Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [0]
INVASION
WILLIAM W.
JOHNSTONE
with J. A. Johnstone
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PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 William W. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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eISBN-13: 978-0-7860-2585-5
eISBN-10: 0-7860-2585-5
First printing: December 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Home, Texas, is a town that lives up to its name a small, peaceful, off-the-beaten-track West Texas community that seems like a throwback to a kinder, gentler America. Yeah, they have satellite Internet service, but they also have a Dairy Queen where you can go in for breakfast and know everybody there. The school mascot, an antelope, is painted on the water tower at the edge of town, along with the proud declaration 1A STATE CHAMPS 1977. A long time ago, but nobody has forgotten. The words are repainted every year.
Home is a town where on a quiet Sunday morning the main thing you hear are hymns being sung in the local churches. The interstate highway is thirty miles away, so you can’t hear the rumble of the eighteen-wheelers. But the mountains, thirty miles the other way, seem to be right in the town’s backyard because the air is so clear. Home may not be very big—POP. 1280, reads the sign at the edge of town—but the people who live there like it. Many of them have lived there their entire lives.
They don’t realize that Home is about to become Hell.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
BOOK FIVE
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
Epilogue
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER 1
Peter McNamara was sound asleep when his wife, Inez, took hold of his shoulder and shook it. Of course, he was asleep. It was ten-forty-five at night, wasn’t it? Pete hadn’t been awake past ten-thirty since Johnny Carson retired.
“Pete. Pete!”
He rolled over,