num_pages: 549
description: It all started with a cough. No one knows who coughed, or where, but it changed everything. That cough did what Vladimir Putin and Bin Laden couldn’t do. It nearly exterminated the human population and toppled the invincible United States Government. It ruined me. Before the sickness, I was a meek, subservient woman. I was quiet and useful to my family, but I ate more than anyone else and I got the most thrashings. I was the unfortunate Dare girl. The fat one. That was before. The long journey, killing people and burning bodies, it all changed me. If only my family could see me now. They can't see me. They're dead. Dead and burned in the south field. Father used too much gasoline and the fire spread out of control. It burned acres of thirsty grapevines and almost took the barn. He cried over the grapes but not the two wives and fourteen children we cremated. Thinking about the dead makes me sad. Thinking about the food that I took for granted makes me sadder. Our ways kept us alive. Behind our walls, men can have six wives and father twenty children. The walls are high enough to keep strangers out and keep our secrets in. They were not high enough to keep out the sickness or wide enough to keep out death when it came to collect. The outsiders called us crazy. Uneducated. A cult. They all died. We didn’t just survive, we thrived. It was during this dark and tragic time that the most unusual thing happened. I found love in the most unexpected place. Me, the unfortunate one.
language: English
title: The Doomsday Papers
publisher: The House of JanJan