A Field Guide to the Dead II

Sixteen years after the world ended, survival is no longer something Alicen is learning. It is something she has become very good at.The infected still roam the ruins. Stranger things have emerged from the changed world. Food is scarce, clean water can mean the difference between life and death, and other survivors can be more dangerous than anything recorded in the Field Guide.Now older and alone, Alicen has made a life for herself at Land's End. She fishes, sets traps, scavenges what remains and follows the rules that kept her alive. She has Blue, her battered bicycle. She has the Field Guide. And she has the lessons left behind by Bob-the man she will always call Dad.Then another girl appears.Suspicious, irritating and unexpectedly capable, the stranger begins to challenge the most important rule Alicen has learned: people are dangerous. Slowly, shared meals become conversations, arguments become jokes, and survival becomes something neither of them has to do entirely alone.But Alicen has never been good at staying.When the road calls her east, she leaves behind the fragile safety she has built and begins a journey through an England being reclaimed by nature, the dead and creatures that should not exist. Every abandoned house, council estate, supermarket and forgotten street might contain food, water-or something waiting for her to make a mistake.And the Field Guide is still being written.When Alicen returns to Bob's grave, she discovers something he took with him: a record of the day he found her.The truth buried with Bob leads back to London.Back to the beginning.Back to Rebecca, the pregnant woman who died before Alicen could ever know her.And to Charlie, a former soldier who survived the fall of London, disobeyed orders to kill indiscriminately and tried to save ordinary people instead. A man who loved Rebecca. A man who believed their unborn child died with her.A man who may be Alicen's biological father.But blood does not make someone Dad.Bob earned that name.Charlie will have to earn something else.A Field Guide to the Dead II: Alicen's Story is a post-apocalyptic survival novel about grief, identity, family and the dangerous possibility of trusting another human being. Continuing the story of A Field Guide to the Dead, it follows Alicen as she discovers that surviving the end of the world may be easier than deciding what-and who-is worth living for.The rules kept her alive.Now Alicen has to decide which ones are worth breaking.