Please join me in welcoming Lyndi Alexander as my guest blogger today. Lyndi is here to talk about Book 3 "Adversaries" in her Color of Fear Series. If you like YA apocalyptic sagas then you're in the right place.
Life after the devastating biological terrorist attack that decimated the White population in the US is beginning to recover as Tzu Lin Kwan is finally able to deliver her precious cargo of herbs to her scientist father. Or is it?
The virus may be mutating, spreading to infect those previously immune. Tzu Shin and his fellow scientists—and now Kwan—are literal prisoners of the US military. The White supremacist army of the demagogue Gabriel has invaded St. Louis. And the Chinese assassin Piao knows where to find his targets.
Kwan and her friends Valery, Eddie, and San are ready to fight to the death to defend their recovering world. The question is: Are courage and determination enough?
EXCERPT:
The building numbered 49 was heavily guarded, with not only armed soldiers but armored vehicles parked around it. The two-story gray cinderblock structure had several modular additions set up behind it, connected by long walkways with accordion-style walls. Each was enclosed in a tent of plastic that was zipped to the ground. It looked like every biohazard lab Kwan had seen in movies.
“Definitely the place,” she said.
Xi San agreed. “I’d say.”
San parked the truck in a designated visitor spot across the road, then got out. Kwan gathered her box of precious Chinese medicinal herbs and her bag, then joined him, watching the guards, who studied them with the same distrust they’d met on the way in.
They walked to the checkpoint at the door.
“Only her,” snapped a large black man with many colored pins over his left front pocket.
Her heart sank. No matter how much she wanted this, she’d always thought she wouldn’t be alone.
“No,” she said, reaching for San’s hand. “San comes with me.”
The officer stared her down, the soldier beside him bringing his rifle forward at an angle, not pointing at San, but decidedly in a threatening posture.
“Only you,” the officer repeated. He eyed the box she held as if he wanted to take it from her. Perhaps that was all they wanted. But we come as a package deal. She turned to San, seeking his input. He only shrugged, but she read tension in his stance right down to the tautness in his shoulder muscles.
“It’s their facility, bao bei,” he said. “More important that you get to see your father.”
Kwan pulled her hand away and clutched the box tighter, convinced that she had negotiating power. She was the daughter of Tzu Shin, after all. “If they want me, we must both go in.”
She caught sight of a soldier from the corner of her eye, speaking on a walkie-talkie. When he finished, practically bristling, he marched over to the officer in front of her. Kwan instinctively took a step back, and it was San who reached for her hand this time.
He never caught it.
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Bio: Lyndi Alexander always dreamed of faraway worlds and interesting alien contacts. She lives as a post-modern hippie in Asheville, North Carolina, a single mother of her last child of seven, a daughter on the autism spectrum, finding that every day feels a lot like first contact with a new species.
The final book in the Color of Fear series is out now! A YA post apocalyptic saga about a plague and the young BIPOC who help the country recover. When I started it ten years ago, I had no idea this would still be relevant! Check it out at Amazon or your favorite book seller.