This is the grim near-future imagined by an active-duty Navy intelligence expert in his new post-apocalyptic page-turner "Tomorrow War."
Slated to hit bookstores June 30, Out today, it's billed by publisher Simon & Schuster as an "ultrarealistic" account of an "alternate dystopian America located just down the tracks of oblivion."
This is, of course, a novel and, by definition, fiction. But like a modern-day prophet weaving deeper truth into the darkest of parables, the author says he also hopes his book serves as a wake-up call about an all-too-possible future.
"At its core, 'Tomorrow War' is a warning, based on the current snapshot of America today. This is about how things might look if we don't turn things around and start getting serious about freedom and liberty," author J.L. Bourne tells OFFduty.
Bourne acknowledges a large wave of current survivalist fiction, but says he always wanted to explore how things might look "if we really saw a grid-down situation, how far tyranny might go. I didn't want to preach, but I did want the reader to see what it looks like from the other side of the looking glass."
"Day By Day Armageddon"
Photo Credit: J. L. Bourne
Fans of zombie fiction know Bourne for his best-selling "Day by Day Armageddon" series. What they may not know is that Bourne isn't his real name.
"I'm a big believer in at least a second or third layer of security," the writer says. "I choose to add an extra layer of security in case things go high and right in the military and they start prosecuting people who write books."
Leading a double life can be weird, he says.
"I've actually seen copies of my books in the spaces of people who work for me. I can't help myself — I have to ask. I get mixed reactions. Some people love it, others hate it, a lot in between. It's a trip seeing people who work for you — or even you work for — reading your stuff and they don't even know it's you."
But he says he has good reason to be distrustful.
With more than 20 years of service, Bourne is a mustang officer who joined the Navy first as an enlisted sailor, eventually working his way up to E-6. He finished his degree taking off-duty classes before earning his commission through Officer Candidate School.
Now a midlevel officer stationed "somewhere in Florida," Bourne describes his more recent military background in carefully measured words.
"Throughout my career as an officer, I have either been an intelligence collector or working as an all-course intelligence analyst at one of the agencies in the D.C. area," he says.
And it's what's going on at some of those intelligence agencies that he's worried about.
"There are brute-force attacks on our freedoms by the National Security Agency. Edward Snowden blew the lid off this thing, that the NSA is reading our mail without warrant or probable cause. The bulk collection of our metadata, phone calls and email, is all happening right under our noses. While some people seem to care, by and large it seems most people are just asleep."
He says he's not sure if he'd go so far as to describe Snowden as a hero, "but I'm definitely not going to call him a villainous traitor, either."
"From what I've seen — and I haven't been read into all the different compartments involving Snowden and I haven't seen the counterintelligence reports on him in person, so I don't know all the stuff behind the black door — but based on what I have seen, his disclosures have caused changes at the National Security Agency. It at least started the beast moving."
Early success
Bourne launched his writing career more than 12 years ago with a kind of online performance-art mashup. He began publishing his handwritten draft of "Day by Day Armageddon" on his website, complete with scribbled notes in the stained margins, as if it was his actual journal in some alternate zombie-infested universe.
The book follows a Navy EP-3 spy plane pilot forced to go rogue as an undead plague engulfs the planet.
Early in the story, his aircraft is sent to eavesdrop on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta as scientists struggle to contain the outbreak.
"It's nothing serious, we are just ordered to be a check and balance for the 'G-men' in Washington, to make sure the CDC isn't hiding anything," Bourne writes. "Reminds me of the time I listened to my ex-girlfriend's phone conversation when I was flying training missions around the San Antonio area. I love the signals intelligence (SIGINT) equipment as it saved me a lot of money and time with that woman."
As the virus spreads unchecked, unleashing the undead hordes, Bourne's character sets off on his own in a one-man battle for survival.
Bourne's online project soon turned into a self-published book, and as his cult following grew into more mainstream success, he was eventually added to Simon & Schuster's stable of writers.
His Spartan, in-the-thick-of-it writing style, paired with his hands-on knowledge ranging from personal weapons to advanced military operations and intelligence gathering, sparks a certain appeal.
Indeed, since its humble beginnings, "Day by Day" is now a three-book series, along with a compilation tome and one e-reader short story spinoff. The original book has been published in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Turkey, Russia, Spain, Italy, Poland and South Korea.
'Tomorrow War'
The new book follows Bourne's familiar formula, with a first-person, journal-like format chronicling a covert operator's descent into the unimaginable.
But this time, instead of fighting off a zombie pandemic, the lead character takes on his own government.
Mirroring Bourne's own hidden identity, that character is known only as "Max," his last name blacked out on the page, redacted as if it were some classified document protecting sources.
The character becomes part of a U.S. government plot in Syria that quickly spills out of control in a web of unintended consequences that sets America under martial law.
"Reeling from guilt about what he's done, Max sets out conducting his own guerrilla-style warfare inside the United States to counter the emerging threat of lawless gangs as well as some federalized gangs," Bourne says.
Bourne makes no secret of his libertarian leanings and constitutional concerns.
In an "Author's Note" opening the pre-release proof of the book, Bourne rails against the rising national debt and worries over debate for stricter gun control and government overreach — even while the real world, he argues, sits on the brink of collapse.
"First world nations' leaders only perform in a political theater of public deception; someone is at the helm and everything will be fine, just be a good citizen or subject and go back to your favorite sitcom, football team, or reality TV program," he writes.
"Where might this dangerous road lead? Has it ever been about your safety and security? The thought crime ahead goes beyond the paradigm of right, left, Democrat, or Republican, the outdated behavioral placement control mechanisms, forcing us to choose between two heads of the same serpent," he writes.
"Slay the beast, turn the page, and choose liberty."
Bourne stands by the ultrarealistic possibility of the national power and communications grid going dark.
A high-altitude nuclear burst over a major population center or even a solar flare are plausible scenarios, he says. "They would bring down the grid, but in 'Tomorrow War,' I build it around a huge denial-of-service attack."
In his nightmare, it comes back to the zombies. Though this time, it's what he calls "zombie phones" — countless infected smartphones all hijacked to attack the grid at once.
"I intentionally did not get into too much detail on the kill chain of the grid. I left it to the reader to imagine how that happens. But the premise of it is a cyber attack on our data and cellular phone systems. You can do a lot of damage if you have the right virus, worm or algorithm programmed into it.
"The grid is so fragile. A cyber attack is not only plausible, it's probable. In fact, it's probably already happened, but we were just lucky enough to thwart it."
Bourne tells OFFduty he hopes, if nothing else, his book encourages people to consider what they would do in a world unhinged.
"I hope people see an Option C. That can be different for everyone, but my Option C is to educate my family and those around me to be well-prepared for disaster, to be well-armed and well-provisioned, and spread the message of freedom and liberty and free markets," he says.
He says he does not criticize the current administration specifically.
"I don't attribute any of the problems to the current commander in chief. I attribute it to the mission creep of the government as a whole. You have all these predatory agencies thrown together, and they all have their separate missions. In each case, their mission seems to erode away at the Constitution."
In one recent Facebook post, he blasted the Navy for naming its most recent littoral combat ship the Gabrielle Giffords in honor of the former U.S congresswoman who survived a crippling assassination attempt that left six dead and 13 injured and now heads an organization working to limit gun violence.
"Embarrassing," he posts. "The navy will name a ship based purely on politics. Really navy? You couldn't have named that ship the USS Chris Kyle?"
On his new book's acknowledgements page, Bourne offers at least some hope for the future.
"For my daughter, I pray that by the time you are old enough to read this you'll find nothing familiar within these pages, and that we'll share a laugh about your eccentric old dad, who worried too much during these times of turmoil and uncertainty."
