Legends of the Flashback Book Two: The Finished Saga: 2 (Flashback: The Finished Saga)

It's all come down to this.

The saga is finished. There will be no more. These three signature editions contain every Flashback story ever written (1993-2023), plus the latest and final stories: This Savage and Beautiful Night, For a Devil Has Fallen from the Sky, and The War-Torn Hills of Earth. More than just an omnibus, Legends of the Flashback ends the saga with a bang--everything is resolved, nothing is left out. All the characters and situations of the Flashback/Dinosaur Apocalypse come together in a trilogy that will close out and define the saga. Join Ank and Williams, the crew of Gargantua, the kids from Thunder Road, and more as they heed the call to adventure one last time and face the very architects of the Flashback!

From Legends of the Flashback:

He caught up to her and turned her around even as the wind surged all around them in a gale. "Okay: okay, okay, so-I'm crazy, fine. Whatever you like," He held up his freshly-bandaged hand. "But this isn't crazy, Lisa. This is as real as you or me, or, or Puck. And I'm telling you right now ... we have a chance to fix this, this thing. This Flashback." He gestured expansively, "This whole thing; this apocalypse, this Big Empty. We go to California-andif we succeed-well, guess what? It all goes away; every last stinking bit of it: the dinosaurs, the lawlessness, the lack of medical care-the hopelessness-all gone, just wiped clean. Just erased from the sands of time, like the untold billions lost in the Flashback, who, by the way, will all be alive again, just as alive as you or me." He stepped closer and gripped her shoulders, firmly, gently. "We'll be alive again, and not just surviving, not just-what? What is it?"

And she backed away from him: dizzily, it seemed, horrified.

"I take it you haven't exactly thought this all the way through," she said, still seeming to reel, then gathered herself. "Okay; so just say it was possible-I mean, it isn't, but just say it was-say the time-storm was reversible ... well, what would happen to us? I mean, us now, right here, talking on this beautiful beach ... where would we go?"

He thought about it, the wind buffeting his hair. "We'd ... we'd cease to exist, I suppose. Just sort of fade away to nothing." He brightened as though he'd just thought of something. "But we'd rematerialize in the past; before the Flashback ever even happened, before ..." He trailed off as though lost in thought.

"It's still a kind of death, Nick. A kind of total annihilation." She plopped down and looked out at the sea. "Would you really wish that on anyone? On a child born after the Flashback, say? My God, Nick, it's been seven years. Doesn't that child deserve some kind of shot at life, too?"

He looked down at her soberingly, then sat down next to her in the sand.

"Well, what about all the seven-year-olds lost in the Flashback? Or, for that matter, all those born just before? Or still in the womb?" He put his arm around her and gazed out over the ocean. "That's what happens when someone," He glanced at the lights in the sky, "something, decides to play God. Others have to play God, too."

And then neither of them said anything more but just looked at the sea and the lightening clouds-at the sun which was starting to come out-at the pterodactyls swooping and diving for fish.

Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood's The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar-Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.