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Cover Blurb

A Native American adolescent carelessly tells two friends a tribal secret various tribes have hidden from the world for nearly a thousand years. A secret of violent death by spontaneous human combustion.

A sociopath learns of the secret and proves its potency. He threatens an airline with it, and plans to sell it to terrorist countries. Can the FBI, and the three old friends, re-bottle and keep the secret safe?

Excerpt

Kim pushed backward into the captain, driving him sharply into the passageway bulkhead. He caught the attendant, keeping her from being trampled by the human exodus. Of the four people who had knocked them backward, one, an attendant, continued down the aisle still screaming. A hundred passengers’ mouths dropped open in unison. “Get on the intercom. Get those passengers under control,” the pilot yelled. The plane’s captain repeated the order while staring Kim down, finally breaking her shock. Once he saw she began to understand, he smiled at her slightly and gave her a nod of his head, conveying his confidence in her capability.

She looked into his face, daring to delay his order. “Ed, you have to get this plane turned around.” Uncontrolled crying continued to spill from the lounge.

“Get those people under control. I’ll take care of this,” he repeated. This time she obeyed.

* * * *

No training could possibly have prepared Captain Ed Turner for the scene that greeted him in the lounge. Three flight attendants were backed against the lounge walls, their mouths open in various states of hyperventilation, their eyes fixed on a child in a red dress who lay across two seats. The child’s head was rolled back, and from her throat came an almost undetectable blue flame, like an alcohol flame three inches high, accompanied by a foggy smoke. Her mother kneeled beside her, screaming and beating her hands against her own head, insane from the hellish scene emitting from her only daughter.

There were other children in the lounge too, accompanied by what appeared to be their parents. The children displayed various stages of agony, but their parents were mostly mesmerized by the extraordinary scene of the girl in the red dress. There were passengers who seemed to be volunteering, maybe doctors or nurses or emergency personnel, who were attempting to treat the children. They, too, were dumbfounded, either kneeling or slowly backing away from the nightmare. The captain responded similarly, his mouth dropping open.

Fire always loomed as the aviator’s greatest enemy. Ed Turner’s fear of fire was perhaps greater than most, generated when his military fighter jet was hit and caught fire over Vietnam. Yes, Captain Ed Turner knew about fire on an airplane. Even though a jet liner like this one burned a kerosene-type of fuel with a relatively high flash point, fire was still a hazard, a dangerous threat to any airplane in flight.

Without removing his eyes from the fire-emitting child, the captain turned his head toward Jeff, the airline steward, who stood beside Carmen. Both were oblivious to their captain’s presence or any other stimulus but the dead girl.

“Get a fire extinguisher!” ordered the captain. No one moved. The captain turned toward the two, saw their fixation on the grisly scene and strode to the steward, slapping him across the face. “Get a fire extinguisher! Now!” Jeff looked at him strangely, vaguely, hysterically. The captain shook the attendant’s shoulders. Finally, Jeff’s eyes seemed to focus on the captain’s face.

“A fire extinguisher.” This time the captain said it in a more controlled way. Jeff’s eyes began returning to the dead girl, now spewing a larger flame from her mouth and emitting a growing cloud of black smoke. The captain slapped him across the cheek again. This time he commanded the order, “Steward! Get a fire extinguisher and get it now!”

Jeff left the lounge on jellied legs, still craning to glimpse the hypnotizing drama. The captain eyed him back to his task.

“Gimme that blanket!” Boy Scout training years ago taught the captain that smothering a fire was best handled by clothing the flame. “The blanket! Someone get me that blanket.” It made a makeshift pallet under one of the screaming children. Can no one hear me? Finally, he crossed the room and grabbed it himself, spilling a sick ten-year-old boy onto the floor.

Suddenly, a woman was at his side. “I’m a nurse. I’ll help you.”

The captain eyed her a second, appreciating that finally someone was responding. He smiled. “Let’s try to smother the flames.” She nodded.

He folded the blanket to four thicknesses and held it over the dead child’s face, effectively shutting off the evidence of burning. Immediately, the grieving mother attacked the bent-over captain, flailing him with her fists and arms. Her cries escalated to the level of an attacking warrior. She knocked him to the floor. “Stop her! Somebody stop her!” The pilot’s yells began reviving one of the two remaining attendants back into reality to help Dr. Craven pull the hysterical woman off the captain’s back. The remaining attendant had collapsed to her knees, her eyes fixed rigidly open. Her body shook involuntarily. Her ability to help was totally spent. Dr. Kristin sat in the corner of the room, also shaking and sobbing, as if the events were her responsibility, because she had examined the child.

Author Biography:

Max Lewis grew up in Seminole County, Oklahoma, where this story takes place. He roamed the area on horseback and on foot with Native American friends … hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping. Together, they saw many of the places, people, and things described in this mystery where different cultures meet and interact.

Oklahoma Literary Review date April 1, 2008
review by S. Riederer One doesn’t expect a new author’s first novel to present words of polished pearl, each weighed exactly, selected carefully, fitted precisely and strung professionally into a masterpiece display in a Rodeo Drive jeweler’s showcase. And Maxwell Lewis’ Consuming Entities doesn’t.
Instead, it forces the reader into uncomfortable consideration of a gruesome phenomenon he probably has already heard about but has chosen to avoid because of its macabre nature… Spontaneous Human Combustion.
Once hooked, you’ll find yourself being played and dangled within Lewis’ 400-plus word work until you finish it. Then, you may choose to bite the hook and read it again.
Let’s see, now…
Creativity, A+.
Subject knowledge, A+.
Character believability, A.
Suspense, A. Dogged, no-nonsense, hard-charging storytelling, A.
Pearly words? In a fast-paced, full-tilt, smash-mouth action tale like this one, why would you want them?