The Keepers of the Flame

Cory put her hands to her face. She was covered with layers of gauze, and she tore at it, layer after layer shedding in her hands as she hurried onward.

The rocks in the path were bones and grinning skulls. This was what she had been stumbling over, and what her dress had been catching on. Panicked, she looked up.

Five years after a deadly plague killed all the Grown-ups, the world's population has nearly vanished. Civilization is gone, and the children who outlived their parents have mostly perished of hunger or disease. But ten children survived, and have forged a new family, a new life, and together traveled up the coast of Florida, searching for answers.

To their shock, they've found a group of adults, the only Grown-ups they've seen for years, living in an abandoned shopping mall. The Grown-ups seem delighted to see the children, and welcome them to the brave new world they've made for themselves -- a place with comforts the family had forgotten: cupcakes, clean clothes, adults to depend on.

But something is terribly wrong. This friendly community is not what it appears. Can they find out the truth -- before it's too late?

In this second book of the Fire-us Trilogy, Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher return to the post-apocalyptic world they created in The Kindling, as the family searches for the dark truth at the heart of the Fire-us.