The End of the World Was Justthe Beginning of Sam’s Troubles Sam Baahuhd has been the headman of the village for twenty-two years. He has the Voice and he has the Power. With them, he can control others with his speech and heal with a touch. Even with his powers, Sam has survived as the headman only because he’s tough and canny enough to keep his fellow villagers from murdering him. Together, they live on Veronica Edgarton’s estate in the Hamptons. Or they do until the nuclear Armageddon destroys the world. The massive underground bomb shelter on the estate is intended for the planet’s intellectual elite. When Sam and his nearly 100 villagers find themselves moving into the high tech shelter, it’s a cosmic joke. Despite living at the end of the 3rd millennium AD, the villagers are serf-like and their society is medieval. They can’t read, spend a lot of their time drunk or stoned, and are so inbred it’s a miracle they can put two coherent words together. Now they are the heirs to the planet. Or at least their descendants will be in a couple thousand years when the radiation clears. If they don’t kill each other first. Dragging a battered but beautiful female federal agent with him as the shelter’s massive steel doors close is not the best move Sam has ever made. Arthur Romero, a commando planted by the military, thinks she is seriously bad news. Arthur is the only non-villager and the only man who can run the shelter’s computers and life-support machinery. He wants her dead. What’s worse, Sam loses his powers the minute he enters the shelter. It’s just a matter of time before the village thugs figure it out. If they gang up on him, he doesn’t have a prayer. Sam has faced challenges before. He isn’t afraid of them. But he has never faced a challenge like the one that comes crashing in when he realizes he is in love with the wounded warrior woman he has named . . . Emily.