You're exhausted after work. Every day is the same, mundane routine in the same grayscale building on the same bored street. You barely speak to anyone at work, would never consider calling them friends, and they seem as confused as you are when they invite you along for drinks at a local bar. What turns out to be an impulse decision to tag along turns your mediocre existence upside down.

You order your usual Jack and Coke, but the bartender convinces you to go with the house special instead. When he puts a drink that looks more orange juice than alcohol in front of you with a dab of grenadine for good measure, you inwardly groan. Just your luck...a lame bar that's the mirror image of your life thus far...gloomy, smells like urine, and is a total let-down. When you finish your first glass, you order a few more for good measure. You haven't even begun to feel a buzz by the time your bladder urgently cries in protest.

That's when your world changes.

You stand up and immediately succumb to the intoxication that's been stalking you. As you whimper on the sticky floor of the bar, unable to even lift your head, the alcohol coursing through your veins defiles you and carries you away. Everyone gathers around you, including that hot little number you'd been eyeing for most of the evening across the bar top.

She helps you into a cab. To your surprise, she gives the driver an address that isn't yours and climbs into the backseat with you. You think that this is it; you're going to get lucky. You're furtively checking your breath against the window of the passenger door and hoping she's got a spare condom tucked away in the nightstand drawer.

The hottie manages to wrestle you up a flight of stairs to her apartment. Your erection is completely visible for everyone to see, and for once, you don't care in the least. You're invested. You're ready for it. Wait until everyone at work hears about this.

Except they don't.

Because your body is found in an alley three days later, your eyes, heart, and liver missing.

That is what the A Quiet Apocalypse Series by Dave Jeffery is like.

When you hear dystopian or post-apocalyptic, you think zombies, human depravation, intense struggles, and raw emotion, the same ol same ol served to us for decades. But you aren't ready for this. Jeffery's perception of the end of the world takes you on a slow-burn beyond the normal tropes, taking you to the edge of the nearest cliff before pushing you off, pulling each of your fingernails off with a pair of needle-nose pliers so that you let go and plummet to the crags below where your body deflates like a busted water balloon.

He doesn't need zombies to scare you.

You won't see this one coming.

It will haunt you.

You will not look at the world the same again.

The series begins with its namesake, A Quiet Apocalypse. It is available on Amazon as an ebook for free at the time of this blog post, as a paperback for $6.80, and on Kindle Unlimited.

In this story, we find out what caused the world to stop, and giving the current condition of our world, it's horrific. A virus that causes those who don't die an excruciatingly slow and painful death to go permanently deaf? It took me months to regain my sense of smell and taste after I had COVID. I'll pass!

Those left behind in the wake of the pandemic scramble to restructure something resembling society, which they term Cathedral, and grasp at straws on who is to blame. It's the general consensus that the pandemic was caused by a dormant mutation within those who are born deaf, and those with this disability are afterwards called Harbingers, hunted down and hung from inoperable light poles so the crows can feast on their flesh.

They aren't the only ones sought after.

Samaritans, the army of guards from Cathedral, scour the area for those who recovered from the virus with their hearing intact. These people are a commodity, highly valued and used like guard dogs.

Chris is one of the intact.

We find him in a lone farmhouse, slave to a man who lost his hearing with the virus. But for Chris, who is worse? The man who breaks his bones to keep him a prisoner? Or the Samaritans who have used dogs and armored vehicles to drag the hearing back within the stone walls of the city, into the unknown? Which fate is worse? Who, if anyone, can he trust?

Chris will find out.

If you think you have this one figured out, you're already wrong.

The second book in the series, Cathedral, takes us into the city, behind the veil, where we are introduced to a new host of characters. It's also available on Amazon as an ebook for $2.99 and on Kindle Unlimited. There is no paperback version at this time.

The stone walls of Cathedral maintain a society that exists based around a testament and a set of rules created by the Prefect. Unlike religious texts we are familiar with, no citizen of Cathedral is capable of seeing the testaments except those in a high profile position. Why the secrecy? What revelations does the text contain? Why are you waiting to find out?

Jeffery weaves the concept of a utopian society with the puss-filled underbelly of a rabid beast. What the citizens of Cathedral find comforting, the methods they use to maintain order, what atrocities they're willing to commit in the name of civilized society, will appall you as the reader, make you cringe, make you look away in disgust. What if the good guys are really the enemy? What if the walls are really there to keep you in, not keep you safe?

What if the only person you thought you could trust was plotting to end your life?

In Cathedral, the question isn't if a murder will happen but when and how often.

While A Quiet Apocalypse and Cathedral are truly art forms, masterpieces of the dystopian genre in their own rights, the final book to date, Samaritan, will chew you up like organ meat and proverbially spit you it.

It is currently available for preorder on Amazon for $2.99 with a launch date of July 7th.

When Jeffery asked me if I'd like an advanced copy to review, I immediately jumped at the opportunity, having already read the first two books in the series. He did not disappoint.

This novel challenges the very construct of human nature and calls into question whether man is truly inherently good or evil and whether that condition is an actual choice or a predestination. In the previous novels, we've been exposed to the side of the Samaritans that hunted the Harbingers and the intact. We've seen them unmerciful, unforgiving, and vengeful. Here, Jeffery gives the Samaritan a humanity that was missing in the other novels, dangling it in front of you with a pretty bow of sexuality acceptance, gender nonconformity, and normal human vices.

But then he rips it out of your hands...taking your skin along with it.

I must say, I have never been as consistently shocked by a series as I was with this one. I truly went into it without reading any of the blurbs. I thought I was walking into a normal zombie fiesta. You guys know I can never turn away the undead. But what I found was a horror that snuck up on me before I realized I was in danger, left me naked and broken in an alley with a few of my body parts missing. It's going to expose the extent that fear and desperation can manipulate a soul while robbing you of your trust, your innocence, and your peace of mind.

Humans truly are the worst monsters of them all.

As always, click on the book images to purchase!