Old Man's Apocalypse | Book 1 | Old Man's War, page 1
part #1 of Old Man's Apocalypse Series
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Old Man's Apocalypse
Old Man's War
Book 1
Post-Apocalyptic Survival Fiction
By
AJ Newman
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Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to Patsy, my beautiful wife of thirty-six years. She assists with everything from Beta reading to censor duties. She enables me to write, golf, and enjoy my life with her and our mob of Shih Tzu's.
Thanks to Patsy, Cheryl, Jim, Brenda, Richard, David, Wes, and Cliff, Beta readers, for this novel. They gave many suggestions that helped improve the cover and readability of my book.
Thanks to Dee Cooper for proofreading and editing this novel.
Thanks to WMHCheryl at wmhcheryl@gmail.com for the great final proofreading and suggestions on improving the accuracy and helping me tell a better story.
Thanks to Dee at Dauntless Cover Design for the fantastic cover.
AJ Newman
Copyright © 2021 Anthony J Newman. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All events, names, characters, and places are the author's imagination or are used as fictitious events. That means I thought up this whole book from my imagination, and nothing in it is true.
All rights reserved. None of this publication may be copied or reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher.
As they say on TV, don't try anything you read in this novel. It's all fiction and stuff I made up to entertain you. Buy some survival books if you want to learn how to survive in the apocalypse. I recommend Wild Edible Plants of Western North America by Donald R. Kirk, Army FM 21-76 Survival, and Old Farts Survival Guide by Ron Foster for an excellent start.
Published by Newalk LLC.
Henderson, Kentucky
Contents:
Books by AJ Newman
Key Characters
Chapter 1- My Story
Chapter 2 – The Game So Far
Chapter 3 – Naked and Unafraid
Chapter 4 – Olivia Aragon’s Story
Chapter 5 – Ollie wakes up.
Chapter 6 - Slavers
Chapter 7 – The Storm
Chapter 8 - Searching for Maria
Chapter 9 – It is … what it is.
Chapter 10 - Ladies in the House
Chapter 11 – Underwear & Sailboats
Chapter 12 – Gardens and Sailboats
Chapter 13 – Loading and Training
Chapter 14 – Training and Pirates
Chapter 15 – Cubans
Chapter 16 – Sickness
Chapter 17 – Recovering
Chapter 18 – Cannons and Bombs!
Chapter 19 – Amazon Warriors and Me
Chapter 20 – Thad Mills
Chapter 21 – Thad’s Place
Chapter 22 – Thad’s Treasure
Chapter 23 – The Stew!
Chapter 24 – Old Man’s “Girl”illa War.
Chapter 25 – Shirley
Chapter 26 – Taking a Short Break
Chapter 27 – The Best Laid Plans
Chapter 28 – Old Man’s Girl’illa War - Again!
Chapter 29 – Ambush
Chapter 30 – Beaten
Chapter 30 – Leaving
Chapter 31 Sailing
Chapter 32 Panama City
Chapter 33 Aunt Olivia!
Chapter 34 “Girl” illas in Action
Chapter 35 - Surprises All Around Me.
Books by AJ Newman
About the Author
Books by AJ Newman
Old Man's Apocalypse:
Old Man's War
Old Man’s Journey (spring 2021)
Prepper's Apocalypse
Prepper's Apocalypse
Prepper's Collapse
Prepper's Betrayal
John Logan Mysteries" The Human Syndrome
Extinction Level Event
Extinction
Immune: The Hunted
War Dogs
Heading Home
No One Left Behind
Amazon Warriors
EMP:
Perfect Storm
Chaos in the Storm
Cole's Saga series:
Cole's Saga
FEMA WARS
American Apocalypse:
American Survivor
Descent into Darkness
Reign of Darkness
Rising from the Apocalypse
After the Solar Flare:
Alone in the Apocalypse
Adventures in the Apocalypse
Alien Apocalypse:
The Virus
Surviving
A Family's Apocalypse Series:
Cities on Fire
Family Survival
The Day America Died:
New Beginnings
Old Enemies
Frozen Apocalypse
The Final Ending
The Adventures of Jon Harris:
Surviving
Hell in the Homeland
Tyranny in the Homeland
Revenge in the Homeland
Apocalypse in the Homeland
Jon Returns
AJ Newman and Mack Norman
Rogue's Apocalypse:
Rogues Origin
Rogues Rising
Rogues Journey
A Samantha Jones Murder Mystery:
Where the Girls Are Buried
Who Killed the Girls?
These books are available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/AJ-Newman/e/B00HT84V6U/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
To contact the Author, please leave comments @
https://www.facebook.com/aj.newmanauthor.5?ref=bookmarks
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Remember to read my other Science Fiction and Mystery Thriller books on Amazon.
To contact or follow the author, please like my page and leave comments at https://www.facebook.com/aj.newmanauthor.5?ref=bookmarks
To view other books by AJ Newman, go to Amazon to my author's page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HT84V6U
AJ Newman
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Key Characters
Jeff Mann – The main character and hero of the story. Life has kicked the crap out of him, and yet he survives. He’s been stranded alone on Dauphin Island, Alabama, since the apocalypse started two years ago. His family was murdered a year before the apocalypse, and he’s been alone ever since. He’s in his late fifties, gray in his hair, and around six feet tall.
Ollie (Olivia) Aragon – Ollie had a great family life, but her husband abused her and left her for one of his students. She’s a feisty Latin beauty who had lived with her extended family during the apocalypse until slavers killed her mom and captured her and her sister. She brings spice and trouble into Jeff’s life. She is in her early thirties, has raven black hair, and is a bold woman eager to get revenge on her captors.
Maria Aragon – Maria is Ollie’s younger sister. Like Ollie, she is a beautiful Latin woman full of anger at her captors and spoiling for a fight. She’s impetuous but handy in a fight. She vies for Jeff’s attention as they try to survive in a world fraught with danger lurking all around them.
Emma Mann – Jeff’s dead wife. He talks with her every day, and she gives him advice. He can’t decide if she is a ghost or a part of his subconscious helping him cope with the apocalypse.
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Chapter 1- My Story
Dauphin Island, Alabama: May 2038
The apocalypse began in 2036 and slowly rolled across the world without much notice. There weren't any bombs, EMP blasts, grid failure, or natural disasters to blame, as you always find in those post-apocalyptic novels. Hell, I’d read a hundred of those gloom and doom stories since the real apocalypse, and most of them were a gnat ass compared to this messed up world. The cause was the incompetence of the world's governments and the failure of the many Ponzi scheme cryptocurrencies. First, the riots came, and then starvation and depravity followed. The billionaires built safe compounds while everyone else died off or fought to survive the holocaust at the end of the modern world.
While over seven billion people died worldwide, I survived the apocalypse by ducking and hiding. I nearly starved several times, but that was when there were still gangs on the island. I could usually catch fish and grow vegetables, and it saved my life. My story starts on Dauphin Island, Alabama, back in 2038. A couple of years after the meltdown destroyed the U.S.A along with the rest of the world. The only people I’d seen in the last two years were pirates and raiders. I’d been alone on the island for years and was miserable. I thought I deserved that because I was alive, and none of my loved ones had survived. In fact, I was too mean and ornery to be around decent people. My life abruptly changed when I saved two wretches from the pirates. I’m Jeff Mann, and this is my story about how I survived the worst event in my life and then the apocalypse a year later. I didn’t do it by myself, but the story starts with my situation and me.
My Story
The ever present wind had died down, and the damned mosquitoes buzzed around me like vultures waiting on a meal but didn’t like my smell. Every now and then, a hungry sand flea would bite me, but I knew I couldn’t move for a while. Sand had worked its way into my crotch and was chaffing everything I held dear. Duke scratched at a flea or something and raised his head to sniff the air. I thought, why in hell’s bells was a grown man lying in the weeds and sand on such a nice day on the beach? My rifle’s scope solved that dilemma when I moved it to my left.
I saw the red, white, and blue boat slicing through the waves, leaving a frothy white trail in the ocean as it approached from the east as the pirates and slavers often did since the shit hit the fan and the world ended. The large twin-engine craft ran up and down the shore before finding a suitable place on the beach to ground the boat. The pilot waved a pistol in the air and then pointed it in my direction. I thought, Oh! Joy! The intruders were going to land nearby, and I couldn’t slink off to my hiding spot.
I hated all of them, but the slavers and human traffickers made my skin crawl. There has to be a special place in hell for them. Apparently, Dauphin Island was an excellent place to stop and clean the women up to get a higher price in Mobile. They always showed up, sampled the women, and then made them clean up and dress in fine clothes before heading up Mobile Bay. Some slavers stopped across the Bay at Fort Morgan, but Dauphin Island had become a popular place to do their dirty work.
At first, I hid from them and didn’t want to know what had happened to the women. Then one day, they landed right in front of my place. That was the second time I’d killed anyone in my life. I killed three men and a woman that night. I gave the slaver’s boat to the kidnapped women and set them free with food and water. Some of the groups that landed were too big for me to tackle. I had to hide with my ears plugged.
I decided early on that this was none of my business and has happened every day all over the new world since the apocalypse, but it stuck in my craw to do nothing. I'm too damned old to get involved in other people's problems. I usually only had to wait until they had completed their perversions and make sure they left the island. I'd seen several of these assholes stop on the island before heading on up the bay to Mobile where they could sell the women. They rarely beat them, and most women complied and lived. Doing nothing to stop this always made me sick to my stomach, but doing nothing kept me alive. I would have snuck away and never gotten involved if it weren't for Emma's constant nagging.
The fact that the women were naked didn't draw my attention. I had seen a couple of dozen nude women since the shit hit the fan. I'd saved several just after the lights went out, thanks to Emma's nagging. The last time I saved anyone, the asshats were molesting three young girls. I shot two of the slavers but didn't see the others. One man shot me in the shoulder. I kept them pinned down while the girls escaped but barely escaped myself.
A few men had landed on the island with the intention of looting or staying. My old trusty .30 .06 with a suppressor and a scope quickly changed their minds. Well, the ones who'd didn't get their brains scattered on the beach. I wasn't a qualified sniper but don't get within four hundred yards of me planning to screw with me. I had buried over a dozen male and female invaders in shallow graves for invading my island with bad intentions. They wanted to scavenge the island, play in the sun, and then move on to wreak their havoc on another location.
I only had one rule for visitors. Leave within twenty-four hours or stay a couple of feet below the sand behind the schoolhouse forever.
I placed my rifle's crosshairs on the stranger's chest as the tall, muscular man dragged the screaming woman across the beach. The jerk wore a do rag and had a pistol in his free hand. Another man held a gun pointed at two other young women. I knew where this was going and how it would end. The damned end of the modern world had brought out the worst from many people. I hadn't seen much good in the world since I adopted a ducking my head and minding my own business philosophy. Being shot trying to save someone tends to make one a bit cautious. The wound healed but taught me a valuable lesson. I must mind my own business, and I can’t save the world.
I moved my scope to the closest hostage. Her hands and feet were bound in front of her. She struggled against her bindings but couldn't run even if I distracted the men that captured her. The other women were in the same shape with their pain and horror etched on their faces. I'd stopped looking at these poor ladies a while back because I didn't want to have nightmares or be haunted by their loss of hope and suffering. All appeared to be women of color, and I assumed they were of Latin descent. Horror covered their faces as the realization of their fate set in on them. Tears rolled down their cheeks, and all but one begged for her life. She was defiant with gritted teeth and clenched fists but also had tears on her cheeks.
Night had fallen as I watched the awfulness unfold in front of me. Two of the men gathered wood while the other started a fire on the beach. I shivered as the night air cooled down a bit but still struggled with every breath of the Gulf Coast humid air. The air was clammy, but I was used to it. The slavers slapped themselves as mosquitoes swarmed around them, but they weren't biting me yet. I used a mixture of crushed peppermint and lemongrass leaves to ward off the blood-sucking bastards. It smelled good to me, but the skeeters hated the crap. I snickered every time one of the men slapped themselves and cursed the insects.
The leader cut one of the women's bindings and then knocked her down to the sand with the butt of his pistol. He dropped his pants while aiming his gun at the poor lady's head. The woman cursed the man and threw two hands full of sand in the man's face. The jerk screamed something and kicked the woman in the side. She collapsed, and the man ripped her panties from her limp body.
Emma whispered in my ear. "Stop looking at the naked women and help them."
"Emma, I'm not risking my life for strangers. I've told you that for a year now. You got me shot the last time you talked me into interfering in someone else’s business."
Duke lay beside me and looked up at me with his brown eyes. He was just happy to be with me and just looked up at me and cocked his head when I talked with him. I scratched his ears. "Emma, Duke agrees with me. We don't stick our nose into other's business."
Duke was my half Golden Retriever and half mutt, who was kinda gold with brown patches and weighed seventy-five pounds. He had tan spots over his eyes and on the top of his paws. Duke was one weird looking dog. He was friendly to most folks but was very protective of Emma and me. Duke licked his balls and cocked his head at me again and then lowered his head and growled. I could read his mind. He wanted me to save the women. Damn, Emma and Duke always teamed up on me. They were do-gooders and would get me killed. I ignored the mongrel. Then I heard Emma. "Save the women!"
I looked out at the Gulf to keep from seeing the vicious attack. I hummed an old tune from back in the early twenties to keep from hearing her screams. The shame in me kept swelling, but I choked it down by thinking about my survival. These men would either kill me on sight or ignore me as most had. No slaver wanted a man too old to work in the fields or brothels. I looked like a cross between a caveman and an old hippie with my gray stringy hair and beard.
My mind turned to the end of the world as it often did when I had too much time to think. The man's blood curdling scream took me by surprise. I snapped back to reality and looked through my scope at the people on my damned beach. Duke was excited and growled his low warning growl. The woman who had been under the man was standing a few feet from him. She was laughing uncontrollably as her attacker stood still, holding his bloody crotch. I thought, Good for her! The man screamed something, raised his pistol, and shot the woman until the revolver was empty.
Emma cried out. "Help them!"
I muttered, "Oh! Shit!" I shot the man when he raised his pistol to shoot the second woman. I rushed toward the captives to set them free and finished off another asshat with my 9-mm pistol. Duke growled and leaped through the air at another man I'd not seen. Duke shook his head violently ripping into the man’s flesh and the asshat begged for mercy. Duke wouldn’t stop the attack until I called him off, but I was enjoying the man’s torment too much. The dog dangled from his bloody arm as the man screamed in pain. I tired of the yelling, so I shot him in the head. One of the women saw me kill the men and thought she was next. She took off for the school building. The other Latino woman stood her ground with a knife. Her posture told me she meant business and would use the knife to protect herself. She was a fierce warrior and beautiful to boot. Things were moving at warp speed, and my old ass could barely keep up. I thought, this woman was different from the others. She’s a fighter.
