a bit too ... um, out-of-touch ... to even notice there was a gauntlet outside her classroom. And so it goes ...
"Well, well," sniped Ernie Severide, the rather large and ill-tempered lineman for our football team. Think a bull raised to fight in the arena that had just had a rope tied around his testicles. That was Ernie at his core. "Look at the snowcakes this glorious year has brought us."
Ben Pender, his wingman since second grade, leaned in to Ernie's ear. "It's either snowflake or cupcake, dude. Ya gotta choose."
Ernie roughly brushed him off. "I call a snowcake a snowcake if I wanta. Back off, queer." Yeah, it was pretty much impossible to see the kid succeeding in life. Then Ernie returned to his duties serving The Line. " Hey, Ph ... Ph ... Christofairy," he sprayed. I tried unsuccessfully to shrink into a black hole and disappear. "Gonna kiss your girlfriend, Ms. Chang?" I know, I know, it was such a lame taunt. But we're talking Ernie Severide. When pigs fly, they don't go very far, and when Ernie articulated, he didn't do so very much.
As I passed him, Ernie reached out and slapped the stack of books I carried under my arm. They crashed to the floor and, man, was that ever hilarious. Not. But Ernie and his Band of Chumps sure thought it was. They brayed like the jackasses they were.
The bell rang, so The Line broke up at a trot, and the last kid in our room closed the door. Peace at last.
"Hey, guys," Grace began with joy in her voice, "welcome back. Great to see the old faces as well as the new ones." She smiled ear-to-ear. "First, I want to say that this is a Judgment-Free Zone. We will all value everyone else's questions and opinions. As of today, we're all best friends, even if we don't know each other yet." She giggled at her own funny. Man, was she a beacon of hope to geeks like me.
Pretty soon, the class had split off into groups of four to work on the day's assignment. Well, everyone but me. Grace pulled me aside and then sat down beside me at one of the benches. We'd worked all summer on a special project and she wanted to have me complete it before she integrated me back into the mainstream classroom. I guess I should say that the computer class was both for newbies and pros like myself. It was also both about programming as well as computer design. Like any class, most kids put in the minimum and, in turn, got out the minimum. But last year, Grace recognized that I was kind of a stud at this computer thing. Accordingly, she allowed me to learn at my own pace, which was a first ever for me.
The upshot was that over the summer she'd help me learn Python. That's a super-powerful language that emphasizes code readability and can manage tons of data. And before you say no way, let me tell you yes way, this kid was able to use, if not master, the language pretty quickly. I was employing that tool to build up some basic parallel programs. Now, we lacked a supercomputer to run them on, but the point was the learning, and I was having a blast and a half. Grace confided in me that I was much more of a natural at programming than she was–quite the compliment for an awkward preteen.
"Christopher, I really think you can get a scholarship to a top-notch university if you keep at this," she praised. "I know that's pretty far off on your horizon, but, hey, a dream is a good thing to have."
I had no idea that, at that moment, any hopes, plans, or dreams of my having a great college experience–or any kind of a normal life–were quite literally about to go up in smoke.
Before I could blush and say something stupid and clumsy, the floor shook. The first wave was subtle.
"Did you feel that, Christopher?" Grace asked me with a frown.
And of course my thoughts–as a sexually obsessed but brain-dead kid–went directly to, OMG, she wants to know if I felt a something that passed between us too. The woman's hot for me. Never mind that Grace had on a wedding band and pictures of her beautiful wife and young children posted on any open space in the room. No, I fancied she was falling for me ... falling hopelessly.
I was awakened to reality–or not far from it–when the building shook violently. Grace shot an arm to cover mine. "Was that an earthquake?" she screeched, horror in her eyes.
I scanned the room, uncertain how to react. The building did jerk around a good bit more than I'd have liked it to. "Ms. Chang, I don't think we get earthquakes in Spokane." I was pretty sure that was a true statement. I'd never felt one anyway.
Any doubt that something very big and very, very bad was coming down was laid to rest definitively when most of the windows exploded inward and east-facing walls started to fracture.
"Students, this is Mr. Gordon," came the loud and shaky voice of the principal. "Duck and cover immediately. There appears to be a nuclear war or something. Duck and cover immediately."
In retrospect, if there was anything humorous involved in the demise of our civilization–and trust me, there was precious little there–it was Principal Gordon's announcement that last morning of normalcy. You see, Philip Gordon was in his late sixties. He'd grown up in an era that feared global nuclear war was just around the next calendar page. As a consequence, school children back in his day were taught the ludicrous duck-and-cover drill. I mean, if a fifty-megaton device just went off within your personal horizon, you were gonna be as dead as dead could be. Vaporized-toast dust. There was no maneuver that would keep a child safe in their doomed classroom. Anyway, duck-and-cover drill faded out in the 1980s. So, it would seem, did Principal Gordon's sensibility as well.
To a student, we were even more confused, and hence, terrified by his command. Fortunately, the fire alarms went off, the sprinklers hissed to life, and we all ran screaming into the halls–teachers included. The thunderous raging of explosions increased in both frequency and severity. The school structure was clearly about to fail. I briefly considered a leap out the nearest window, but settled for a sprint along the top of the lockers that lined the halls. The stairway was another story. Swirling death. The student body was flowing in one terror-stricken current. I doubted I'd survive entering the river as it surged.
