The Fifth Day

by Gordon Bonnet

Portents of evil. Dreams of destruction, chaos, death. Feelings of terrible foreboding, heavy as the dark skies before a storm hits.

Within twenty-four hours, the sudden and nearly universal presentiment of doom experienced by folks in the peaceful beach town of Furness, California is found to be horrifyingly accurate when a handful of people wake up to find that their friends, families, and loved ones—in fact, most of the inhabitants of the Earth—have simultaneously vanished without a trace.

Left behind to make sense of a strange and depopulated world are an odd assortment of people. A wry and jaded psychic who knows good and well that her fortunetelling is a sham—until the day it begins to come true. A kind, idealistic registered nurse. A thirteen-year-old science nerd. A church custodian. An outspoken, pragmatic physicist. A volatile and unpredictable bakery owner. A tough-as-nails ex-Army man with a terrible secret, who is determined that he’ll survive this, even if it’s at the cost of the others.

But they soon discover that they’re not the only ones trying to find their way through the empty streets of Furness. Because the cataclysm that took 99% of the Earth’s inhabitants did one other thing.

It released the monsters. (368 pages)

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Publisher: Solasta
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About the Author

Gordon Bonnet has been writing fiction for decades. Encouraged when his story Crazy Bird Bends His Beak won critical acclaim in Mrs. Moore’s 1st-grade class at Central Elementary School in St. Albans, West Virginia, he embarked on a long love affair with the written word. His interest in the paranormal goes back almost that far, although it has always been tempered by Gordon’s scientific training. This has led to a strange duality; his work as a skeptic and debunker on the popular blog Skeptophilia, while simultaneously writing paranormal and speculative novels, novellas, and short stories. He blogs daily, but is never without a piece of fiction in progress-driven to continue, as he puts it, “because I want to find out how the story ends.” Stay up to date with Gordon and all his writing and appearances on Facebook, Twitter, or at www.gordonbonnet.com. You’ll also find more great fiction on his writing blog, Tales of Whoa.