What Lies Within Chronicles of Max

By Barry Pittman

What makes someone evil? How do we explain the depths a person will fall – are they even people at all? The media claims there are aliens among us. The churches blame the Devil. Others believe some people have turned feral. This four part ‘post-apocalyptic’ series follows the events of survivors as they face the good and the bad in people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pittman
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005709556

Barry Pittman

Reader and writer of adventures

Book preview

What Lies Within

Chronicles of Max

By

BJ Pittman

Joanne XOXO

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Variously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Though believed the earliest appearance of the quote is in the book, Meditations in Wall Street. (using before instead of ahead.) Published anonymously in 1940, the author later being revealed as Haskins, a New York stockbroker

© 2021, Barry John Pittman (BJ Pittman).

Except as provided by the Australian Copyright Act Copyright Act 1968, along with various court decisions that have interpreted copyright over the years. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author. All characters appearing in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Thank you to my Alpha and Beta readers and all editors involved. Any errors are down to my interpretation and not a reflection on their advice or professional services.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

I didn’t know. Well okay, I knew, in the bigger picture, like everyone else, that we probably weren’t alone. Based on all the movies and the books, I knew that when they finally came, we were pretty much toast. Whether it be krakens, triffids, or lizard people.

We lived a fantasy, assuming we were safe in our civilised world. But behind the curtain that hung around our lives was the reality. The veil was gleaming white and billowing in the breeze, easy to confuse as the real world from our limited perspective. It lit our lives, sporadically translucent enough to glimpse the alien landscape around us.

When the shroud collapsed, it revealed that landscape. It was a world where the plants and animals were indifferent to humans at best. At worst, they were hostile to humanity – hunting us down, killing us at will.

Then there were the aliens.

What we didn’t know was that the invasion had been going on for millennia, and we were losing.

All the stories circulated as the end came. They were leapfrogging on viruses or fleas, bats, birds, or pigs. They created the viruses. Who or whatever they were? They arrived at the timing of the triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius. Whatever it was, they preyed on the lower order of animals to spread amongst us.

Starting in Africa, or Asia, or Kansas for all anyone knew. I guess it didn’t really matter. The realisation of what was happening came too late. The last major plague was exponentially greater than those before them. After attempts with Aids, Avian Flu, African swine fever, and multiple viruses from bats, the right strain worked, or the wrong strain from our point of view, given the ninety-nine percent mortality rate.

What was the purpose? Killing off the host killed them as well, but that had been the story of parasites as old as time.

Why me? Why did I survive? I did nothing to earn this. In this unknown world, what use was an accountant? I had never grown a plant, let alone something edible, and I had killed nothing bigger than a spider. Okay, I’d never killed a spider, but I may have trodden on an ant somewhere in my twenty-five years.

I’d seen the movies. The major character always looked good. I mean, always. They stood gallantly against the invaders, armed to the teeth, windswept hair, a shining glint in their eyes. I looked like crap and I had for months – greasy hair, dirty skin, and I couldn’t shoot a gun to save my life.

And where was the super-hot sidekick of the opposite sex? Someone who didn’t know they were hot until we found ourselves alone in an alien