Bloody Barrens

As a scout, sixteen-year-old Marlowe Cooper thrives on the adrenaline rush of navigating the Bloody Barrens. It’s an unforgiving territory, riddled with Reapers, zombies, disease, and dust storms. But she has no desire to live a Fort life - closed behind solid walls, going soft without the fight for survival to keep her sharp. When the Mayor of her home base, Fort Davis, falls sick, Marlowe and her brothers are tasked with fetching the life-saving penicillin needed from another Fort, over a thousand miles away. To make matters worse, the Mayor’s son, Oliver, insists on tagging along. He has never set foot outside the Fort in his entire life, let alone cut a grisly escape route through a horde of zombies. His presence alone will ramp up the risk of the trip by a hundred percent thanks to his lack of experience. But Oliver is hellbent on personally seeing that his sick mother gets the medicine she needs and he won’t take no for an answer. As Marlowe and Oliver make their way across the Barrens, can they survive together? Or will they get each other killed before they can make it back home? This is a YA series suitable for ages 14+ with occasional uses of language, themes of violence, romance, and contains no sex. The end results in a cliffhanger that leads into the next book.