Staying Alive

‘My name is Zara. It’s coming up to my sixteenth birthday and I don’t think any boy will ever kiss me again. I kissed a boy once. What I mean is, I kissed just one boy, but more than once. Much more than once. His name was Troy and he’s dead now. I killed him.
I wasn’t there when he died, but I could have saved his life and chose not to. If I’d known he was going to die, would I have made a different decision? The answer is: I don’t think so.
Lots of people have died by now, not just Troy. I don’t know for certain whether Troy died or not, but it’s hard to see how he would have survived. What’s happened has affected everyone, maybe everyone in the world, and so many people have died. I don’t know how many. I don’t suppose anyone knows for sure.’
It’s just a bad outbreak of ‘flu. That’s what everyone thought. Until people started dying. Millions of them. Zara is 15 and being uprooted from her home to hide out in the wilderness isn’t her idea of fun. After two years in the woods she finds life for survivors of the pandemic is very scary. The world is a dangerous place and Zara will need to grow up fast if she and her family are going to survive.