Title: A Beginning At The End
Author: Mike Chen
Genre: Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalyptic
Publisher: MIRA books
Release Date: 14th January 2020
BLURB supplied by Harlequin Trade Publishing
An emotional story about what happens after the end of the world, A
BEGINNING AT THE END is a tale of four survivors trying to rebuild their
personal lives after a literal apocalypse. For commercial readers who enjoy a
speculative twist, or their sci-fi with a heavy dose of family and feelings.
Six years after a global pandemic, it turns out that the End of the
World was more like a big pause. Coming out of quarantine, 2 billion unsure
survivors split between self-governing big cities, hippie communes, and
wasteland gangs. When the father of a presumed-dead pop star announces a global
search for his daughter, four lives collide: Krista, a cynical event planner;
Moira, the ex-pop star in hiding; Rob, a widowed single father; and Sunny, his
seven-year-old daughter. As their lives begin to intertwine, reports of a new
outbreak send the fragile society into a panic. And when the government enacts
new rules in response to the threat, long-buried secrets surface, causing Sunny
to run away seeking the truth behind her mother's death. Now, Krista, Rob, and
Moira must finally confront the demons of their past in order to hit the road
and reunite with Sunny -- before a coastal lockdown puts the world on pause
again.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon UK
Google Play
Google Play
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to
somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek
websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist, Tor) and covered the NHL for mainstream
media outlets. A member of SFWA and Codex Writers, Mike lives in the Bay Area,
where he can be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his
wife, daughter, and rescue animals.
AUTHOR LINKS
Twitter: @mikechenwriter
Instagram: @mikechenwriter
Instagram: @mikechenwriter
Facebook: @mikechenwriter
EXCERPT
Prologue
People were too
scared for music tonight. Not that MoJo cared.
Her handlers had broken the news about the
low attendance nearly an hour ago with some explanation about how the recent
flu epidemic and subsequent rioting and looting kept people at home. They’d
served the news with high-end vodka, the good shit imported from Russia,
conveniently hidden in a water bottle which she carried from the greenroom to
the stage.
“The show must go on,” her father
proclaimed, like she was doing humanity a service by performing. She suspected
his bravado actually stemmed from the fact that her sophomore album’s second
single had stalled at number thirteen—a far cry from the lead single’s
number-one debut or her four straight top-five hits off her first album. Either
way, the audience, filled with beaming girls a few years younger than herself
and their mothers, seemed to agree. Flu or no flu, some people still wanted
their songs—or maybe they just wanted normalcy—so MoJo delivered, perfect note
after perfect note, each in time to choreographed dance routines. She even gave
her trademark smile.
The crowd
screamed and sang along, waving their arms to the beat. Halfway through the
second song, a peculiar vibe grabbed the audience. Usually, a handful of
parents disappeared into their phones, especially as the flu scare had
heightened over the past week. This time nearly every adult in the arena was
looking at their phone. In the front row, MoJo saw lines of concern on each
face.
Before the song
even finished, some parents grabbed their children and left, pushing through
the arena’s floor seats and funneling to the exit door.
MoJo pushed on,
just like she’d always promised her dad. She practically heard his voice over
the backup music blasting in her in-ear monitors. There is no sophomore slump.
Smile! Between the second and third songs, she gave her customary “Thank you!”
and fake talk about how great it was to be wherever they were. New York City,
this time, at Madison Square Garden. A girl of nineteen embarking on a tour
bigger, more ambitious than she could have ever dreamed and taking the pop
world by storm, and yet, she knew nothing real about New York City. She’d never
left her hotel room without chaperones and handlers. Not under her dad’s watch.
One long swig
of vodka later, and a warmth rushed to her face, so much so that she wondered
if it melted her face paint off. She looked off at the side stage, past the
elaborate video set and cadre of backup dancers. But where was the gaffer? Why
wasn’t anyone at the sound board? The fourth song had a violin section, yet the
contracted violinist wasn’t in her spot.
Panic raced
through MoJo’s veins, mental checklists of her marks, all trailed by echoes
from her dad’s lectures about accountability. Her feet were planted exactly
where they should be. Her poise, straight and high. Her last few notes, on key,
and her words to the audience, cheerful. It couldn’t have been something she’d
done, could it?
No. Not her
fault this time. Someone else is facing Dad’s wrath tonight, she thought.
The next song’s
opening electronic beats kicked in. Eyes closed, head tilted back, and arms up,
her voice pushed out the song’s highest note, despite the fuzziness of the
vodka making the vibrato a little harder to sustain. For a few seconds, nothing
existed except the sound of her voice and the music behind it— no handlers, no
tour, no audience, no record company, no father telling her the next way she’d
earn the family fortune—and it almost made the whole thing worth it.
Her eyes
opened, body coiled for the middle-eight’s dance routine, but the brightness of
the house lights threw her off the beat. The drummer and keyboard player
stopped, though the prerecorded backing track continued for a few more seconds
before leaving an echo chamber.
No applause. No
eyes looked MoJo’s way. Only random yelling and an undecipherable buzz saw of
backstage clamor from her in-ear monitors. She stood, frozen, unable to tell if
this was from laced vodka or if it was actually unfolding: people—adults and
children, parents and daughters— scrambling to the exits, climbing over chairs
and tripping on stairs, ushers pushing back at the masses before some turned
and ran as well.
Someone grabbed
her shoulder and jerked back hard. “We have to go,” said the voice behind her.
“What’s going
on?” she asked, allowing the hands to push her toward the stage exit. Steven,
her huge forty-something bodyguard, took her by the arm and helped her down the
short staircase to the backstage area.
“The flu’s
spread,” he said. “A government quarantine. There’s some sort of lockdown on
travel. The busing starts tonight. First come, first serve. I think everyone’s
trying to get home or get there. I can’t reach your father. Cell phones are
jammed up.”
They worked
their way through the concrete hallways and industrial lighting of the
backstage area, people crossing in a mad scramble left and right. MoJo clutched
onto her bottle of vodka, both hands to her chest as Steven ushered her onward.
People collapsed in front of her, crying, tripping on their own anxieties, and
Steven shoved her around them, apologizing all the way. Something draped over
her shoulders, and it took her a moment to realize that he’d put a thick parka
around her. She chuckled at the thought of her sparkly halter top and leather
pants wrapped in a down parka that smelled like BO, but Steven kept pushing her
forward, forward, forward until they hit a set of double doors.
The doors flew
open, but rather than the arena’s quiet loading area from a few hours ago, MoJo
saw a thick wall of people: all ages and all colors in a current of movement,
pushing back and forth. “I’ve got your dad on the line,” Steven yelled over the
din, “His car is that way. He wants to get to the airport now. Same thing’s
happening back home.” His arm stretched out over her head. “That way! Go!”
They moved as a
pair, Steven yelling “excuse me” over and over until the crowd became too dense
to overcome. In front of her, a woman with wisps of gray woven into black hair
trembled on her knees. Even with the racket around them, MoJo heard her cry.
“This is the end. This is the end.”
The end.
People had been
making cracks about the End of the World since the flu changed from online
rumors to this big thing that everyone talked about all the time. But she’d
always figured the “end” meant a giant pit opening, Satan ushering everyone
down a staircase to Hell. Not stuck outside Madison Square Garden.
“Hey,” Steven
yelled, arms spread out to clear a path through the traffic jam of bodies.
“This way!”
MoJo looked at
the sobbing woman in front of her, then at Steven. Somewhere further down the
road, her father sat in a car and waited. She could feel his pull, an invisible
tether that never let her get too far away.
“The end, the
end,” the sobbing woman repeated, pausing MoJo in her tracks. But where to go?
Every direction just pointed at more chaos, people scrambling with a panic that
had overtaken everyone in the loading dock, possibly the neighborhood, possibly
all New York City, possibly even the world. And it wasn’t just about a flu.
It was everything.
But… maybe that
was good?
No more tours.
No more studio sessions. No more threats about financial security, no more
lawyer meetings, no more searches through her luggage. No more worrying about
hitting every mark. In the studio. Onstage.
In life.
All of that was
done.
The very
thought caused MoJo to smirk.
If this was the
end, then she was going out on her own terms.
“Steven!” she
yelled. He turned and met her gaze.
She twisted the
cap off the water-turned-vodka bottle, then took most of it down in one long
gulp. She poured the remainder on her face paint, a star around her left eye,
then wiped it off with her sleeve. The empty bottle flew through the air,
probably hitting some poor bloke in the head.
“Tell my dad,”
she said, trying extra hard to pronounce the words with the clear British
diction she was raised with, “to go fuck himself.”
For an instant,
she caught Steven’s widemouthed look, a mix of fear and confusion and
disappointment on his face, as though her words crushed his worldview more than
the madness around them. But MoJo wouldn’t let herself revel in her first,
possibly only victory over her father; she ducked and turned quickly, parka
pulled over her head, crushing the product-molded spikes in her hair.
Each step
pushing forward, shoulders and arms bumping into her as her eyes locked onto
the ground, one step at a time. Left, right, left, then right, all as fast as
she could go, screams and car horns and smashing glass building in a wave of
desperation around her.
Maybe it was
the end. But even though her head was down, she walked with dignity for the
first time in years, perhaps ever.
Excerpted from A
Beginning at the End by Mike Chen, Copyright © 2020 by Mike Chen. Published by
MIRA Books.
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