Hugh Howey

He didn’t want to puzzle it out, he just wanted to be told.

She fought to remain calm, not to succumb to the nausea of kids having kids.

He pictured Bernard’s hand swinging down and to the right, slamming the plug home into number seventeen, then turning and confronting Lukas about his favourite pastime, his secret crush …

Juliette had promised herself never to love in secret again, never to love at all. And somehow this time was worse: she had kept it a secret even from him. Even from herself.

But Lukas would wait. Lukas was locked up and safe. She had all the time in the world to call him.

Lukas now knew why people were put out. He was the virus. If he sneezed the wrong words, it would kill everyone he knew.

Or they could lie in the crook of that hill and waste away as a couple, a couple whose kinship had been formed by desperate talks lingering into the night, an intense bond between two stranded souls that was never spoken or admitted to.

He was still a teenager like that, Juliette saw. Still ashamed to cry

climbed to his death;