As the new millennium approaches, the world is getting ready to celebrate-unaware that a Russian terrorist cell is preparing to carry out a plan that will change their lives in an instant. It is November of 1999, and all seventeen-year-old Josh Saunders wants to do is escape his Podunk town of Elnor, Texas. But everything is about to change when Josh learns the US president and vice president are dead. A nuclear missile has just struck Washington, DC, and Russian President Vladimir Pemarov has declared war on America. Suddenly what was once a boring little town erupts into chaos. Now Josh and his friend Yuko must not only save their own lives, but also the life of Akbashev Chekenov, a deserting Russian soldier hunted by both American soldiers and his own military unit. As two worlds and cultures collide in a brutal battle, Josh, Yuko, and Akbashev are about to realize there is much more to war than honor and glory. In this modern military thriller, three young adults are propelled into an unthinkable war and soon discover that there is a thin line that separates enemies from friends.

IN THE SUN

Part 1By Joshua Patrick

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Joshua Patrick
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5998-0

Chapter One

"Damn, man. You see that shit? They aren't going to let us get out of the parking lot until four today!" Troy complained as he and Josh loitered in the parking lot.

The teachers were blocking both entrances and exits to the parking lot, afraid of losing their jobs and letting students leave the school prematurely. No one was standing with the students however due to Elnor being a small school with fewer than three hundred students and as a result, fewer teachers. Some teachers even did three classes to make a steady paycheck and Josh was amazed at how a football coach could teach both science and biology, despite probably having flunked both classes when they were in school themselves.

Josh's old pick up truck was so close and he impatiently played with his keys in his pocket, weighing detention against leaving school early. He wished that he'd chosen to not even come that day, but his father persisted that he didn't want to get in trouble for him skipping school anymore, so he went resentfully—he always hated being forced into things he didn't want to do.

"Man, screw this. I'm going home." Josh said finally, yanking his keys out of his pocket. He stealthily motioned for Troy to get in the back and then Troy whistled slightly to their other mutual friend Daniel, and they all piled into Josh's truck.

"They're not going to let you go, you know. They going to make you get out and then everyone's going to be laughing at us for doing something so stupid." Daniel muttered as Josh slammed his truck door and started the engine.

"Yeah? Well, who says I'm going out through the parking lot?" Josh gave him a smirk and then put his truck in reverse, backing into the field adjacent to the school and then putting it back into drive and driving off through the corn field before any of the teachers could reach them.

"Fuck, man! That corn shit hurts!" Troy howled and rolled up the passenger window as cornstalks and pieces of corn flew at them as Josh floored his truck and whipped through the cornfield.

When he finally reached the road across from the school, he stopped and looked back at his handiwork and smiled; teachers were shouting now, but no one was following the road he'd made through the cornfield for them. The sound of engine's turning over made him wonder why no one was following, but as he got out onto highway, he saw why.

Cars seemed as if they were suspended in time, none of the vehicles moved but Josh's.

"Damn, traffic jam." Josh muttered and quickly yanked the wheel of his truck around a stopped eighteen wheeler that was blocking the road. Some people were out walking and looking under the hoods of their vehicles, but none of the vehicles would start and Josh soon realized that the vehicles that had stopped working were ones made from 1980 and after, but Josh's truck had been made in the fifties and although it needed repairs every few months, his truck ran like it always had without any problems.

"Glad I didn't stay at the damn school. I'd probably be walking home and my fat ass can't go fifteen feet without sweating like a pig. Shit, I'd probably die!" Troy said as Josh stopped at the driveway of Troy's house. Troy and Daniel slid out and Josh told them not to go back to the school since he knew that whatever had made the cars stop running that school would probably be canceled for at least a day and as Josh drove away, he hooted in excitement, knowing that he'd get an unplanned vacation.

Josh continued driving around, and after a while, decided to go into Austin and see what was going on since he could see several black trails of smoke already curling up from various places.

He managed to make his way around all the parked cars blocking the highway and as he came up to a department store at the edge of Austin, he noticed plenty of people running with items, more so than usual. He pulled over and asked a man who was carrying a television what the hell was going on. The man looked at him and continued pushing his basket, Josh shouted at him, but was ignored again, so he got out and walked up to the store entrance.

"Jesus, this place is worse than Black Friday in 1997!" He mused to himself as someone hurried past him with a basketful of items. "I just hope they haven't run out of Tickle Me Elmo's again!"

He ventured further into the store cautiously since the power was out and people weren't shy about fighting over trivial things, it seemed.

"Just take the money and give it to us!" Josh heard someone shout suddenly. He turned and saw people swarming around the jewelry case that was in the middle of the store. A few people were trying to buy some jewelry and Josh thought it odd, since most people were grabbing whatever they could and running out. But that was only because no one tried to stop them ... there was still a cashier struggling to defend the jewelry case by himself.

"Let's just take it! Don't fuck around with this bullshit!" Josh winced as someone swung and metal baseball bat and hit the cashier in the side of the head. The bat bounced off the side of his head with a dull thud and then the cashier fell backwards and never got up again. Josh winced, but as the one with the metal baseball bat smashed the jewelry display cases one after another, Josh saw it as his opportunity to do some looting of his own.

Before the guy with the baseball bat had noticed, Josh had snatched nine gold rings with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies on them, a gold watch, and a few gold necklaces. He stuffed them in his pockets and took off deeper into the store in case the guy had ideas of following him and stopped behind a pile of dog food and waited in the darkness. No one came however and after a while, Josh emerged and went across the aisle for what he assumed were cookies.

He hadn't eaten since noon and his teenage stomach grumbled in hunger and since people were looting he thought it wouldn't matter. As he reached for the last box of the cookies another hand grabbed them at the same time.

"What the?" Josh looked at the girl who'd grabbed the same box. Though it was dark, he could make out the features of the girl. She had long black hair and he thought perhaps she was Asian at first or maybe even from a Pacific island, because she looked slightly tanned, but even in winter, everyone in Texas looked slightly tanned. She was slender and wore a t-shirt that had a picture of the Texas capital and the words, "Keep Austin weird". They both stood for a moment looking at each other and then someone bumped Josh in the back and snapped him out of his trance. By the time he looked back up, the girl had run off with the box of cookies along with some more food items.

"Jeez," He mumbled and took a box next to the one he'd grabbed before. He wrenched open the package, ate a few and then dropped them on the floor. They tasted like soft chalk.

Josh started to move towards the canned food section, when he kicked something solid by accident and by the light of a dropped flashlight, he found out it was a gun. He didn't know what kind it was, but he managed to put the safety on and put it in his pocket. He had learned to be safe around guns ever since he was twelve years old and his friend had shot him in the leg with his mother's air gun and sent him to the hospital. The wound wasn't serious but he was restricted to minimal activity for a few weeks afterward. He considered it a favor however and waved off his friend's apologies for shooting him since he had a viable excuse to get out of square dancing in gym class, which he hated strongly.

Josh checked on the gun in his pocket to make sure it would not accidentally fire. He looked out the side of the aisle to make sure it was safe and started to walk away, trying to look normal. Just as he had gotten to the exit he heard a loud report of a gun discharging, and looked just in time to see a man with a handgun duck behind a display of chips then another man come out with a revolver and start to run. The man came out behind the display of chips and fired three times and hit the man running in the shoulder.

"Holy crap! Time to go!" He said aloud to himself.

Screams were heard and then a flood of people began to filter out of the store's entrance and Josh was with them, he thought he might've heard another gunshot as he got outside but he wasn't sure.

He got into his truck and decided quickly to leave and go somewhere else to avoid getting shot in the melee and had just started his truck when someone smashed into him from behind.

"What the hell?" He began to say and looked back for a moment and witnessed someone being dragged from the car that had just hit him and getting kicked in their face, while another person went through the car, searching for something. Josh hurriedly pressed the lock on his door, put his truck into drive and punched the gas, resolved instantly to let his insurance company worry about the damage later.

He kept going until the reached a supermarket down the road and then inspected the damage. His tailgate was bent all the way in. Josh tried to open the tailgate but couldn't. Josh stepped back and looked at his truck, she had already been dented and rusted, but the new hits looked almost normal for the hell it had been through in the last forty-two years.

He left his truck again, glancing around quickly before crossing the walkway from the parking lot to the supermarket's entrance and when he went though the doors, he saw that almost everything was gone close to the door, except for a couple of dented cans of sweet corn. He grabbed what he could and looked in the other aisles and found a bag of flour, an opened bag of sugar that had been discarded, three boxes of matches, two cans of soup, and some candy. He ran towards the exit to stash his supplies back in his truck and come back for more, but as he did he heard a commotion in the dairy foods section.

He was uneasy about another confrontation and possibly facing the same fate the man in the department store had suffered. But all of a sudden, his old instincts kicked in. It was as if something came over him when there was danger around him, he always liked to partake but only when he knew what was happening. He rounded a corner of an aisle and saw a man holding a girl with black hair in his arms and saw the flash of metal against her neck. He walked around the man who was telling everyone to back off or he would kill the girl he was restraining. He decided to do something since everyone else either moved away or acted like they hadn't seen anything.

He took out the pistol that he had in his pocket and pointed it in the man's back and said, "Let her go." The man seemed so surprised he dropped his knife and stood still until Josh told him to put his hands up. The man complied and as soon as he lessened his grip on the person, the same girl he'd seen earlier, elbowed him in the mouth and ran.

Josh didn't have anything in mind besides getting the guy to let the person go, but when he heard another voice tell him to put his own hands up, he turned and saw that another man had a gun and it was pointed at him. Josh lowered the gun but didn't let it go. Suddenly, there was a flash of a white dust cloud, and the man fell but not before pulling the trigger and Josh pivoted and pulled the trigger on his own gun.

The gun fired so hard that he dropped it on the floor and jumped to grab it before the other man could fire his gun again; he picked it up and fired twice before the man could react. The man fell, but still had the strength to drag himself into the aisle next to him and then collapsed. Josh got up and looked around behind him for the man who held the girl, but he was already gone. Then he saw the girl coming towards him out the corner of his eye. He whirled around and aimed the gun at her for a moment until he realized it was her and lowered it. The girl was holding an empty bag of flour in her hands, but she tossed it away as she neared him.

"I think he's dead," She said and started to tell him that she was trying to get some food when out of no where a man came up to her and grabbed her and put a knife to her throat and was most likely going to drag her away to rape her when Josh had arrived.

He was shocked; he had never saved a life before. He wanted to savor the moment because he was sure this would never happen before. But, before he could enjoy the moment the girl asked him his name. "Josh." He answered.

"Thanks, Josh." The girl replied with a smile.

Josh looked at her and said, "You're welcome."

Then the girl said, "My name's—." All of a sudden, Josh saw movement out of the corner of his eye and he was quick enough to push the girl away from him. She fell backwards and was probably wondering why the hell he'd pushed her so hard at first, but the gunshot caused her to only flinch slightly and look at Josh in amazement. He'd saved her life yet again.

The bullet smashed through Josh's right shoulder and exited through his upper right back. Josh felt as if a baseball bat had just hit him and he stumbled back, trying to get out of the line of fire before another bullet came for him and he slipped on a half-empty bottle of water and tumbled backwards. It felt like he was falling in slow motion and he felt something hit his head hard on the right side just before he hit the ground. His vision went black for a moment and then white lights danced around the scene in front of him.

The girl had picked up the gun that had fallen out of his hands and shot the man in the chest. Fresh blood poured onto the already bloody floor. Josh was still lying on the floor, his head against the dairy case, when the girl ran over to him and looked at the wound in his shoulder. He oddly felt like smiling; there was never enough danger for him, but most of the time it led to stupid decisions. It felt just like when he had been shot with a BB gun when he was younger; the bullet stung a little and his arm was numb just like his leg had been right after it happened, but there was a new feeling, a burning sensation. He winced when the girl pulled up his shirt and gently touched the bullet hole.

"Ow! Jeez, what the hell, that hurts!" Josh said. The girl got up and started to run away. "Hey, where you going?" Josh yelled.

"Don't worry, I'll be right back." She said.

"Hey, I don't want to bleed to death here." Josh yelled and tried to move towards the girl so she wouldn't leave him there alone.

"Don't worry." The girl yelled back as she ran. Josh was bleeding lightly but decided to bandage his wound by himself to stop the bleeding. Josh lay back with his back on the dairy case door, he looked behind him and thanked God that the glass hadn't broken when he fell since it probably would've cut him open or impaled him. He watched other people pass by him, not even giving him a second look and he scoffed at more than a few of them before the girl came back. She was with a boy who looked about nineteen and wondered why he looked almost like he was related to her.

"Don't worry we're still going to help you, just let my brother pick you up."

"Wait, my truck—I can't leave my truck here." Josh said. He had gotten his truck on his sixteenth birthday from his father and he loved it and would be damned if he was going to leave it for some marauding thieves to steal or vandalize it. The girl said something Josh couldn't understand and the boy replied back in the same way.

"Okay, tell us what your truck looks like and we'll get it." Josh described it and said the tailgate was dented in and the truck was white. The girl hurried off as the boy picked Josh up and told him to lean on his shoulder for support and walk.

"I'm Nobu, by the way." The boy said and shook Josh's that was on the same arm he'd just been shot in. He winced, but hoped the boy would think nothing of his limp handshake.

"What kind of name is Nobu?" Josh asked as he walked.

"It's Japanese, you stupid honky." Nobu snapped back, "And don't start with that ching-chong shit or I'll fucking hit you in your face."

"Okay, okay. I was just asking, you know." Josh replied and told him he'd meant no offense.

"Sorry, I get that a lot from people here in Austin." Nobu explained. "Outside of Austin is even worse."

"Where's your sister?" Josh asked while they went through the crowd of people running in and out of the store front, some of them were pushed roughly out of the way by Nobu for Josh so he wouldn't be knocked over or hit in his wound again.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from IN THE SUNby Joshua Patrick Copyright © 2011 by Joshua Patrick. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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