Final Sunset

By Willard Bixby

Final Sunset is a book about the possible ending of mans existence on earth. It is a science-fiction novel with a little different twist on things. Its about one man's quest to answer a burning question, What has happened to all of mankind? Am I the last man alive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499082197

Willard Bixby

Willard Bixby is the author of Final Sunset. He grew up in a small town in Idaho with a strong sense of family values. Willard has had an experienced life as a blue-collar worker with a dream to write since he was a young lad. Driven by economics and the responsibility of family life, he put his dream aside for many years. Writing late in life allows him bring his life’s experiences to his writing. Final Sunset represents a year’s work, writing when he was able.

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Copyright © 2014 by Willard Bixby.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2014919702

ISBN:    Hardcover    978-1-4990-8217-3

Softcover    978-1-4990-8218-0

eBook    978-1-4990-8219-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/15/2015

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The Arrival

Chapter 2 Finding Shelter

Chapter 3 Winter Camp

Chapter 4 The Journey Begins

Chapter 5 Homeward Bound

Chapter 6 Home

Chapter 7 Backtracking

Chapter 8 The Quest for Jill

Chapter 9 To Morgan’s Bluff

Chapter 10 Happy Trails

Chapter 11 The Family’s Fate

CHAPTER 1

The Arrival

Night has fallen hard, and the dark forest is filled with blue moonlit shadows. The mid-October air has a very crisp bite to it, and the ground is hard and frozen. It is extremely hard to distinguish the existence of any trails.

There, in an open area just ahead, is what appears to be a man. The man standing there, with what appears to be a backpack of sorts, a rifle, and various other gear, is Jack Strait.

Jack Strait is a seemingly normal-looking man. He stands average, around six foot tall, muscular build with a weight of about two hundred pounds. He looks to be in his early fifties with well-kept thick gray shoulder-length hair. He is wearing a leather coat with a turned-up sheepskin collar, a pair of laced-up boots just below the knees, and an outback hat complete with a snakeskin hat band with the front brim slightly turned down just above his eyebrows.

His expression, surprisingly, is one of total bewilderment, as though confused or dazed. His eyes are wide open as if he is seeing something for the first time. He is slightly trembling.

Jack very slowly begins to look all around. Lowering his backpack to the ground, he carefully lays his rifle across it. He rubs his arms as if to feel whether this is real or imagined.

The look of bewilderment soon changes to concern as he realizes this is real, very real. And he is awake, alive, and right here.

Here? Where is here? Jack mumbles to himself. I don’t know where I am.

When did I load my backpack? Jack wonders. This is most definitely my backpack. The contents are all items I own. The rifle here is my old reliable long gun, and the hip gun I am packing is a cherished old wheel gun of mine.

Yes, and everything in my backpack are items I normally would have packed for hunting. Hunting, no, the items are a little more qualified. These are all items I would have packed for survival! But I don’t remember packing these things. I don’t recall anything.

Jack starts to look around once more. He realizes the air seems to be even colder than it was ten minutes ago. He starts to dig through his backpack, looking for the flashlight he always carries when he is anywhere away from home. There it is. He turns it on to locate his package of lighters neatly placed deep in his backpack.

Jack is an individual who always thinks you can never have too many methods of starting a fire. This comes from a memory of being lost on a hunting trip, and how his only friend was a fire.

I have to start a fire, he thinks to himself, then I’ll see if I can make even a glimmer of sense of this madness. This isn’t a dream, I know I am here. I’m getting really cold now and must have warmth. A fire is my number one task now.

Jack gathers up the driest kindling he can find. Not much was dry. He knows the drier wood is going to be where it is protected from the elements. He finds some downed timber, and under the timber is just enough dry branches to start a fire.

Now the temperature was plummeting, and there are many disturbances in the deep blackness. A darkness which was enveloping this seemingly alone visitor to this strange but very habited wilderness.

Jack shines his flashlight into the darkness. He sees the returning reflections of unknown animals glaring into the light, then turning and disappearing. He can hear groans and heavy breathing in the distance.

He knows the crisp night has a tendency to carry sounds a long way. At least he hopes they are a long way away.

Jack has a nice fire blazing now. The warmth is starting to bring what little comfort it can. He keeps turning from front to back in an effort to balance the warmth. The air is so cold now.

Jack gathers several armloads of semidry wood and places them next the fire to finish drying. He gathers enough wood to hopefully carry him through the long night.

He decides if one fire can keep one side warm, then two fires, one in front of him, and one at the back would be better. No, three fires, he blurts out as if someone were there and could actually hear him.

He wasn’t opposed to a little added protection that three fires will give him against what creatures might be lurking in the forbidding darkness.

Three fires are now blazing away. Jack again mumbles to himself, If anyone is looking for me, they can surely see my fires, no, not my fires, my friends. He starts to feel a small sense of comfort, from at least, the elements.

The thought keeps running wildly through his mind. This is impossible. This can’t be happening. The last thing I remember was kneeling down, holding the hand of my dear sweet wife, and giving thanks to heaven for all my bounteous blessings. And then getting into a cold bed, snuggling close to my sweetheart, as she put her cold annoying feet on me, and after the warming of her feet, I remember drifting off into a peaceful slumber. A ritual I have performed for the past thirty-four years. And now I am here.

Jack looks at his watch, 12:03 a.m. He decides to try to get a little sleep. There’s nothing he can do until morning anyway. He hopes he will be able to figure it out then.

Maybe this madness will pass. Or maybe whatever brought him here will return him back home to complete his confusion. But for now, a little shut eye is in order.

What seems to be hours, but is only moments later, came a horrendous crash in the darkness, just beyond the dancing shadows of his fire fortress. It awakens Jack to the full capacity of his senses.

There, just barely visible, is a huge creature with an all too familiar form, a grizzly! The sight strikes fear deep into Jack’s very foundation! He reaches for his old companion of many years, his Winchester Model 70. The rifle has never failed him. Now is not the time for it to start. He raises the rifle. The scope is too blurred due to the closeness of the bear to be of any use. He does his best to aim. Then he pulls the trigger. A bone-chilling click. Nothing happens! No ammo! Jack shudders. He didn’t check the rifle! How could he have been so stupid. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

The grizzly, which isn’t respecting fire like Jack had been wrongly informed, is advancing in a methodical, driven stride as if it hasn’t had a meal in months.

It is now close enough to the fire fortress that Jack could see the devils intense red glowing eyes, as if Satan himself had sent the beast.

Jack is helpless. He starts to retreat backward when he trips and falls. He is lying flat on his back as the grizzly approaches. He instinctively reaches for his other safety net. The .44 Magnum on his hip.

Jack doesn’t know if his wheel gun is loaded either, but now is not the time to check. He draws wildly, hammers back, and pulls the trigger.

A welcome flame bellows from his hand cannon. The flame reaches out and just touches the very face of the beast. The grizzly is now almost standing directly above Jack. It is shaking its head back and forth, as if it is shaking off a nuisance horsefly. Jack didn’t wait to see the results. He hammers back again and pulls the trigger. And again the flames bellow out. This time to the throat. He then fires three more flaming bellows from his fire-breathing cannon.

The placement is unclear but effective, as the grizzly lets out a blood-curdling scream and falls lifeless across Jack’s feet.

The grizzly lays motionless. It is now apparent that the grizzly is massive as the weight of it on Jack’s feet sent waves of pain reeling through his body. He struggles and pulls his feet out from beneath the beast.

After rubbing his feet just long enough to be sure they still work, he just keeps standing and staring at the dead grizzly that lies before him on the ground.

He starts to shake uncontrollably. The more the realization hits him of what just happened, the more he shakes.

Pulling himself together, the first thing he does is to hastily ransack through his backpack. He is obviously on a reconnaissance mission of some kind.

He stops and sighs a deep sigh of relief. He reaches in and retrieves a small box, which contains one hundred rounds of his secret recipe. A box of hand-loaded cartridges for his rifle.

It has taken him several years of fine-tuning his hand loading to develop this special round. These custom rounds in this box gives him the confidence to know that if another bout with a devil beast is in his future, he will now be prepared.

He swiftly loads his rifle with his big medicine. And then he does the same, but with an easier mind, locates and loads custom cartridges for his wheel gun.

Now with both weapons loaded and open for business, Jack once again directs his attention to the motionless grizzly that just moments ago was a very much alive and threatening menace to be contended with.

Starting with an easy approach, Jack eases his way toward the grizzly. He hesitates just briefly as the big bear twitches his final death twitch. He glances at his watch, 12:23 a.m. He thinks to himself what has happened in a short twenty minutes could have altered his presence among the living.

The big bear, he notices has placed himself squarely in the center of his fire fortress. The value as a fortress is somewhat in doubt now.

Jack, mustering a little humor from way down deep, thinks the big bear is nothing but a huge teddy bear now. With this in mind, he eases down next to grizzly making himself comfortable between the huge front shoulders and the massive back legs.

Jack just sits there in his bear chair. He begins staring at the dancing shadows of the fires. He is exhausted after his adrenaline rush diminishes.

It is about twenty more minutes before an exhausted and still befuddled Jack drifts off to sleep sitting nestled next to his still warm and slightly smelly teddy bear.

After several hours pass, he is awakened once again by a crash in the woods. But this time, however, it is a much lighter disturbance. As he glances out, the early morning light is now showing him a different world than the one he had fallen asleep in.

The noise is a deer. But what kind of deer? Jack is even more confused. He doesn’t recognize this breed of deer. It is definitely nothing from my home territory. This makes him feel even more uneasy.

Right now, however, he has many other issues to deal with. He slowly gets up and the deer sprints gracefully away. The pain of last night’s encounter hits him like a ton of bricks. He hurts from one end to the other. He concludes, that old cuss he snuggled up to last night wasn’t nearly as comfy as he thought he would be.

The fires are nothing but embers now. Jack is cold, very cold. He scrambles to get one of the