After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Twelve, “Partners”

The old man spent the rest of the day with Bill. They were feeling each other out.

Learning each other.

The old man was sore and tired from the day’s digging. He figured another day of rest couldn’t do any harm. Another night of good sleep inside wouldn’t hurt either.

A couple more good meals to refuel.

Bill seemed less concerned now but was still following the old man around. Right on his heels most of the time. Watching him.

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Outro S1 E12

We are 12 episodes in my survivor friends! You have, ahem, survived this far into the story!

Thank you – this is Chris your cruise director. Now we have Bill the dog and the Old man in a partnership. And maybe the old man is starting to step back from the brink of his fatalism?

What happened to Janet? What happened to KJ the killer? What other characters are roaming the apocalypse with them?

Stay tuned to find out!

We are up to 2,390 listener downloads. That’s great. Up 41% since last episode drop. And I blame you. All of you who took the time to tell a friend or give us a like or a review. Keep it up!

I will work my tail off to bring you a new chapter every other week, or fortnightly, for those of you who like that term.

I commit to a steady release schedule so you can plan for it. I know I hate when podcasts are inconsistent. Or when they fade out after a few episodes.

We’ve passed the one-year anniversary of when this idea of the Old Man in the apocalypse came into my head. It was the week the Pandemic started, and I was at a trade show in Atlanta. This picture of the old man popped into my head while I was running down by the Chattahoochee on a rainy morning.

I wrote the first chapter on the plane on my way back home. That’s the last time I was on a plane!

I have read a couple SciFi books since we last talked. I’m an avid and voracious consumer of books. I do like hard science fiction. I think I found a list of ‘best books’ or something so I bought a pile of them from Thriftbooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Icarus_Hunt The first one was a novel called The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn. Decent book. It’s a bit of a who-dunnit caper in space. The tech was good. The characters were good. The action was good. The story moved right along. It kept your interest by creating tension around the big secrets and slowly teasing them through the narrative until the last act. It seemed a bit rushed at the end with the big reveal and I was left wondering ‘wait, that’s it?’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warchild_(Lowachee_novel) The second was a much bigger book called Warchild by Kiran Lowachee. The characters, especially the main character are very compelling, very deep. It has a bit of ‘Starship Troopers’ in it. It was 400+ pages but quite compelling. I have to admit that the pirate-child-sex-slave themes really creeped me out. On the one hand it’s a testament to the writing, on the other it’s just creepy and I don’t read escapist fiction to get creeped out. This is an amazing piece of work for a first novel.

Links in the show notes, which you can find by looking at them in your podcast player or the website, which points to the website page on Acast, or of course, on the Patreon page.

Both good hard SF novels. I’d recommend them. Tell you what, if you contribute to the patreon for the show I’ll drop ‘em in the mail to you.

Still looking for supporters to help me finance this.

I wanted to thank my friends Tim and Duane for being editors. They pick up stuff that I don’t and it makes the product better for all of us. The show is dedicated to them. And Tim, hopefully you’ll be able to download and listen to podcasts while you’re out on the Appalachian trail this summer.

Hope everyone is enjoying spring, or fall, depending on which side of the planet you’re on. Reach out and say ‘Hi’ at cyktrussell at gmail.

See you next time and Keep Surviving!

Standard outro and links

After the Apocalypse is written and produced by Chris Russell (that’s me) aftertheapocalypse.me

The show is narrated by Robert Weinheimer who’s work can be found at https://commandvoices.com/

The intro and outro music is by Bobby Quinn