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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Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D.
a novel
by John T. Cullen
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17.
During the night, the horror of his situation sank in as Alex lay huddled and shivering in his earthy hole.
He had sunk to the lowest level imaginable—by comparison, his stay in the birthing caves had been paradise. Here he had nothing but the stiff, cold hide he wore, which chafed his skin raw and at times actually made him colder. He was about to die from loss of body heat.
His misery enveloped him in layers. He was starving and his stomach was in constant pain as its acids began digesting the stomach itself. More immediately, he was about to die from loss of body heat. He shivered through the night, convinced that he was losing so much body heat that he would not awaken in the morning. As the ambient temperature dropped toward the dew point, moisture formed in the leaves around him. His protective shield of radiated body heat shrank perilously close to the skin. Soon his feet and ankles were stiff and numb.
All the while, he kept getting flashes of his long-ago Alex Kirk memory, in some impossibly wonderful paradise in upstate New York, where the lovely Maryan Shurey rode by on a horse and smiled at him while he sat on his porch drinking lemonade and waving. Had such a world ever existed? There was not a shred of evidence anywhere today, but the thought of finding his way back to that world offered the only glimmer of hope in this lost existence into which he had fallen.
He discovered he had company in his burrow. Lines of ants kept crossing his torso, and he kept crushing them when he felt their hundreds of tiny legs tickling and burning.
Something slithered past, hunting, and stopped. A forked tongue probing sent airwaves around him as the snake dispassionately examined what he was. If it were poisonous, he prayed that it would take him quickly. But it slithered on, perhaps seeking something smaller that it could wrap its mouth around and swallow down the corridor of its body.
Something large emerged to his right and plopped onto his face. Instinctively he reached up—and found a beetle almost as big as the palm of his hand. For a second its hard, armored feet started to hook into his skin. He screamed and tore it off his face in rage and fear and anguish as he crushed it in his palm. Instinctively, he pressed the shattered, still twitching carapace to his mouth and sucked out the eggy-tasting slime inside. He threw the empty shell away into the night.
Strangely, that calmed him. He could feel the lump of matter moving down his esophagus and into his stomach, which calmed down as it began to digest. He chewed on dry grass—hay, he thought, like cows eat—in the hope of adding some bulk. He crawled through the brush and licked dew off large curling leaves on the ground around his lair.
Then he burrowed deep and fell asleep.
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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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