The Sixth Extinction: The First Three Weeks – Betty and Lennie’s Story‪.‬

The Sixth Extinction Series is an apocalyptic tale about a pandemic that sweeps the globe, decimating the human race, leaving humanity struggling to survive. Within three weeks, everything has changed. Social structure has collapsed. The police are non-existent, and the army concentrates on the cities. Gangs of yobs rule the streets.

Betty is an eighty-six-year-old woman who spends her days annoying the carers in the nursing home, where she was forced to move when the government deemed her unfit to look after herself and her mentally disabled, giant of a grandson, Lennie. Lennie is placed in a home for adults with special-needs and developmental disabilities. They get to see each other only once a week, when a care worker takes Lennie on the train to visit his grandmother.

Then the world changes. The virus outbreak spreads like wildfire, consuming country after country, until it reaches the shores of Great Britain. The government locks the country down. No one is allowed to wander the streets – everyone is under house arrest, to try to stop the virus from spreading.

However, the care home is forgotten in all the turmoil. The carers stop turning up for work, and the old residents are left to fend for themselves. As the older, sicker occupants start dying, Betty is forced to do things, things which only days before would have seemed impossible.

Unable to reach her grandson, Betty is struggling with her emotions and her body’s limitations. Things go from bad to worse when one night the unimaginable happens, and as people are dying all around her, she has to fight to stay alive.