The Sole Survivors' Club

Description:

Having lost her parents in a tragic multi-car pile-up, Monica Harper is drawn time and again to fatal automobile accidents without understanding why. Living alone, she works next to the same section of highway where her parents were killed.

But it isn’t survivors’ guilt trapping Monica in her dead-end life.

Fred Schott is a tabloid reporter obsessed with Monica, and with other accident magnets like her. Despite her mistrust of Fred, Monica is eventually convinced to speak with other people with the same problems.

But in arranging this tiny support group, Monica has pushed for a confrontation with an invisible army of living spirits. One by one, her new friends are picked off until Monica is left alone to face an enemy she cannot see or touch.

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Reviews:
Rebecca Sutton reviewed the book on Goodreads

"This is a rich and beautifully researched dark fantasy novel which balances its world building and necessary introspection and explanation with moments of vivid and sometimes shocking action."

Quillsandzebras reviewed the book on her blog

"...a thrilling and fascinating read. The world-building is superb and the plot’s strong enough to keep you reading until 2am in the morning (yep, guilty as charged…)."

And you knew it had to happen. Here's a bad review from Red Adept, for balance.

"When I received a copy from Ms. Whitten, I was very excited because I had really enjoyed one of her previous novels, The Lesser of Two Evils.  I’ve purchased, but not yet read, the sequel, Trail of Madness. I read this one before that sequel because I was so intrigued by the description. I think it’s obvious that I was disappointed."

Chapter One

Truck tires screeched behind Monica, and she tensed her shoulders as she stopped walking.

Years of listening to car accidents had trained her well. The sound of tires slipping over pavement had barely begun, but already she could tell what kind of vehicle was sliding, and even which direction the vehicle was moving. The steady squeal of the truck tires indicated a straight slide, as though the driver had been forced to make a sudden stop.

In her mind, Monica saw a small truck with the tail bed raised off the leaf spring suspension and the cab angled until the front bumper skimmed the road.

Flicking her head around, Monica cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. She didn’t expect to be hit, but she was still waiting for the explosive sound of metal folding metal, or of glass and plastic shattering on impact.

The squeal died, not followed by the sounds of a crash. One block away, a black Nissan truck drove around a mint green Pinto hatchback stalled in the middle of the road. The driver of the Nissan leaned out of his window to flip off the Pinto driver, almost hitting another car in the process before he turned his head and stepped off the accelerator in time.

Monica watched the truck until it was a speck before she let go of her breath. But she couldn’t relax until she got to work. The truck driver had avoided the crash, and so the accident was still coming.

Monica knew it because she could hear a voice in her head. It prepared her for every crash, and when the voice told her, Get ready, all she could do was wait for the inevitable.

But this time there had been no warning to look around. There was no feeling of cold on her shoulder, which she always felt before a crash.

Even if she did not feel it, she had to resist the urge to touch her right shoulder, just to be sure. Returning her gaze to the sidewalk in front of her, she started walking again.
She tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, as her former Tai Chi instructor had suggested. She wasn’t sure if it helped to clean up her chi, but it did slow down her pulse.

Her pace was quick, though she had plenty of time to spare for her walk to the Denny’s where she worked. Her apartment was eight blocks from the diner, and she always reported to work with ten or fifteen minutes to spare.
It was not an attempt to be punctual. She just preferred to be inside buildings and away from cars.

As she crossed the parking lot of the diner, Monica spotted another of the night shift waitresses, Camilla Rodriguez.

Camilla hung out at the front entrance to smoke a cigarette before the shift began. Like Monica, she was already dressed in her drab brown uniform, a one-piece dress that would have been ugly and unflattering no matter who wore it.

But while Monica could earn tips just by smiling and looking pretty, Camilla had to resort to charm. She had charm in abundance, but the days of her youth and beauty were three decades behind her.

Pudgy and short, Camilla wore her black hair in a perm that made her head look like a globe. Her upturned nose had looked cute in her youth, when she was slim. But with pounds and wrinkles added by the savageries of time, her nose became porcine. The quality was augmented by her small brown eyes, and the padded roundness of her face made them seem to be set too close together.

Camilla spotted Monica and smirked, offering a wave that left behind a trail of smoke. “See any accidents on your walk today?”

“No, just a near miss this time.” Monica gestured at the highway. “The accident will probably be on the highway tonight, or maybe the access road.”

Camilla grimaced with disdain, chuffing from her cigarette before she huffed a plume of smoke. “You got to get yourself a new hobby, chica.”

“Why? I don’t spend any money on mine.” Monica pulled open the left half of the swinging glass double doors and gestured inside. “How’s Eddie?”

“Tolerable.”

Relieved by the positive sign, Monica sighed as she walked in.

She passed through a second set of swinging doors into the diner. Her first destination was the cash register to clock in. From there, she wandered behind the counter and through the wooden double doors into the kitchen. Jake Whitley, the night shift cook, nodded a greeting to her. She offered a friendly wave before she hung her purse on the rack of coat hooks mounted on the wall.

“What’s the good news?” Jake asked.

Shrugging out of her faded denim jacket, Monica said, “No accidents today.” She hung her jacket beside her bag, and then she fished a hairband from her skirt pocket.
She bound her long, dark blonde hair into a ponytail, but her hair was so straight and thin that many of the strands were already slipping free as she dropped her hands. Within a few minutes, she would have a pair of “antennae” that served no useful purpose other than to amuse her customers.

“So far,” Julio Alvarez, the day shift cook, commented before he set a plate on the pickup counter.

Clanging the bell at the end of the counter, he stepped away from the grill and let Jake take over handling the orders. “You can’t go two days without witnessing an accident. It’s like a fetish with you.”

Monica took down an apron from the rack to tie around her waist. “Actually, my record is one week.”

“I know, but it’s still freaky. You’re a magnet for car accidents.” Moving to stand on the other side of the coat racks, Julio leaned against the tile wall and folded his lean arms over his grease-stained brown work shirt. “I used to think the idea was stupid. But now I worry every time I leave work. I keep thinking your bad luck will rub off on me.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Monica said. “To make sure you get into an accident, you’d have to give me a ride somewhere. Which is why I don’t ask for a ride home.”

Julio snorted and shook his head. “You wouldn’t get it if you did.”

Monica ignored the verbal jab and dug in her jacket pocket for her lip gloss. She touched up the gloss already on her thin lips and dropped the tube into her apron.
Heading back to the front of the diner, she grabbed a pad of tickets and stuffed them along with a pen into the right pocket of her apron.

Then, closing her grey eyes, she took a deep breath. When she opened them she put on her best fake smile and got to work.

The evening became a blur as the routine of work set in. Eddie Monroe, the night shift manager, mostly brooded by himself. Eddie could be grouchy even on his good days, and he often spread his misery among his staff.

But tonight he was indeed tolerable. He chose to remain hunched over silently in front of the register, giving stink eye to the noisiest customers.

Brooding suited his hulking frame, and he looked natural hunched over the counter with his head bowed. His heavy brow ridge made him look like he was angry all the time, so even when he smiled, he was still scowling.

Eddie made his oval face appear more severe with a tight buzz haircut, so it was hard to tell whether his hair was a shade of white blond, or if it was just grey. Which was the real reason why he cut it so short.

He wore a beige dress shirt and a pair of brown slacks that were every bit as ugly as the dresses worn by the waitresses.

However, there was a final part of his uniform that was missing, a hideous brown clip-on tie with the diner logo on the tie tack. The tie was under the counter, in case “corporate” came by for an inspection.

It was not as though the job did not have difficulties without his help. During the night shifts, Monica was used to dealing with the drunks who came in after the bars closed. She was used to gangs of bored teens who came to drink coffee and use up several tables without buying food or leaving a tip.

The drunks could at least be good tippers. Many had professed love for Monica, but their affection was based more on the coffee she supplied than her good looks.

The teens almost always had snotty attitudes, and the drunks would be preferable if not for their crude comments.

Some nights, faking a smile for either group was damned hard.

And compared to both groups, screaming babies or crying children were infinitely harder to put up with. She dreaded having to take an order with a table where a child was screaming, because there was nothing she could do but stand in place and act like she wasn’t developing a migraine.

She would have preferred the drunks or the teens. But two hours into her shift, a girl who seemingly had lungs down to her knees began bawling after her older brother punched her teddy bear in the face.

Monica saw the boy do it, and she was tempted to smack the kid, even if it would result in her dismissal.

Instead, she gave a tight-lipped smile to the father, who returned it with an embarrassed look. His wife leaned over the table and slapped the boy’s cheek, which of course caused him to start wailing too.

Monica felt conflicted, because she’d wished someone would smack the kid, and once it happened, she wished something would shut him up.

She had no sooner thought it when the screech began.

Monica’s shoulder froze, and the voice said, Get ready.

The sound was too close to be coming from the highway, and the chattering chirps of truck tires told her that the driver was swerving instead of braking. The truck wasn’t sliding so much as hopping over the paved surface.

The children’s screams ceased, but every conversation in the diner was muted as heads snapped around to face the front windows.

Monica spun her head to look at the access road, where a white Dodge truck was still swerving in an effort to avoid an ancient brown Buick. The tail end swung sideways on the edge of the back tire while forward momentum carried the truck in the direction of the car that had pulled out of the diner parking lot.

The tail bed clipped the side of the car before the truck’s tires got a firm grip on the road. The pickup lurched into the parking lot, the driver’s side of the cab shuddering when the tires thumped over the curb.

Only then did the driver try to slam on his brakes.

The sound of screeching tires mingled with screams inside the diner before the truck slammed into a black BMW. The car surged toward the diner windows.

Everyone else within the path of the car flinched, except for Monica.

She couldn’t flinch or step back. Once she was certain that the accident was coming, she could hear the voice in her head chanting Don’t look away.

The BMW came to rest just inches away from the window. The airbags inside deployed, and she watched them deflating while she waited for something else to happen.

Nothing did, and she looked at the truck next. The driver was slumped over the wheel, bloodied and unmoving.

In the diner, people began to talk, to ask each other questions.

Monica couldn’t tear her gaze away from the unconscious driver. Something else was supposed to happen. She was sure of it.

The voice insisted over and over, Look closer. What do you see? Despite the mantra’s power, she had no idea what she was looking for.

The huff of a too hot breath rushed over Monica’s frozen shoulder, alerting her that someone was standing behind her. She turned her head and gasped when she found Eddie just inches away.

He didn’t notice because he was still scowling at the BMW. He looked so mad that she would have thought the wrecked car belonged to him.

His dark brown eyes moved from the car to the truck. “I’m having a good night, Monica. Why are you screwing it up for me?”

Monica strained to smile once she caught the note of sarcasm in his voice. “Sorry, boss.”

“I’ll go check on the driver.” Eddie waved toward the phone beside the register. “You know the drill.”

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