The virus came from deep in Africa. By the time they had a name for the disease, it had wiped out half the continent. Within a year, it had decimated our world. Now, ten years later, our species is on the verge of extinction. Only a few of us have survived, those lucky enough to be born with a natural immunity to the plague. We scavenge amongst the ruins of our old civilizations, picking out a living from the devastation. After a decade of living a solitary existence, I have found a family, one that I would do anything to protect. Then tragedy strikes in the blink of an eye, and leaves my family in mourning. There was nothing any of us could do. We were helpless. My inability to protect them from pain and loss feels like a terrible failure. Despair becomes a constant companion, but I can't live like that forever. I must find a way to move through the grief, and carry on. I choose to fight for what's important. I can't just stand by waiting for death to claim the people that I care about, one by one. What can one person do to save a world this far gone? I can try to bring hope to the people that are left behind. It will be a difficult battle, but I must fight for the people I love. I have to try. We have to try. We have to find some way to move forward, or humanity will be lost forever. Someone must step forward and lead the way. My name is Sandy McDermott, and I say that merely surviving is no longer enough. *** Author's Note: Although this book does feature the undead, it is not intended to be horror. The Survivors is a little bit apocalyptic, a bit dystopian, a bit science-fiction, a bit zombie horror, but above all else it is a love story. To quote the very first blogger that got her hands on it: "(The Survivors is) a layered, touching, powerful story of humanity and survival." The story takes place in the Waikato region of New Zealand, ten years on after a killer plague erased the majority of our species from the face of the earth. 99.5% of humanity is either dead, or has been reduced to the (mostly) harmless, lumbering undead. The few people lucky enough to be immune to the disease have spent the last ten years struggling to live amongst the ruins of a dead society. For some people, the time hasn't been so bad. For other people - like our heroine and narrator, Sandrine McDermott - the last ten years have been a living hell. Without rules to keep people civilized, there's nothing to keep a lone female safe except her own wits. Sometimes, that's just not enough. Life has not been kind to her. In fact, it's safe to say that fate's been kind of a bastard. However, it's also a whimsical bastard. When Sandy injures herself and is forced to go looking for the medication she needs to survive, she finds herself on the receiving end of kindness in the last place she expects. She's forced her to reassess her place in the world, and her own humanity. The Survivors is a four-part tale that follows Sandy's evolution from the psychologically-damaged wreck that she at the beginning of the story, to the true heroine that we need to preserve our species from extinction. Somehow, some way, she must go from being one of the hopeless wanderers, to being our hope for a new tomorrow.