Civilization Fades

By Edward William Byrne

It is about a man simply named Cowboy that starts off with a normal life and goes to Las Vegas for a vacation. When civilization starts fading away and the chaos begins, electricity and all technology stop working and little by little the shooting starts. Our brave hero finds the love of his life, Lilly, and the action and shooting continue on even as they escape the city to fine country living of survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward William Byrne
• Release date: Feb 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310637032

Edward William Byrne

I had always enjoyed writing, entertaining action-filled stories when I was a student at California State University Fresno several years ago. All of the thinking and writing was combined to write this novel.

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Civilization Fades

By Edward William Byrne

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Edward William Byrne

AKA Eddie Byrne

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 ebook 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.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - It starts

Chapter 2 - The Drive

Chapter 3 - Old motel

Chapter 4 - In Vegas

Chapter 5 - Large casino

Chapter 6 - Out of the mega motel

Chapter 7 - Back to the old motel

Chapter 8 - Boy Meets Girl

Chapter 9 - Out of Town

Chapter 10 - Back Home

Chapter 11 - Water Tank

Chapter 12 - The Neighborhood

Chapter 13 - New Neighbors

Chapter 14 - Change Is In The Air

Chapter 15 - Back to Vegas

Chapter 16 - The Vet Truck

Chapter 17 - The Invasion Begins

Chapter 18 - Time For Little Ones

Chapter 19 - Wearing Out

Chapter 20 - The Day The Rest Of Technology Ended

Chapter 21 - Final Chapter

Sources

Chapter 1

It starts

There is a new state of the art American satellite, all shiny large with big solar arrays sticking out and an American flag painted on it, and it's making that satellite noise, bleep, bleep, bleep sound like in the movies. And then there is this old Chinese satellite, a total old piece of junk, with the Chinese flag emblem on it. One of the solar arrays is broken in half and all jagged. The other has holes in it from micro meteorites. There is a large burnt spot in the middle. And it is moving right at the American telecommunications satellite, and strikes it at great velocity causing a large impact explosion. It looks like a large Fourth of July fireworks exploding in the air. The explosion, in fact, is so large; it can be seen from the ground.

Shortly after that event, a large jet is flying on auto pilot based on the information that is being sent to it from the satellite that just blew up. The plane's avionics for the autopilot are based on GPS and other satellite information systems. So the people are inside the plane having a free beverage when the plane starts violently shaking and starts falling from the sky. The soda cart started flying down the alley way, and a stewardess goes tumbling along with it. Inside the cab of the plane, the alarms are blaring and the pilot is looking at his screens trying to figure out what is going on. The plane just continues to fall out of the sky; then the pilot figures out what he needs to do. He turns off the auto pilot and pushes the throttle to full and pulls the yoke back trying to regain control. And after a few seconds he does gain control. Just then Cowboy looks up and sees this very same jet flying over his head, and he can hear the engines roar full blast as the plane starts to regain altitude. What the heck is that nut job pilot doing? Cowboy says.

He looks down in disbelief and just shakes his head side to side. Then he looks up and around at some farm land next to some alfalfa, wheat and open pasture. The wind is blowing slightly. The sun is out and it is a little warm. He takes off his white cowboy hat and wipes the sweat off his head, while wearing his white with blue striped long sleeved shirt. He is listening to a country western song on the radio, and the song stops playing in the middle. It is followed by only silence. He waits a few more seconds for the song or something to come back on, but it doesn't. So he walks over to his 1976 blue ford pickup truck. He opens the door, and the window is already rolled down. He changes the radio to another station, and starts listening to another country western song. And goes back shoveling a rodent hole closed. He then lights a fuse and sets off the rodent bomb, hopefully killing the squirrel. He moves away from the hole and hears a large boom, and then the ground shakes a little. He thinks, well, that must surely have gotten him. After finishing the day, he goes back to his little farm house and starts to get ready for his long awaited vacation in Las Vegas.

So he goes up to his bedroom and starts packing his studded cowboy shirts, and country styled blue jeans. He turns on the TV to the satellite channel that is usually on, but for some reason, there isn't any picture on. So he changes the channel to a country western video channel. And the channel starts working just fine. So he continues on packing. He turns the TV off and the light in his bedroom and heads off to his truck for the several hour trek to Las Vegas.

Chapter 2

The Drive

He starts driving down a two-lane road as the suns starts to set, and the second country western station stops playing. He thought, Man, that's kind of weird. This station usually works more than thirty miles from here. So he turned the radio back to the original station he had on earlier in the day, but it wasn't working either. Of course, there was on Uber powerful station still working, the not-so-local hard rock station. He thought, Good, this will help wake me up for the long drive ahead, with loud, ear bleeding sounds of rock and roll pouring out of his truck's speakers. After a couple of hours, he noticed that his truck's gas tank and his stomach gas tank were both going on empty. He sees a sign ahead, gas combo place, a fast food joint, and a gas station, all in one place. So he pulls into the gas station and sees the gas pumps are the new state of the art kind that takes every credit card known to man. He jumps out of the truck and pulls the gas hose out and puts it into the gas slot in his truck. Then he takes out his handy-dandy-accepted- everywhere-on-earth credit cards, and put it in and pulls it out. And the pump says Out of credit card service. See attendant. He says, What the heck, new technology you get depended upon it, and then it just doesn't work when you need it to. He then takes the pump hose out of the truck, turns the handle on the pump to off and puts the hose back on the pump. He then thinks to himself, God, I hope this place still knows how to take cash.

He walks inside and says to the cashier, Hey, pump number five isn't working. And she said, Yep, the credit card system has been down for an hour and they're trying to fix it. So he says, Oh, alright then give me twenty dollars worth on pump number five. He goes back to his truck and fills it up, jumps back into the cab, fires up the old truck and takes back off down the road.

Then he thinks, Darn it, I forgot to get something to eat. All, well, I don't want to go back to that place. So he keeps on trucking down the road.

Finally, after several hours, he comes up to the mighty Hoover Dam. The dam was built back in the great depression in the 1930's. Most of the electricity produced for the City of Las Vegas is produced independently by Hoover Dam. He pulls into town during the evening with all the lights flashing and blinking. As he drives down the strip, he can see a replica of a great pyramid with the Sphinx in front, and then on to a castle fit for King Arthur himself. Surprisingly to see people from afar, is that all the people are out at night. There were people everywhere Herding down the sidewalks and along the streets. He continues driving along and sees even more infamous looking hotels, New York, New York with a roller coaster flying by, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. He turns his head and sees a giant lion from the MGM hotel and then on seeing erupting volcanoes and pirate ships firing a full broadside blast from their cannons.

Chapter 3

Old motel

He then drives by a roman casino, a beautiful water show with water jets and cannons shooting high into the air, and then on to a taste of Italy, Paris, and the Needle. But instead of going into one of these grand hotels, he pulls his truck into one of those lower cost motels off the beaten path. So he pulls into a small parking spot, one that his truck can barely fit in.

(Fast forward to several days into the future) Cowboy puts the forty-five in his belt and reaches over and grabs a black duffle bag and the shotgun. He then opens the car door and runs over to a place he found. It was where they store the large garbage can. It had concrete walls on three sides and a steel garbage can on the open side. Cowboy looks around and said, Man, this is some good cover. He looks over and sees a couple of gang looking cars about a hundred yards behind him, and another car joined the first car they came in contact with. Cowboy was familiar with ambushes, faints, flanks, good ground, bad ground, good cover, good firing position, all that kind of stuff you learn from hunting with ex-military types. He then opens up the black duffle bag. He pulls out the fifty caliber sniper rifle. He lies down in between the garbage can and the concrete wall. There isn't any wind blowing and at only one hundred yards, the sites are almost perfectly on, maybe a hair high, but who cares. He flips the safety off and aims right through the car door. He gently squeezes the trigger and KABOOM-POW he hears the largest bang he has ever heard in his entire life. He looks through the scope and sees a good-sized hole in the car door, and a blood splatter all over the front of the second car. Then one of the guys runs so that he has two engine blocks between him and the fifty cal. The guy then opens up on Cowboy with his nine millimeter Uzi and sprays the brick wall and garbage can with lead. Cowboy could hear the lead ricocheting off the bricks. He then looks through the scope again right through both engine blocks. And Cowboy says in Spanish, Adios muchacho or goodbye, little dude, in English, and fires the fifty again and again. There is a large spray of blood that came out from behind the car engines. Then the two cars catch on fire and start burning like crazy. The two other guys behind the cars start running for dear life. He then moves position to the other side of the garbage can. And as he is setting up, he sees one of the guys running over to a nearby building. Then another guy follows him. Now Cowboy is set up and ready to fire. This time he aims for the engine. On the first shot, Pow goes the rifle and the car just starts burning right away. Then the other guys pile in the second car and peel out, trying to get out of range as fast as they can. Cowboy says, Well, there is no need of having a future problem. So he lines up the scope at their gas tank and squeezes the trigger. And a huge fireball bursts where the car was. Then Cowboy hears the boom. Alright that problem has been neutralized.

Then one of the guys that got away had snuck up on the garbage can, and he starts to run as fast as he can. Just as he is getting close to the garbage can, he is going to jump up into the air and on top of the can. He was going to let Cowboy have it. Cowboy was waiting there with the forty-five automatic, and let him have it just as he jumped into the air. The power from the slug at point blank range was so great it flipped the guy over backwards. He landed on the back of his head dead. The second guy was yelling as he ran towards the garbage can. Cowboy heard him and grabbed the automatic shotgun filled with double-ought buck shot. Cowboy jumps up, and he just starts squeezing his trigger. Lead was flying like a hail storm, and the guy's body was just disintegrating as he came towards him. He finally fell straight forward on his face dead, and a pool of blood started pooling next to his body.

(Fast backwards to several days in the past) Cowboy had just parked in the paring lot at the cheap motel. He grabs his luggage and walks over to the lobby of the hotel. He goes inside and there is an elderly gray-haired lady with a lit cigarette in her mouth. She says to him, Well, welcome there, Cowboy, farm boy, sir. And he says, Howdy back to you. Ma'am. The lady hands him an old fashioned key and tells him his room is up on the third floor. So he lifts his luggage up on the top of his shoulder and walks over to the stairs and starts his upward jaunt. He goes up one flight then another. He feels himself starting to breathe harder, and finally he makes it to the top, walks over to the door, sticks the key in, opens the door, and walks in.

Well, it looks kind of old and 1960's looking chair, and the bedspread, too. The room has an old musty smell, a slight smell of cigarettes, whisky, and maybe musty mold. He dumps his luggage on the floor, throws his feet up in the air and jumps on the bed. He then thinks, Why am I sitting here? How come I'm not out in the casinos like everyone else? So he jumps up, lifts up his arm and takes a smell of his armpit. Then he says, Whah there, Cowboy, you got some intense BO going on there. Then he dumps his clothes off and jumps in the shower. He grabs up some of the generic smelling shampoo and rubs it all over his body. Thinking, Damn, is this water cold. He looks down and says, Don't worry, Mr. Turtle, we'll be out of here soon. He jumps out of the shower with goose bumps all over from the cold water shower. He dries off and puts on a fresh set of clothes, and heads downstairs all cowboyed out, with cowboy blue jeans, studded shirt, and complete with hat. He thought that since he was an out-of- towner, he should wear a white hat because he never has gotten in trouble when he has ever worn a white one. Now the black one, that's another story. So he is in high gear now to go and have some fun. He opens the door hoping it locks automatically and bolts down the stairs.

Chapter 4

In Vegas

He looks across the street and sees a little casino across the street. He has a plan. His plan is to walk into the doorway, look around for the first dollar machine he sees, and put in five dollars and pull the handle. So he walks in and looks around and sees some quarter slot machines, and thinks, No, not them. He sees the other games, of course, the roulette, poker, dice, and all the other card games as well. So he walks forward a ways, and there it is, standing there all shinny and everything. He briskly walks over to the machine, sticks his hand in his pocket, and sticks in a new five-dollar bill. He puts the bill in the automatic bill feeder. It takes in the money. He takes in a deep breath and pulls the handle. The reels start spinning; the reels start making that sound, blool, blool, blool, then thump, thump, thump. Nothing, not even one cherry. Darn it, he says, All that planning and scheming, and I didn't get even a single cherry.

He looks around the casino and notices for the first time how smoky it is inside, and how the place has that musty air-conditioned smell. For some strange reason, the lights went off and flood lights came on for a second, then the power came back on.