Gannon Snippets

At The End Of The World – Snippet 29

This book should be available now, so this is the last Snippet. At The End Of The World - Snippet 29 Carbs had been a problem from day one, even though we left South Georgia with more than our fair share. Willow was confident that if she and Johnnie didn't get infected, the food the Captain had seen on the pirates' trawler -- mostly dry and canned goods from King Edward Point -- would last a long time. Willow even had a solid plan for getting to those supplies in a few weeks: douse the compartments with water and wait for it to freeze. That...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 28

At The End Of The World - Snippet 28 So we didn't go to back Husvik and spent two weeks feeling pretty lousy about it. That was also when we steered away from the uppermost margins of the Antarctic circumpolar current (the same one that helped push us from Tierra del Fuego to South Georgia) and nosed northward into the Benguela current. We paralleled the western coast of southern Africa for ten days, then sheared off, heading northwest for St. Helena. After making that turn, the winds were brisk but changeable, so we spent an extra day or two...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 27

At The End Of The World - Snippet 27 So Willow had made her choice. And there was obviously no going back. She didn't do it to try to get us to lift the quarantine; she did it to stay with Johnnie. Kind of the weirdest and scariest Adam and Eve reboot you could ever imagine. She knew the dangers. She knew that a balanced diet was going to be a big challenge for them. She knew all of it. But as she calmly, patiently explained through the door, she knew that we'd leave them a good supply, she knew which seaweed she could use to supplement their...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 26

At The End Of The World - Snippet 26 "Really?" I asked. "You think you could shoot either of them? And do you think they'd make it easy?" I thought I might throw up. "Captain thought this through. Winter is just about done down here. In a week, if the weather is good, we start out. If not, we wait for it to turn, watching the ocean from Leith Harbor." "And what?" Giselle gasped. "Just leave the captain and Johnnie here?" I sighed and looked straight at her. "That's what the captain says. And if you have a better solution, one that allows us...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 25

At The End Of The World - Snippet 25 He may have chuckled; he just may have been coughing and gurgling. "Fair point. Let's say things are going to get difficult in a new way." "Well, that's good to hear. The old way was getting boring." "I knew you had some cheek in you. But hard facts, now, Alvaro. I'm never leaving the radiohouse." "Captain, if you haven't come down with the virus in a month --" "Alvaro: think. You're smarter than that." He was right. Deep down, I knew better. He evidently knew my silence meant I realized he was right....

At The End Of The World – Snippet 24

At The End Of The World - Snippet 24 Captain Haskins ended by getting their assurance that their story was complete and honest, pointing out that the penalties for lying were extremely severe in our group. The pirates swore to their truthfulness on bibles they had never read, and on the souls of mothers that they had probably abandoned to squalor and disease by the time they were fifteen. The only really useful information we got was about the plague itself. We learned more details about the various stages of the disease, about how contagious...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 23

At The End Of The World - Snippet 23 The men at the stern came out of the hatchway again, crouching. Chloe, who was now deathly quiet, let one get out, then caught the second one with a shot in the chest right as he cleared the coaming. By the time the next one was clambering over him, she had worked the action and fired again. That one went backward -- whether hit in the leg or trying to fling himself out of the line of fire, I couldn't tell. Then she nudged her gun over to where the first pirate, the one she had allowed to exit the hatch,...

At The End Of The World – Snippet 22

At The End Of The World - Snippet 22 Instead, a bunch of them came running out of the superstructure and set up around the forward weather deck, from the waist to the bow. They were scanning the high points behind their ship. Including, of course, the Karrakatta.  A moment later, the men who had ducked back into the rear hatch came rushing back out; three of them kept sweeping their weapons back and forth across the same high points. The rest set to work on lowering the two dinghies. "Captain --" I started. "I see it. They're readying...