Dust

By Robert Williams

Billionaire adventurer Stan Owens has everything, success, fame, all the luxury money can buy... until a plane crash leaves him stranded in the desert. Alone in a hostile environment, he makes a horrifying discovery in the desert wastes.

This is a frightening new short story by Robert Williams, the acclaimed author of "Peculiar, MO."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Williams
• Release date: May 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458064752

Robert Williams

Robert Williams received his degree in astrophysics from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1998, and is a former array operator for the Very Large Array, the world's largest phased radio telescope. His previous novels include Peculiar, MO, The Storms of Eternity, and The Remembrance.

Book preview

Dust

By Robert Williams

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

© 2010 by Robert Williams. All rights reserved.

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The great man fell out of the sky and crashed into the earth. More or less to his benefit, he happened to be inside of an airplane at the time. The antique, single-engine World War I fighter plane descended in an erratic, jagged arc that would be generous to call a glide path, as the pilot struggled to maintain control of the aircraft. A trail of smoke billowed from it, marking out its trajectory like a graph illustrating a stock market crash, falling unavoidably to ruin.

The pilot managed to keep the plane’s nose up, so that it did not crash head-first into the ground, spreading itself and its sole occupant over half a mile of barren Nevada desert. Instead it came in at an angle, but its velocity was much too great to make a safe landing. The landing gear broke off the instant it touched the ground. The plane skidded on its belly with a scream of tearing metal, trailing sparks and smoke. First one wing broke off, then the other, before it skidded to a halt. The pilot managed to clamber out of the open-air