Chapter 13 of World of Hurt has frightening twist

Oren and Mickey discover frightening event in Las Vegas

World of Hurt

A Novel of Las Vegas

Richard J Pietschmann

Chapter 13

Here's a teaser that will make you hunger for more

VEGAS A-BOMB POPS

Oren wasn’t the only one who understood that nothing nuclear had popped at all—it was the thunderclap detonation of an ordinary high-explosive bomb dropped in a dry-run simulation of the real thing.  

A sudden breeze puffed out of windless air and riffled the hair poking out underneath Oren’s cattleman hat. That activated the primitive center of his brain, the part devoted entirely to survival. An involuntary warning shiver instantly flashed down his spine and prepared Oren to flee or fight. But then the slower pair of evolved brains wrapped around the ancient core intervened, using reason and experience to tell Oren that he had nothing to fear from the event he had experienced. The breeze was from the flight of a ruthless hunter uninterested in him gliding soundlessly within inches of his head. It would have been the only warning any prey could hope to detect before the great horned owl ripped it apart.

Only then did Oren exhale, the visible breath surprising him with the knowledge that he had stopped breathing.