John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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Doom Spore
a novel
by John T. Cullen
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72.
Lee Collwood hung up the phone as he sat in his office at Anaconda's parent plant near Brawley. He looked out his office window and saw the helicopters coming from San Diego. He'd just finished speaking with a sobbing Metrick. His man in Congress was done and would be singing like a canary. Lee knew he was finished.
He went to the pool area, unlocked the liquor cabinet, and took out a bottle of the finest scotch. He wandered into the livingroom and got his gun out of the cabinet. Then he climbed into his golf cart, rode out through the huge garage, and drove out through the still rising gate. All the while, he kept tipping that quart bottle up over his lips, until the burning liquid ran down his chin on both sides. Soon, the sky seemed to be turning as his vision blurred.
About a mile out on the desert, that ancient seabed, the golf cart ran out of juice. Lee Collwood finished the last of his quart bottle, hoping it would stop his heart. But the Collwoods were made of sterner stuff. Armed with Collwood genes and a Glock automatic, Lee walked til he could walk no more, and crawled.
He crawled on the burning-hot glassy gravel and felt the sun beating down on him. A scorpion darted past and refused the opportunity to administer a killing sting. Somewhere, a rattle indicated that a big desert snake was after more appealing game. Not even the desert's most insidious killers want anything to do with me, Lee thought. Screw them all. He laughed at the irony of it—that snakes and scorpions would not claim one of their own, and perhaps the devil himself would refuse Lee entry into hell. Laughing wildly, he lay on a ridge overlooking a shallow valley and put the gun to his head. The Collwood body engine was pumping with vigor and strength, and no heart attack was imminent. Nor did he have the courage to shoot himself in the temple as he'd planned. So he discharged the gun into the air.
"I know you're out there," he called. He fired again. The shot echoed back and forth in the dry canyon and the gulch. He fired again and again until the gun was empty, and then he threw it from himself. "Come find me," he called out. "I want to pass into the next circus." With those words, he passed out face down in the hot glass shards that passed for desert sand, here on the lower spurs of the hell not all that far away, known as Death Valley.
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
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