He recoiled. “I do love you and when I make it, I’ll come back for you. You’ll see. I won’t forget you, kitten.”
Hysterical laughter threatened even as she swallowed salty tears. “If you leave now, the end of the world would have to come before I’d ever consider forgiving you.” She turned her back on him, making her final stand.
But her ultimatum didn’t stop him. The rumble of his motorcycle starting and the sound of it receding as he made good on his words masked her harsh sobs.
I’ll never forgive you for this, Brody. Even if you were the last man on earth, I’d never take you back.
Turned out she had a gift for prophecy.
Chapter One
Six months after Brody left, the world ended with a sneeze.
Well, at least, that was Hannah’s theory. Kind of like that butterfly effect people talked about, except this one killed off most of the human population.
She’d been sitting down to dinner with her sister and uncle in the living room-their habit, since the death of her parents in a car crash-when the news came on. The announcer, in a grave tone, spoke of a new epidemic that had broken out. Hannah barely listened to the report. After the previous year's overrated swine flu scare, she put little stock in what the media sensationalized for ratings. The WHO-the World Health Organization, always one to hog attention-immediately clamored to any news source that would listen. They claimed the world was about to experience a deadly pandemic. But, kind of like the boy who cried wolf, people scoffed, no longer believing the officials after seeing their previous panic about a flu that did not come close to living up to its expectations.
When the nightly news started posting the number of deaths caused by this super flu, Hannah and her family began following the daily reports with morbid fascination. Those who had initially mocked the WHO fell silent, in many cases permanently. In her little town that had not yet been touched by the fatal influenza, it was all they could talk about at the diner where she worked full time since dropping out of college to support her sister and uncle.