Hell Holes: What Lurks Below
by Donald
Firesmith
GENRE: Science
Fiction (Apocalyptic)
BLURB:
It’s August in
Alaska, and geology professor Jack Oswald prepares for the new school year. But
when hundreds of huge holes mysteriously appear overnight in the frozen tundra
north of the Arctic Circle, Jack receives an unexpected phone call. An oil
company exec hires Jack to investigate, and he picks his climatologist wife and
two of their graduate students as his team. Uncharacteristically, Jack also
lets Aileen O’Shannon, a bewitchingly beautiful young photojournalist, talk him
into coming along as their photographer. When they arrive in the remote oil
town of Deadhorse, the exec and a biologist to protect them from wild animals
join the team. Their task: to assess the risk of more holes opening under the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the wells and pipelines that feed it. But they
discover a far worse danger lurks below. When it emerges, it threatens to
shatter Jack’s unshakable faith in science. And destroy us all…
Excerpt:
IN THE PLANE
Once everything was stowed, I
followed Mark up the short stairs and into the lavish interior of the business
jet. Unlike the cramped commuter planes I usually took when flying up to the
oil fields, the Embraer Legacy 500 made first class seem like coach. Either the
executive funding our study was desperate to get us up there, or this was the
only aircraft the company had left to send. Either way, I was happy for the
unexpected upgrade.
Unlike typical airliners, the jet’s
eight large leather seats were organized around four small tables, two on
either side of the cabin. Each table separated two seats, one seat facing the
back of the airplane and the other facing forward. Angie and Jill were seated
in the first row of the plane leaving the second row seats facing forwards for
Mark and me. I’d just sat down opposite my wife when she pointed her finger
over my shoulder. Following Mark had prevented me from noticing the unexpected
extra person seated in the rear of the cabin. With the satisfied smile of a cat
having feasted on canary, there sat Aileen O’Shannon. I wondered whether Angie
and Jill had selected this particular seating arrangement so they could glare
at the weirdly bewitching beauty in the back. Of course, it may have been to
keep Mark and me from being tempted to look at her instead of paying proper
attention to our wives.
I got up and marched straight to the
rear of the plane and said, “I’m sorry, but I never said you could come along
on this trip.”
“You are?” she asked coyly. “Oh, my.
You never said I could not come.” She gave me a stunning smile that I’m sure
usually got her everything she’d ever asked for. “I naturally took your silence
to signify agreement, so I packed my bag and cameras, and here I am. Lucky for
you that I did; you wouldn’t want to get up there only to realize you needed
someone to make a visual record of your discoveries. Besides, I know some of
the discoveries the Russians made that they didn’t publish.”
The co-pilot walked up behind me.
“Excuse me, Dr. Oswald. Can you please take your seat now? We’re on a very
tight schedule, and Mr. Kowalski wants you in Deadhorse as soon as possible.”
I looked up front and saw that the
cabin door was already closed, and the seat belt signs were on. Before I could
answer, the plane began taxiing away from the hangar. Realizing that it was too
late to rid ourselves of the reporter, I turned around and took my seat facing
Angie.
“I see we still have Miss O’Shannon
with us,” Angie said with a hint of irritation. “I thought you’d decided we
didn’t need her.”
“I did,” I answered as the plane
accelerated down the runway. “But the cabin door was already closed, and we
were already moving.”
“Jack, you’re the leader of this
study, and this plane wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. The pilot
would have turned around if you’d asked him to.”
“You’re right,” I admitted
sheepishly, silently cursing my habit of not questioning authority figures, at
least not unless it involved science.
“Well, what are you going to do
about it?”
Suddenly and for no apparent reason,
my annoyance with O’Shannon disappeared, and I felt an overpowering desire to
keep her with us, with me. I twisted around and looked back at her. She was
staring back at me with a knowing smile. God, she looked so mesmerizingly
beautiful as her fingers provocatively played with the top button of her shirt.
Of course, she should come…
“Jack… Jack!”
I jerked back around, my heart
pounding as I felt my face warming. I was blushing from embarrassment and
guilt. I was also confused, unsure of what had just happened.
“Jack, I was talking to you, and you
just ignored me! What’s gotten into you?”
Praise Quotes:
“I
enjoyed my time in Firesmith’s world. I did not want to leave. I really got a
kick out of it, and would happily come back for more. Recommended.”
MJ
Kobernus, author of The Guardian: Blood in the Sand
“This
book rocks.”
Barton
Paul Levenson, author of Dark Gods of Alter Telluria
“a
quick, enjoyable read. Full of action and fraught with danger”
Dave
Robertson, author of Strange Hunting, Strange Hunting II, and The Brave and The
Dead
“The
book is an easy and quick read and an action-filled one that you’ll imagine as
a TV series or a movie with no difficulty.”
Olga
Núñez Miret, author of Escaping Psychiatry
Book
Trailer:
AUTHOR Bio
and Links:
A
computer geek by day, at night and on weekends Donald Firesmith writes modern
paranormal fantasy, apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels
and relaxes by handcrafting magic wands from magical woods and mystical
gemstones.
A
computer geek by day, Donald Firesmith works as a system and software engineer
helping the US Government acquire large, complex software-intensive systems. In
this guise, he has authored seven technical books, written numerous software-
and system-related articles and papers, and spoken at more conferences than he
can possibly remember. He is also proud to have been named a Distinguished
Engineer by the Association of Computing Machinery, although his pride is
tempered somewhat worrying whether the term “distinguished” makes him sound
more like a graybeard academic rather than an active engineer whose beard is
still more red than gray.
By
night and on weekends, his alter ego writes modern paranormal fantasy,
apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels and relaxes by
handcrafting magic wands from various magical woods and mystical gemstones. His
first foray into fiction is the book Magical Wands: A Cornucopia of Wand Lore
written under the pen name Wolfrick Ignatius Feuerschmied. He lives in Crafton,
Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs,
cats, and birds.
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Links:
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