The Apocalypse Seven
by Gene Doucette
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whatever.
The whateverpocalypse. That’s what Touré, a twenty-something Cambridge coder, calls it after waking up one morning to find himself seemingly the only person left in the city. Once he finds Robbie and Carol, two equally disoriented Harvard freshmen, he realizes he isn’t alone, but the name sticks: Whateverpocalypse. But it doesn’t explain where everyone went. It doesn’t explain how the city became overgrown with vegetation in the space of a night. Or how wild animals with no fear of humans came to roam the streets.
Add freakish weather to the mix, swings of temperature that spawn tornadoes one minute and snowstorms the next, and it seems things can’t get much weirder. Yet even as a handful of new survivors appear—Paul, a preacher as quick with a gun as a Bible verse; Win, a young professional with a horse; Bethany, a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent; and Ananda, an MIT astrophysics adjunct—life in Cambridge, Massachusetts gets stranger and stranger.
The self-styled Apocalypse Seven are tired of questions with no answers. Tired of being hunted by things seen and unseen. Now, armed with curiosity, desperation, a shotgun, and a bow, they become the hunters. And that’s when things truly get weird.
Cover Artist: David Curtis
ISBN: 9780358418948
Format: Trade Paperback/Ebook
Publicity Contact: Hannah Dirgins <Hannah.Dirgins@hmhco.com>
Praise for The Apocalypse Seven
Doucette’s seven aren’t just magnificent—they’re also entertaining as hell.
—Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of the Infected Trilogy
The adventure I’ve been looking for! Never once did I know what to expect, and I loved being proved wrong at every turn. Far more mind-bending than a book this fun has any right to be.
—Zack Jordan, author of The Last Human
Doucette is ultimately able to do something new with a familiar genre, and do it astoundingly well.
—Booklist
[A] riveting postapocalyptic outing… Doucette’s vibrant prose and unique premise make for an enticing adventure.
—Publishers Weekly
Clever in inception and execution […] Speculative fiction ranges from straightforward to bewildering, and Doucette covers the whole arc here. It would be a trespass to violate the reveal, after encounters with mutated coyotes, an alien who smells like pee, and a timey-wimey bargain for the fate of the human race, but it’s really fun to read. A cinematic, speculative exercise in which a ragtag band saves the world, kind of.
—Kirkus