Kevin James Miller lives in Illinois. Dozens of his stories and poems in the horror, SF, fantasy, and crime genres have been published. Cemetery Dance said his Rain on a Stranger's Eyes was "hard-hitting" and "a solid noir masterpiece with chilling irony." Publisher's Weekly wrote that Stealing Klatzman's Diary was a "morbidly amusing caper with a Shakespearean body count." The Crazy Colored Sky and Other Tales is an anthology from Silver Lake Publishing of sixteen of his stories. Drop him a line at his blog.

(With no apologies to Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.)

Prologue. Or, if you prefer, “prolog.” From the conclusion of Leftovers: Nick O’Ley, saving us the trouble of coming up with four new pages to kick off this volume in the series.

Truck Gilliams (that’s right, this guy’s name is “Truck,” now try and keep up) was filled with despair, sadness and ennui as he saw the daycare/youth sports league wing of the Christ Evangelical Faith Protestant Resurrection Church. Of course, being an American he was a couple of healthy miles from ennui and a lot closer to despair and sadness, but nowhere near self-pity. No siree bob. Not him.

The church was less than two blocks away, next to the Starbucks, the Blockbuster, the Best Buy, the Borders, the Burger King, something else starting with “B,” the other Starbucks, the McDonald’s and the other, other Starbucks. But the ground was still doing the Funky Chicken, a dastardly dance of deadly, devastating destruction. Huge, mid-size and tiny trees crashed to the ground and, shockingly, the huge trees were the ones that caused the really serious, on - my - gosh - the - horror - don’t - bother - to - contact - your - insurance - agent - for - a - claim - because - they - have - already - fled - in - terror destruction. They (we’re talking about the trees now) knocked power lines into the streets disrupting power to traffic lights, satellite/digital TV reception and telephone land lines, but, really, that last part, what kind of loser is still using land line phones anyway? You can buy cell phones at Wal-Mart, for pity’s sake.

The more Truck drew near the daycare/youth sports league wing of the Christ Evangelical Faith Protestant Resurrection Church, the more bad - stuff - but - no - self - pity he felt in his heart, which we know we’re already told you, but put up with us because we’re only on page “vii,” and we’ve got four-hundred and thirty pages in this sucker to go, and that’s not counting the two pages of ads for the other very find books in the Leftovers series.

No, we have no idea what “upcoming products” means in those ads, so don’t ask. We tend to leave that to our lawyers and the agents.

Anyway: the daycare/youth sports league wing was the only part of the church left standing. Darn tootin’ it was. We’ve mentioned it, like, what? Twice or something already? We wouldn’t mention it this often this early and shuffle it off stage this fast if it weren't important. This isn’t, we don’t know, The Annihilator #9,437: Blood Showdown in Detroit or whatever.

The walls and floors of the daycare/youth sports league wing of the Christ Evangelical Faith Protestant Resurrection Church had been built by native-born Americans who had been registered Republicans for at least twenty years, and were therefore especially reliable. The headlights of Truck’s Ford - Ranch - Range - John - Wayne - in - She - Wore - a - Yellow - Ribbon - but - not - in - The - Searchers - Because - Let’s - Not - Get - Too - Weird - Sports - Utility - All - Terrain - Motor - Transporting - Machine illuminated the bike racks, the boxes of the X-Treme Teen Bible Quote Trivia Extravaganza board games, and the piles of They Will Know We Our Christians By Our Love basketballs. The lights of Truck’s car shone on walls and chairs, incongruously barely covered in dust.

What you mean “Why incongruously? What the heck just happened?” You haven’t read the first three books in the series? Move it along, buddy. The Stephen King and Dilbert books are three aisles over.

The rest of the church was gone -– The Creation Science: Fact or Helpful Reality? diorama, the wackily adorable dead-or-alive posters featuring local abortionists, and the Torture Terrorists -– Both Words Start With ‘T’ souvenir gift shop.

Truck could see a car in a crater that used to be parking lot, but before that a crater, and before that a poem written by a depressed, third-year Philosophy major. Anyway, now it was a crater, and this car’s wheels were missing. Two naked human legs stuck out from under the car. Somebody in our Bible Study Group last Tuesday thought we should make this a dog at this point, because that would have more dramatic impact. Friggin’ “animal rights” tree-hugging fruitcake. We got to start screening these group meetings. Truck stopped his Ford-Ranch-Range-Et-Cetera near the car with no wheels.

Of course, we could just have this “Truck” character just observe for another two or three pages. It doesn’t matter. After all, it’s your religious duty to keep purchasing every book in this series, right? Right?

Truck couldn’t open his car doors. It probably had something to do with all the apocalyptic shenanigans that had been going on, plus that movie deal we cut with the sitcom kid. The agent said he could get us national distribution, but nnnnnnoooo. This genius opens the picture in New York City –- New York City! – and because of a bad first weekend we get dumped into a direct to DVD release.

Not that we’re bitter.

Truck used his cowboy boots to kick out a window –- the passenger side front seat -- and crawl out of his car.

Then he noticed he had left one of the windows in the back seat rolled down anyway. He sighed and shook his head.

The earthquake stopped. You knew that the earthquake was still going on, right? I mean, we haven’t mentioned the earthquake for about 700 hundred words but it was still going on –- except just then when it stopped. The sun reappeared, although if you want to be picky about the details (the teacher of the Write Your Novel community college class said, “Details are important”) it, the sun, hadn’t really reappeared because it didn’t disappear. Of course. Otherwise the whole world and all our characters would be instantly frozen to death. Be a pretty neat trick writing our way out of that, what with us planning on writing another dozen books in this series.

So, anyway, Truck couldn’t see the sun, but now he could, and now the earthquake stopped.

Although why would this idiot want to look directly into the sun anyway?

It was bright, sunshiny (must contact the lawyers -– would the guy who wrote I Can See Clearly Now sue?) day in Irvington, Illinois.

Truck realized that the sun, whenever he had been able to see, had always been that mysterious quality: It was always sunshiny.

Every bone in his body ached, although what is this guy complaining about? He just survived the apocalypse. Some people are such whiners. Truck staggered over to the wheels-free car, skipping over or dancing the waltz being inappropriate choices at just that moment.

“Novel writing is about characters making choices,” said the Write Your Novel community college guy.

When he got close enough to the car with no wheels he saw that there was a shoe missing from one of the legs.

The one that remained told him that these were the crushed, mortal yucky remains of his wife Linda Lee Goodie Gilliams.

Truck tripped on a rock, fell on his face, scratched his face on a rusted old Diet Mountain Dew can and got back on his feet again to –- What?

Okay, fine. One of our copy editors at Aspirin House, our fine publishers, is telling us we have to describe the woman’s shoe.

It’s, um, a red pump. Can we move on now? Thank you.

Truck made it to the car. What the heck, we got him to page two. We might as well let him accomplish something.

Remembering news stories of mothers of young children who temporarily have had the strength to lift cars under which they are pinned, Truck tried to lift the car.

“Ow, ow,” he said, remembering that he wasn’t a woman. Good thing. “Truck Gilliams” would be a pretty stupid name for a woman.

His heart, stomach and liver screamed not to leave Linda Lee’s body there, which was very noble of him, accept for that fact that the fabric of civilization was kind of completely unraveled. At the moment, he should have been worried about somebody making his wife’s body fuel, or lunch, and less about whether or not to go open or closed casket.

Realizing he hadn’t done full-blown panic yet, Truck panicked for a few seconds, then did an emotional U-turn and then hung a hard left (an emotional left) down the street of total, sobbing misery.

He looked over the post-apocalyptic surroundings and, since Mel Gibson, Will Smith, or that mousy little guy who breaks his glasses in that old Twilight Zone episode with the bomb shelter were likely to turn up, Truck looked for the entrance to the underground shelter. He found it in the shadow of the Jewel supermarket/deli/pharmacy/Botox clinic.

… All of which is fictional, except for the Biblical, Final Days part. You can take that to the bank. Eventually, the Lord, the Living God is coming to render Final Judgment on humanity, to reward the pious and punish the sinful, for eternity, and bring about the End of Days.

… Although, fingers crossed, not for a couple of more years yet. We got mortgages on the third home and the wife’s gall bladder operation to pay off.