Campbell_Book One

Campbell:Book One By C.S. Starr


It’s been ten years since a virus wiped out the entire adult population. Across the world, opportunistic kids worked to reestablish order through the creation of uneasy, fractured territories.

A decade later, the rules are changing.

Desperate to stop his western territory from coming apart at the seams, 23 year old President Connor Wilde sends his oldest confidante to Campbell, a swelling northern empire, to negotiate with its leader.

Tal Bauman isn’t expecting Lucy Campbell to be so impossible.

Or intriguing. Or beautiful.

He’s also not expecting their negotiations to leave them both fighting for survival in a part of the world neither are familiar with.

Spanning a dystopian North American landscape, Campbell is the story of two unlikely companions who find themselves reevaluating their loyalties, beliefs, and futures.



Acknowledgements



It’s hard to know where to start. In the past year, this story has been touched by so many hands, and I’m terribly afraid I’ll miss someone. If I have, it’s not intentional.



Matt, thank you for all things. Words are a bit trite at this point.



Jo, thank you for your relentless dedication to stroking my ego when I desperately needed it. Elizabeth Hunter, thank you for your encouragement throughout the process.



Julia Reiss, thank you for your sharp eye and continued collaboration.



Thanks to DK, MM, MM, TM, SM, SP, SR, and ST for reading earlier drafts and sharing your thoughts, critique, and kind words.



Last but not least, thanks to my writing community, family, and friends for encouraging me to keep going through your always appreciated words, supportive emails, and blog hits over the past five years on this project and countless others. I hope, as readers, you never doubt your ability to inspire and contribute. I hope you enjoy the final product as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.





To Margot Lucy, wherever you might be.





Prologue



January 17th, 2001



On January 17th, 2001, Dominga Vargas, an elderly woman from Lima, Peru, dropped dead. Her friends and family knew she was old, ancient, even, but no one knew exactly when she’d been born, including Dominga herself, so there was no Guinness World Records representative present, no Associated Press story marking the death of the oldest woman on earth. She had a pauper’s funeral, marked by no pomp or circumstance, and she disappeared from life just as she’d come into it, noted by few, and remembered by even fewer.

On January 18th, 2001, an unexplained virus claimed its first elderly casualties in Monaco. In the weeks that followed, similar strains were reported in Macau, and Japan. By February 12, 2001, it was deemed an epidemic, and many countries recommended that the elderly quarantine themselves in order to keep infection down within their age group.

Soon after that, quarantine was not only recommended but required by those over sixty, in order to keep the unnamed illness contained within that age group, where, thus far, it had stayed; the youngest person infected being a youthful seventy-two.

Worldwide protests raised questions regarding the ethics of age-related discrimination, and the illness led to increased incidences of elderly abuse and abandonment. When Michael Croft of Surrey, England, dropped dead of the same virus on March 21, 2001 after defying the quarantine notice to have his traditional Sunday tea with his grandmother, Rose Croft, the protests stopped.

Michael was fifteen years old.

By July 12, 2001, there was no one left over fifty-five, and a state of emergency was declared in one hundred and two countries. Those countries not included in the declaration had no way of joining, their resources and populations so devastated that making such a declaration would have removed valuable resources and manpower from the ever-present tasks of safely removing the dead and attempting to keep those not infected, alive.

By November 17th, 2001, the oldest surviving person in the world was Liu Zhang, from Quingdao, China.

She was twelve and three-quarters.