Small Press Finalist #20 - Dark Sand

DARK SAND
WOMEN'S FICTION/SUSPENSE/THRILLER
96,246

ALEXA UNDERWOOD is being held captive somewhere in the Arizona desert. The brilliant and beautiful college student  is a long way from her pampered life in the San Fernando Valley. And she's in for the fight of her life.

Alexa’s own brother has brought her to a remote compound called Oceania. Her captor, a man known only as Thomas, tells her that she has been chosen, along with other women, to repopulate the world following the end of days. But things are not as they seem.

Thomas is a malevolent man who is hiding something sinister behind his ruse, using the women one by one for his own gain. Lacking compunction, he will stop at nothing to keep the wheels of his wicked gambit in motion.

Even if it means cold-blooded murder.

Suspecting treachery, Alexa begins to unravel the shroud that Thomas hides behind. What she uncovers shakes her to her core and she knows she has to find a way out for herself and the other captives of Oceania.

But Alexa better hurry. She is about to become Thomas's next victim.

First 150 Words:

CHAPTER ONE

God, it was hard to breathe.

Stinging, bitter smoke clawed at my nostrils, dragging me from a sleep so deep I could have been in a coma. My mouth was dry and full of cobwebs, and my tongue felt like an Eggo waffle that had been forgotten in the freezer sometime last year. At first I thought my lips had bits of paper glued to them. Then I realized it was just my skin, as it peeled away in curly little shreds from the tender tissue underneath. As the smoke seeped into my lungs, some corner of my groggy brain realized that whatever was burning smelled like rubber, or maybe plastic with a hint of kerosene. And it stank.

Very slowly I cracked my eyes open. Suspended above my head was a curved ceiling of bright blue with an occasional dark silhouette reaching across it, grasping at something unseen.