The Novels of "V"
 
"The Texas Run"
 

Publishing Information
Author:  Geo. W. Proctor
Publisher:  Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1430 Broadway, New York, NY, 10018
ISBN:  0-523-42470-1
Canadian ISBN:  0-523-43444-8
Copyright:  1985, Warner Bros., Inc.
 

Comments
The original characters are stereotypical, especially the heroine, Sheryl Lee.  A bland "leading man" makes things even worse.  Mike Donovan makes a brief appearance at the beginning on the novel.  I found the plot to be very  predictable.  This one isn't the worst of the lot, but it does leave much to be desired.
 

Major Plot Points

 

Memorable Moments
pp. 48-49  Rick ponders his seeming callous reaction to the death of a Visitor
Rick pivoted and stared at the wrecked alien ship.  "His friend!"
Without another word of explanation, Rick snatched his dropped energy pistol from the sand and darted back into the ship.  A flare of harsh blue-white light accompanied by the crackling hiss of released energy preceded his exit from the craft.
"I made certain his friend wouldn't suddenly come back to life," Rick answered Sheryl Lee's questioning gaze.  "The last thing we need is the co-pilot radioing his position to his fellow snakes."
The coverall-clad redhead nodded.
Her reaction sent a chilling shudder through the Californian.  The nod, the casual acceptance of his act, was like viewing a mirror reflection of himself. He had just placed the barrel of a gun to the head of a sentient creature and pulled the trigger.  The war they fought defined the action as a matter of simple survival.  Yet he could not escape the feeling he had acted as an executioner, not a soldier.
There should be guilt, a sense of loss, he told himself, trying to detect a hint of those emotions within him.  He found them in neither himself nor the Texas beauty who lifted the water bottle and Thermos from the ground.  It was as though he had swatted an annoying insect, rather than killed a sentient being.
 

p.55  Ramifications of the red-dust
"Yep."  Sheryl Lee eased him away from the coiled snake.  "That's a rattler."
"I didn't know they came in the two-headed variety."  Rick watched the poisonous snake's twin heads weave slowly from side to side.  Behind those heads a tail with two rattlers vibrated angrily.
"Don't usually," the redhead answered.  "But ever since the red dust was released, there have been more and more weird creatures like that poppin' up in this part of the country."
"A mutation?"  Rick cast the young woman a sideways glance as they circled the two-headed reptile, giving it wide berth.  "But I thought the bacteria wasn't harmful to terrestrial life forms."
"It wasn't supposed to be."  Sheryl Lee looked over her shoulder at the still-coiled rattlesnake, then proceeded northward at Rick's side.  "Maybe once we released it into the atmosphere, it changed the way the virus did in that movie Andromeda Strain.  But it's not just the rattlers that are affected.  It's the coyotes, jackrabbits, prairie dogs -- all the wildlife.  I've heard reports of cows and horses suddenly gone sterile."
Rick listened, uncertain of what he heard.  IF the red dust humankind had used to combat the Visitors was causing the mutations, then the biological weapon was as dangerous to Earth's denizens as it was to the alien invaders.  And without the red dust, what defence did the world have against the snake's superior technology?
His stomach lurched and churned.  What was the use of fighting and freeing the world if the weapons man created would eventually destroy the planet?  Sheryl Lee had to be wrong about the effects of the red dust.  She had to be.
 

The Back of The Book...

Fight or Die -- For the Freedom of the Earth

Barely escaping death from a Visitor ambush, resistance warrior Rick Hurley is rescued by Sheryl Lee Darcy and a band of Texas freedom fighters carrying vital drugs to the sick and wounded of their native state -- where the red toxin, once fatal to the lizard-like aliens, has lost its affect.  The Visitors have placed a stranglehold on the Dallas-Forth Worth area, rounding up the terrified populace for cold storage aboard the Mother Ship. There the Texas resistance strike-and-hide guerrilla raids, aimed at the Visitors' processing centres, keep the inhuman enemy in confusion and disarray.

But when Sheryl Lee is taken prisoner, it's Rick who plans a daring rescue, with the help of wild-man rancher Charlie Scoggins, striking at the heart of the enemy stronghold across hundreds of miles of lizard-held land, at the deadly, desperate end of... The Texas Run.
 
 

Ordering Information
All of the "V" novels are currently out of print.  However, you can often find used copies at reasonable prices
at the Advanced Book Exchange.
 

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