Totality

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When the first solar eclipse in years arrives on the Oregon Coast, Bryce Walker faces west, away from the eclipse. Instead of watching the sun go dark, he sees a woman wade into the dark, dangerous ocean. Alone.

He needs to help her. Because no one else sees her.

No one else even knows she's there.

Bryce's attempt at heroism might save a life or two—maybe even his own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393080572

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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Totality

Totality

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

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Totality

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About the Author

Totality

They stepped out of the fog like androids from a bad science fiction movie. Regular people, wearing weird glasses, staring up at the sky to the east, the fog ebbing and flowing around them like it did every August morning on the Oregon Coast.

Tia Catrone tried not to look at them, tried not to think about them, but she couldn’t avoid it. The highway was mostly empty—everyone was in place for the massive solar eclipse—except her and a black 4x4 with California plates.

The Californians were trying to find a place out of the fog, so they could see the eclipse. They were weaving all over the highway like crazy people, trying to find a road that would take them farther east, into the promised sunshine.

Apparently no one had told them about the likelihood that the morning eclipse would be obscured by fog. No one had told all the other people lined up on the sidewalks, backs to the ocean, looking expectantly at the sky.

To be fair, the sun had come out earlier. But as the temperature dropped, the early morning fog had returned.

Not that Tia cared—or rather, not that she cared the way everyone did. She kept glancing at the clock, hoping she could find her sister Joyce before totality.

Joyce was off her meds and in the middle of a breakdown. Tia could only hope that Joyce wasn’t seeing this—the confused driving, the strange people with their eclipse glasses stepping out of the fog—because Joyce really would think that the people were androids or maybe aliens disguised as humans, trying to take over the world.

And then the eclipse…Joyce might see that as something supernatural as well.

Totality would happen in forty-five minutes.

Tia was trying hard not to panic. She had been so nasty to her brother for losing Joyce a week ago. Then Joyce had showed up on Tia’s doorstep and Tia thought everything would be all right. She begged for a few days off work to get Joyce level. Then Tia got Joyce to the local hospital, reinstated her meds—

And Joyce slipped away, before dawn, and Tia hadn’t noticed.

She had known that Joyce’s disease made her both paranoid and cunning; somehow Tia had thought she could deal with it on her own—at least until her brother arrived.

And they had decided he wouldn’t arrive to take Joyce back to the resident care facility (Mental hospital, Tia thought. It was a mental hospital. Just call it what it was) until Eclipse Day passed.

Eclipse Day. A