Showing results for "Digital Hell" in Genre Fiction

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

After a long and bloody battle, legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez reigns as the dutiful but reluctant new king of the islands. Advised by a council of former sky citizens as well as Cazadores, he works to assimilate the two societies peacefully. But not all Cazadores have accepted the new order. While X tries to ease tensions at home, a rookie team of divers, led by Michael Everhart, returns to the skies in Discovery, formerly the ITC Deliverance. Their mission: To locate other human survivors throughout the world and rescue them.

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

In "People in Hell Want Ice Water" - an eerie and suspenseful short story about connection, trust, and self-preservation - a random hookup amidst the COVID-19 pandemic brings two lonely people together when they need it most. Colin is an immunocompromised software engineer living alone in Los Angeles when he meets Martha on an early morning walk. She’s irreverent and mysterious, and although Colin knows better than to invite a stranger into his house, it’s been over 40 days since he’s been touched, and he can’t resist the temptation.

An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he'll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity.

The Sea Wolf sets out to search for the Metal Islands. Leading the expedition is legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez. After enduring a decade on the poisoned surface, his survival skills will be put to the test on the dangerous open seas. But storms, sea monsters, and the cannibalistic Cazadores aren't the only threat to X and his small crew. Their mission will uncover hard truths about the history of the war that left humankind stranded in the air for centuries. The fate of those still living on the airships might very well rest on this perilous journey to find a new home.

After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny, habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this "paradise" is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal King el Pulpo. For the first time in X's life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.

The secret location of the Vanguard Islands is no longer a secret … Tired from years of fighting, Xavier passes the crown to a younger Hell Diver, Kade Long, and then sets off on the Sea Wolf with Magnolia to find Michael and his family. But the journey will push them both to their limit. On the damaged airship Vanguard, Michael and crew are running out of water and must dive to a new location before attempting the perilous voyage across the Atlantic to a new home.

Ten years ago, Hell Diver Xavier "X" Rodriguez fell to Earth. Those he left behind went on without him aboard the airship he once called home. Michael Everheart - the boy once known as Tin - has grown into a man and the commander of Hell Diver Raptor Team. While Michael dives to help keep the Hive in the air, Captain Leon Jordan rules with an iron fist at the helm of the ship. But unrest stirs under his strict leadership as a prophecy of hope sweeps the lower decks.

Left for dead on the nightmarish surface of the planet, Commander Michael Everhart and his team of Hell Divers barely escape with their lives aboard a new airship called Deliverance. After learning that Xavier "X" Rodriguez may still be alive, they mount a rescue mission for the long-lost hero. In the skies, the Hive is falling apart, but Captain Jordan is more determined than ever to keep humanity in their outdated lifeboat. He will do whatever it takes to keep the ship in the air - even murder.

Before you knew him as the king or the Immortal, he was Commander Xavier “X” Rodriguez—with ninety-six dives under his belt, the most experienced Hell Diver on the airship known as the Hive. Time after time, he dived through the electrical storms, returning with parts to keep his home in the sky. Then, on a jump into Hades, the most hostile environment in North America, he sacrificed everything for mission and team. They returned to the airship with the fuel cells needed to keep the Hive running, but X was left behind.

From the jungles of Indonesia to the very heart of New York City comes a plague that kills 100 percent of its victims. Medicine's greatest nightmare, this modern Black Death is caused by the most virulent and uncontrollable mutant virus humanity has ever witnessed. And medicine can do nothing to stop its merciless spread.

To start their new life together, Jamie Pratt and his young bride join a westward wagon train bound for the Rocky Mountains. They get as far as Helena when their unscrupulous wagon master deserts them, leaving them as good as dead in a godforsaken, blood-scorched land. The other settlers agree to set stakes where they are, but Jamie and his bride press on toward the Bitterroot Valley, deep into Sioux territory. They never come out the other side.

In 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the Lawrence, Kansas, Massacre, former bushwhacker Cole Younger stands before a preacher at a tent revival. "I was, I remain, and I will always be a wicked man," Younger states, taking a step toward salvation. And for a man like Cole Younger, there is much to confess.

Two and a half centuries before the Hell Divers, the Machine War erupted—autonomous killer robots turning Korea into a battlefield that threatened to consume civilization. As the dust settles, three men stand at the crossroads of humanity’s fate. CEO Tyron Red, thrust into leadership of the Industrial Tech Corporation after his father’s death, works to reverse the war’s catastrophic effects while battling enemies, both human and machine, lurking in the shadows.

Sam Hill always saw the world through different eyes. Born with red pupils, he was called “Devil Boy” or Sam “Hell” by his classmates; “God’s will” is what his mother called his ocular albinism. Her words were of little comfort, but Sam persevered. Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.

The mission to Rio de Janeiro ended in victory, but it came at a dire cost, killing most of those who set out to rescue the stranded survivors. Even worse, the skinwalkers’ leader, Horn, escaped with his demonic crew and is coming to take the throne. Back at the Vanguard Islands, King Xavier Rodriguez has been severely injured in another battle to protect the kingdom. Now an infection threatens to kill the one man who can keep the peace.

Islamic State is here, all around us. There is no defence. Only attack. On the Syria/Iraq border, a British hostage is beheaded by IS terrorists. When the executioner breaks down, he is led into a nearby tent, where a masked figure is waiting for him. This mysterious person is treated with a mixture of respect and terror. They call him the Caliph.

In a London funeral parlor, the dead rise and walk again. On a train in the London Underground, a young couple is terrorized by a demon. In a suburb, a poltergeist forces a family to flee their home. Hellboy has his hands full. While the supernatural is on a rampage in London, a series of brutal Torso Murders turns up at various sites around the city. All of the corpses are headless, limbless, and drained of their blood.

In the early 1990’s, Hellboy, Liz Sherman, and Abe Sapien are drawn into a bizarre case in New York, linked both to Hellboy’s 1980 adventure with Anastasia in Brazil and to The Lobster’s encounter with the Proteus Club in 1933. A strange community of bizarre humans has been living in secret beneath Manhattan for more than sixty years. Now, though, someone is stalking them, murdering them one by one—someone who claims to be the ancient goddess Sem-Karul. With aid from the now elderly Cynthia Tynan, Hellboy and the BPRD must face the Goddess of Manhattan, and the monsters who serve her.