Tension abounds in the first half of this book. I’ve picked up several end-of-the-world books in recent years, and have not been impressed, so I took a break. However, this one exudes the tension I’d expect from somebody suddenly thrust into a world where she appears to be alone.

The book reminds me of No Time To Scream, but here Scarlett has not been trained in any martial arts or survival, and never finds a mentor. Regardless, when confronted by adverse situations, she steps up and starts thinking critically. I hope that anybody in that situation would do the same, even at fifteen years old. She makes a lot of mistakes, and her priorities are not in a survival mode, just getting from danger to relative safety. Peanut butter is great to pack for a weekend, but other things are required for long-term survival.

The book takes place in three parts, not divided up literally. In the first part, Scarlett is on her own. She freaks out, visits her friend’s house until her friend dies, and then takes a car she can’t drive, replacing it with a motorcycle when she can’t navigate the jammed streets.

This was by far my favorite part of the book. Scarlett is scared, but forces herself on. The virus isn’t really analyzed in the early pages, except the effects it has on humanity. A combination of The Last of Us and the aforementioned No Time to Scream, it starts with people’s brains being infected by a fungus, which them pops its antennae through the victim’s eyes. Unlike The Last of Us, it sucks them dry until they are husks, instead of turning them into zombies. That’s not what this story is about. Like in No Time to Scream, the city is now empty, with only a handful of survivors, and lots of mess, and the main character has to find a way to survive in the moment.

Years have passed since that book was written, however, and this author uses social media to great effect, as all her friends think she’s dead for not answering, but by the time she answers, they are all dead. She was witness to what was probably the first infection at a baseball stadium, and she’s a typical teen girl, not wanting to be there, but pretending to appreciate the effort her remarried father is making. It’s a nice contrast to the person she becomes.

She moves farther and farther from her childhood home, as her mother, sister and father all die. She rescues a woman from a crazed man, only to realize the woman is also infected, and dies while she watches over her. Scarlett’s time in the sports store, where she learns archery, is too afraid to learn to shoot, and eventually packs survival supplies, then grabs a motorcycle from a dealer and learns from youtube how to drive it, was great. After her encounter with the crazed man, she takes care not to draw attention to herself while she’s growing up fast, learning to survive in an abandoned world.

Eventually, she makes her way up to Griffiths Observatory, where she sets up camp, raiding the cafeteria and nearby houses for food, looking out over the city, watching the lights die as the power goes out in each neighborhood. Some houses have solar panels, so she’s able to take hot showers even when the generator runs out of fuel.

She’s so careful, but forgets some of the most basic rules, but learns the hard way. Unfortunately, her peaceful life isn’t to last. One night she sees moving lights, and decides to signal what can only be another survivor, only realizing too late that the survivor might not be somebody who wants to share the world.

Chad appears after she comes back from a shower, and after being nice, he forces her to the ground so that Donovan can capture her. It could have been a lot worse. Chad was only doing Donovan’s bidding because he had another hostage. Delores kept Chad alive after he wasn’t careful and got really sick. Chained to the interior of a bus, the women are let out when a pregnant woman hails them and her water breaks with the stress. Scarlett and Delores deliver the baby, but the woman dies in childbirth. It’s a cruel world, and the author doesn’t shy away from the cruelty. It allows him to tell the story of Scarlett without too much complication, keeping the story simple.

Donovan, who wears survival gear as if he’s been preparing for the end of the world all his life (which he probably has), gathers the baby supplies that they took from a pharmacy, and brings them all back to his survival hideout. The author isn’t interested in all the horrible things man can do to man, or women in particular. Donovan wants to trade them for a cure, when one is found.

So while Scarlett gets to know Chad, and they conspire to escape, Donovan leaves them pretty much alone. On the night they decide to get away, during a bathroom break, a helicopter arrives –the people Donovan has been negotiating with. They take Scarlett, Chad, Delores and the baby, and shoot Donovan dead. Not the kind of person you want helping you to recreate the world, they say. Ouch.

The third part of the book is not nearly as exciting. Scarlett and Chad, deciding to trust the army scientists, submit to being put in containment cells and giving blood and tissue samples. In reality, they are worse off than at Donovan’s. They are separated, and can only communicate by writing words on the separating window (through the fog of their breath, I’m guessing). And they are left completely without anything to do. The doctor in charge has no bedside manner, and is likely preoccupied with finding a cure, so might not think of the niceties of giving them a TV or a book. The guards could have let them exercise and interact. But when Scarlett makes a feeble attempt to get her to be nice, the doctor threatens to have her restrained.

She and Chad do remarkably well with confinement, even though Scarlett says she’s losing her mind. Of course, the whole story is told in hindsight, for posterity, so she’s bound to leave out details, no matter how much she tries. She’ll get emotions mixed up, accentuate fears and hopes. So even though she’s bored out of her skull, I think she came out of there well balanced compared with how I’d fare.

In the end, I’m not sure the doctor was working on a cure, or not completely. While she seemed to have successfully inoculated the only marginally friendly guard, Munez, she also infected the four survivors with new strains. An old man who was there before them goes crazy, and is eventually shot by a nervous guard. A stray bullet breaks the glass to Scarlett’s cell, and she manages to get out. The result infects the doctor and other guards, but they are in a place meant to quarantine hazardous diseases, so there are safeguards.

I’m still not sure I like the idea that the virus was manmade, but I guess that’s better than a natural evolution, which could crop up any time.

Delores dies, but Scarlett escapes with Chad and the baby, helped by Munez. Here is where Scarlett makes her first kill, and by now, she’s immune to the death. She shoots a guard in response to him shooting Munez.

Then they leave, making for her family’s old mountain cottage. By the epilog, they haven’t had any kids, and they haven’t contacted any survivors. It will obviously take a long time for them to overcome the shock of what they experienced. Scarlett’s original plan to find a boat and learn to sail has been long put aside in favor of living in peace. I guess the baby and any kids they have will have to learn how to put the world back together.

I liked Scarlett, hated Chad and Donovan, until things changed, and I grew to appreciate Chad and how Donovan was just trying to survive. The army scientists were unredeemable, except for Munez, and I had a hard time with that, but it’s also filtered through Scarlett’s viewpoint. That makes it a successful story from my perspective, as it was able to manipulate me. Aside from yelling at Scarlett to ask for a book or a movie or paper and pencil because her boredom didn’t drive her crazy, I thought the author’s writing style was tight and kept things moving along smoothly. I whipped through the pages because the tension was so high, another sign of success.