Well, it's Friday, so that's "later this week," and as promised, here's the first chapter of the new novel, Walking Dead.

I have no firm release date as yet other than "Summer '09." Discussions with my editor have lead me to believe it could be as early as the end of May, perhaps June, maybe July, but certainly by August, depending on what else is on Bantam's publishing schedule. That being said, though, the book is pretty close to locked; I'm awaiting the copy-edit, which will, in turn, lead to requisite minor revisions. But structurally and story-wise, we're final.

Unlike Patriot Acts, this is not a direct continuation from the previous novel in the Kodiak series, although it begins with the status quo as implied at the end of the previous novel; for those following who've been following Atticus, Walking Dead begins some three years after the end of Patriot Acts. If you've never read the series before, you should be able to dive into this one without confusion. In fact, that was one of the things I was hoping to accomplish in this book, that the reader could come to it with no prior experience of the series.

All in all, I suspect I'll post the first three chapters in the coming months leading up to the release; I may post more, I'm undecided. If you've never read my prose work before, figure this is a good way to wet your whistle. For the rest of you who know the novels, I hope you enjoy this first taste. Comments welcome, of course.

Chapter One

People came to Kobuleti to hide. It’s why we were there, and it’s why Bakhar Lagidze had brought his family there, and I knew it, and I never asked him why.

I should have.


I was awake but unsure of it, my eyes suddenly open, the last whispers of dream vanishing, leaving me with no true memory, just the impression that it had been unpleasant, that I had done things of which I was not proud. Full-moon blue filtered into the bedroom, shadows swayed behind the thin curtains as long pine boughs rocked in the breeze.

Our dog, Miata, an old Doberman with no voice, was pacing at the door. I tried to focus my blurred vision on him as he turned a circle in place, raised a paw to scratch at the door, then glanced back my way. I fumbled my glasses off the nightstand and onto my nose, watched as he repeated the sequence. It had been the noise or the motion or both that had pulled me from sleep, and I knew the behavior for what it was, and it shifted me fully awake, and I put a hand on Alena’s shoulder.

“Trouble,” I said.

She murmured, refusing to surface.

“Wake up.” I’d been speaking in Georgian, now switched to Russian. “Trouble.”

I looked to the door in time to see Miata finish another circuit, this time to fix me with a plea in his eyes. Any other dog, I’d have thought he was fighting a weak bladder. I slipped out of bed, felt the hardwood immediately leech heat from my feet. There was a pistol in the nightstand drawer. I put the gun down long enough to pull on my jeans.

“What’s going on?” Alena asked.

“Miata’s got something.”

She looked at me blearily, half-heartedly shook her head, as if unsure she was dreaming this or not. “Not the alarm?”

“I’ll check. Stay here.”

She was readying a pistol of her own as I left the room.

The two laptops that ran our security system lived in the linen closet beside the bathroom, on the shelf above the towels. I could feel Miata’s moist breath against my bare ankles as I checked each. No alerts, nothing had been tripped. Nothing on the video. Nothing in the logs. It occurred to me that Miata was now an old dog, and maybe he really did need to take a leak, nothing more.

Then he bolted away down the hall, paws skidding on the floor. I followed more slowly and caught up with him at the back door. Together we listened to the night, and whatever it was he was hearing, I wasn’t. I opened the door, and stepped out after him into the summer darkness.

The air was close to cold, chilled as it came in off the Black Sea, with threads of thin fog hanging in the trees, and it was as dead silent outside the house as it had been within. I thought about going back for a shirt, but Miata had begun cautiously trotting towards the woods that ringed our house, muzzle and ears both raised, and he clearly wasn’t in a mood to wait. Two will-o-wisps, dim halos, blinked at me as a car came along the road that cut through the forest in the distance. The sound of the engine followed a second later, but barely, the vehicle easily half a mile away, turning along the road that lead to the Lagidze home. The light and the sound faded.

I followed Miata to the edge of the tree-line, where it bordered our backyard, put a hand on his back to calm him. Alena and I had cut down several of the trees in the past two years to clear eye-lines to the perimeter, and we still had four cords of wood split and stacked and ready to keep us warm through the coming winter.

Then I heard the shots.

This time, Miata had to follow me.

Flat run, barefoot, in the forest, in the dark, it took me almost three minutes to cover the distance, and I counted gunshots as I ran. I heard a total of fourteen more, all of them sounding as if spoken by the same weapon. An engine turned as I reached the edge of the dirt road leading to Bakhar’s house, and the car it belonged to was already in gear and accelerating, and the lights hit me. The driver’s response to seeing me, shirtless, barefoot, and armed, was to floor the Land Cruiser and swerve it in my direction.

My answer was to get the hell out of the way as fast as I could, and when I got to my feet again, the car had already shot around the bend, taillights retreating. Miata burst out of the woods, racing in the direction of the house. I went after him. A second Land Cruiser was parked outside of the darkened house, its tail to Bakhar’s beat-up Opel, and I could see three men heading for the larger vehicle. The night stole details, but I saw that two of them were armed, and one of them had a long gun, the distinctive silhouette of an AK, and maybe Miata didn’t care, but I sure as hell did.

“Back!” I shouted the command in Russian, and Miata took it immediately, veering off sharply, into the cover of the woods on the right.

I went left, and had just enough time to put a tree between myself and the AK before the shots came. Whoever was on the trigger knew his business and controlled his bursts, sending three my way in short order. The Land Cruiser started up right after the third salvo. I broke cover to run alongside the road, using the trees, and the AK shouted at me again, and this time I got a fix on the shooter and returned fire, two double-taps that went true.

A door slammed, and the Land Cruiser shot forward, then past, then was gone.

I brought my pistol down, tried to get my heart rate and breathing to follow suit. Miata edged out of the shadows on the other side of the road, followed me as I went to check on the man I’d shot. His legs had folded beneath him where he’d collapsed, the AK lying parallel to his knees. The moonlight lit him well, and I could see he was Caucasian, probably Eastern European, which was hardly a surprise, considering that was where we were. I found a wallet and a wad of Euros on him and took both, stuffing them into my own pockets. I picked up the AK, gave it a quick check.

The night had gone quiet again.

I looked toward my friend’s house. The front door was ajar, perforated with shots. Moonlight dropped a shadow that filled the entrance with darkness.

“Bakhar?”

I didn’t get an answer. I didn’t expect one.

I already knew what I was going to find.