Sunny At the End of the World by Steph Bowe is a thrilling post-apocalyptic story. Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 2018, 17-year-old Sunny and Toby are on the run after zombies have destroyed most of the adults in their world. Cut to 2034 when Sunny is being held in an underground facility. What happened? Was it aliens, a conspiracy, a simulation, biological terrorism, a totalitarian takeover? And who can infiltrate the facility and release the surviving prisoners? The tables will be turned more than once in this thrilling and thought-provoking novel.
With Steph Bowe’s sad passing at the age of 25, in 2020, we lost a truly wonderful author of three smart, funny YA novels. Her mother and sister discovered a manuscript on her computer: the book you have in your hands. Steph was always wise beyond her years, with the power to access other worlds. Somehow, in Sunny at the End of the World, she predicted an ‘outbreak’ much like the one that changed our world, after she was gone …With her trademark humour, endearing characters and brilliant storytelling, Steph Bowe has left us a novel that helps to make sense of the rapidly changing world we live in.
EXTRACT
There’s a feeling you get when bad shit is about to go down. Sometimes you ignore it because it doesn’t concern you, and getting involved will only make it worse. But sometimes your elderly neighbour turns into a zombie, a flesh-eating monster, and you have to do something, or else. And ‘or else’ generally means getting eaten alive.
For the two and a half seconds it took me to unlock the front door (too quickly for Mum to stop me – she was still staring, awestruck, as blood splattered the driveway that Mr Courtenay hosed down daily and would need an extra good hose today, which it definitely wouldn’t get), I debated with myself – cricket bat or lamp.
Not: should I go out and bludgeon my next-door neighbour or shouldn’t I?
Because when you’re confronted with situations like this it’s the little details that you get caught up in.
I chose the lamp.
Outside, in the sunlight, I felt naked. I thought of everyone in their houses, and I wondered who was dead, who had turned, and who was tucked behind their front curtains, shit-scared. I thought of everyone I went to school with, and my teachers, and I wondered what had happened to them, what was happening to them right now. And I thought, hey, maybe they’ll be able to contain this thing. Maybe I’ll be back at school next week. Then I thought of Mrs Courtenay’s dentures sinking into Mr Roberts’s neck, and the look on his face as it rapidly turned from concern to shock to absolute horror.
And then Mrs Courtenay turned and locked eyes with me, and dropped Mr Roberts, who fell limply on the road. I couldn’t really think of anything except how f**ked up all of this was, how 17-year-old girls shouldn’t have to even consider murdering folks.
As Mrs Courtenay ran at me, I swung the lamp base at her head. She smelt of Chanel No. 5, fabric softener and death, and her eyes were red-rimmed. She certainly did look washed out, although that could’ve been because she wasn’t wearing make-up. In retrospect, the cricket bat would’ve been a far better weapon. The lamp shattered on contact and wasn’t quite as damaging as I’d hoped, but it did the job. I was, however, left without a weapon. Mrs Courtenay went down and she stayed down, but I was kind of expecting she’d get up again, like in the movies. I shuffled backwards, and Mum appeared at my side with the cricket bat. I glanced behind me. Dad was standing in the doorway with a frying pan in his hand. I stopped breathing. We were all immobile, frozen on our lawn like garden gnomes, waiting. Mrs Courtenay appeared to be out for the count.
The only sounds were birds singing, the breeze in the trees and a siren wailing in the distance.
‘Perhaps we should go back inside,’ Mum whispered. ‘Call the police.’
‘I tried. Can’t get through,’ Dad said. ‘Everybody must be calling the police.’
Mr Roberts groaned. His limbs were twitching.
Dad stepped out from the doorway. ‘You all right, Peter?’
He didn’t respond, but slowly began to get up – he was moving in a way that someone shouldn’t be able to do after having a significant chunk taken out of their neck.
‘Please go inside, Sunny. Run. Please,’ Mum muttered, shaking.
I ran.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steph Bowe was born in Melbourne in 1994. Her first YA novel, Girl Saves Boy, published in 2010, was aptly described by Rebecca Stead as ‘full of the absolute truth – life is complicated’. Steph went on to publish two further YA novels, All This Could End, which was longlisted for the 2014 Gold Inky Award, and Night Swimming, a Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Notable Book in 2018, when it was also longlisted for a Sisters in Crime Davitt Award.
Sadly, Steph passed away on 20 January 2020, after a courageous battle with a rare form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She was twenty-five. The manuscript of her posthumous novel, Sunny at the End of the World, was discovered on her computer by Steph’s mother and sister.
0 Comments