This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine (Plague Years)

In this third installment of the Plague Years series, the Strickland family and their developing clan has settled in the rolling Palouse Hills in Moscow ID. Most of America is in chaos; either under the control of petty crooks and jumped up war lords or badlands populated by those unlucky enough to have caught the Plague. Major David Tippet and his friend Captain Chad Strickland have been tasked to gather intelligence and to begin to reassemble the isolated pockets of uninfected people in eastern Washington. They have been assisted by the local National Guard unit, ROTC detachments at the Universities in the area and by regular people who are stepping up to do their part. Meanwhile in the aftermath of the attack on Fairchild AFB near Spokane General Antonopoulos and a ragtag assortment of firemen, aircrew, and others are trying to escape former Special Agent Macklin as he leads his band of mercenaries and Infected in an attempt to capture the general and further disrupt the already unraveling fabric of civilization at the behest of his powerful sponsor, Nergüi. The fate of civilization in the Northwest and indeed the world may rest on whether these disparate forces can reorganize and again march towards a peaceful and prosperous future.

Mark is currently faculty at the University of Idaho in Management Information Systems. He has published papers and conference proceedings in Geographical Information Systems, Grizzly Bear Habitat, and is currently working in Computer Security and Hacker/Attacker Motivation. Academically, Mark has a BS in Computer science from Montana State University in 1978, MBA from University of North Dakota in 1985, MS in Computer Science from Washington State University in 2000, and a PhD from the University of Idaho in 2014. Mark has promised his wife that he will enter into a 12 step program to kick his education habit. Previous to his employment with the University, Mark was Director of Engineering for TriGeo Network Security, which developed products to parse security tool logs and provide alerts. Prior to that, Mark was a Sales Manager for Advanced Hardware Architectures and an Air Force Officer flying in B-52's.