Four-year-old Ben was just the beginning. The chilling realization that there were millions of other orphaned children struck Mo soon after his dying neighbor thrust the boy into his care. Then Deb, a retired schoolteacher hellbent on saving as many children as possible, upended Mo's loner ways. Together, they forge a small community of survivors. An unlikely group of heroes emerges from the ashes of civilization to join them:
Dee, an inner-city gang member with a violent background
Jessica, a med-school dropout struggling to overcome her past
Amanda, an IT specialist and secret anti-vaxxer
Joshua, a pacifist scientist with a fear of needles
Titus and Chris, modern-day MacGyvers whose conflicts threaten the progress of the group
Together, they must face untold horrors while breaking into the homes of the dead to rescue abandoned children before it's too late. But not everyone is on their side, for evil intent lurks in the minds of other survivors.
The premise of this tale of speculative fiction: five years after the pandemic, the vaccinated population dies off. The few remaining adults, vastly outnumbered by young children, must learn to overcome their polarizing differences to succeed in their common goal: the children's survival.
Four-year-old Ben was just the beginning. The chilling realization that there were millions of other orphaned children struck Mo soon after his dying neighbor thrust the boy into his care. Then Deb, a retired schoolteacher hellbent on saving as many children as possible, upended Mo's loner ways. Together, they forge a small community of survivors. An unlikely group of heroes emerges from the ashes of civilization to join them:
Dee, an inner-city gang member with a violent background
Jessica, a med-school dropout struggling to overcome her past
Amanda, an IT specialist and secret anti-vaxxer
Joshua, a pacifist scientist with a fear of needles
Titus and Chris, modern-day MacGyvers whose conflicts threaten the progress of the group
Together, they must face untold horrors while breaking into the homes of the dead to rescue abandoned children before it's too late. But not everyone is on their side, for evil intent lurks in the minds of other survivors.
The premise of this tale of speculative fiction: five years after the pandemic, the vaccinated population dies off. The few remaining adults, vastly outnumbered by young children, must learn to overcome their polarizing differences to succeed in their common goal: the children's survival.
âPlease, I beg you, take him! Heâs only four, he wonât survive on his own. Youâre the only one I know who isnât vaccinated!â
Maurice âMoâ Biggs listened to the womanâs plea as her crying son gripped her leg. What was her name again? he wondered. Jenny? Janet? The supplicating look in her eyes, tinged with panic, was a sharp contrast to the judgemental glare she and the rest of his friendly neighbors had given him for the last five years. Not that he had missed their pasted smiles.
The early morning sun shone brightly. Another beautiful spring morning, he thought. Hungry birds chirped excitedly while searching for food. The row of single-family homes across the street cast long shadows, overlapping each other. One porch after the next, one ornate front door after the next. Each striving for uniqueness in Cobbs Hill, an upper middle-class neighborhood that thrived on sameness. SUVs and pickup trucks dotted each double driveway. The upstate New York scene was idyllic, except for the woman standing in front of him trying to give her child away.
The woman swayed to her left and took a step backward, dragging her little boy with her. She reached for the post on his front porch to steady herself.
âItâs coming soon,â she said. âHe canât see it happen.â
A look of primal fear overtook her face, like an animal realizing it had become prey. Fresh tears spilled over, obediently running along dried streaks. She took several deep breaths and seemed to steady herself.
âThe dizzy spells are coming more often.â She let go of the porch post. âIâve already had two this morning.â
Sheâs right, Mo thought. He knew that if she already had two dizzy spells this morning, she probably wouldnât make it past the evening. The spells usually started two to three days before death. Once they were coming every hour or so, death was imminent. Complete and sudden heart failure: the victim simply fell over.
Mo looked down at the little boy. He knew nothing about children. Taking on a child while the world was crumbling around him was the worst idea he could imagine. Unfortunately, Mo wasnât very big on thinking before acting. Amy, his last girlfriend, used to playfully call him Rambo. She even made a verb out of it when he made a reckless move.
âYou Ramboâed it again,â she would laugh as he stood over some Mo-made disaster in the house or yard. A lifetime ago, though it had only been two years. Amy was one more item on the bill heâd had to pay for refusing to get injected. Her media-brainwashed mind, plus the mounting pressure of so-called friends and neighbors, finally drove her away. He wondered if she was having dizzy spells yet. Mo banished the painful thought.
âHey, kid, do you have a name?â He knelt down at the boyâs level. Rambo, he thought.
The boy shook his head, still clutching his motherâs leg.
âReally? No name? Well, thatâs so cool. I donât have a name either,â he exclaimed with a surprised face. âWhen people call me, they just say, âHey you!ââ
The boyâs eyes seem to weigh his words.
âYeah, well, thatâs going to be a real problem, isnât it? When someone yells, âHey you!â, weâre both going to say, âWhat?ââ.
Now the boy smiled. âNo, I have a name. Youâre being silly.â
âAww, youâre luckier than me. Whatâs your name, big guy?â
âBen,â the little boy murmured, lowering his eyes.
âNice to meet you, Ben. Do you like dinosaurs?â
The boy nodded.
âWell, Iâve got the coolest dinosaur book in the whole world. Do you want to see it?â
Ben shook his head.
âNo? Why not?â Mo asked.
âMommy says youâll make me sick.â
With a blank expression, Mo stared at the woman. It was the best he could muster after years of mistreatment. By now, he had trained himself to hide his anger at the injustice people had flung his way on a regular basis.
âHeâs all better now,â she interjected, with a nervous glance towards Mo, not quite making eye contact. âHe wonât make you sick, honey, itâs OK.â
âLook, your mom has to go somewhere, and Iâve got a dinosaur book just waiting for a little boy to read it. What do you say?â
âI canât read.â
Under any other circumstance, he would have found it funny how the boyâs four-year-old brain took Moâs words verbatim. Instead, Mo became increasingly anxious, wondering how he would separate Ben from his motherâs leg.
âOK, OK, I mean, Iâll read the book to you, but youâll get to look at all the pictures. Deal?â Mo asked.
The boy seemed to hesitate. âIs there a T-rex in it?â
Mo feigned an indignant look. âWould it be a real dinosaur book if it didnât have a T-rex?â He prayed it did. He got the book from Amy as a joke when he had turned forty, but had never actually read it. âOf course it has a T-rex,â he added.
Ben let go of his motherâs leg. Mo reached out for his hand. The woman bent down and kissed her son ferociously on the cheek. His mouth squished up into a fishlike grimace.
âI have to go now, sweetie, butâŚâ, she hesitated a moment, âthis man will take good care of you, OK?â
She doesnât remember my name either, Mo realized.
âI love you so much. Never forget that,â she added.
âMommy!â Ben cried, reaching out for her as she backed away.
Mo latched onto the boyâs outstretched hand. âCome on, Ben, the T-rex is waiting for you.â
âThank you,â the woman mouthed silently when Mo glanced her way. She ran off, her shoulders shaking, and her hand covering her mouth.
Mo escorted Ben into the house, shutting the door behind them. He loved the feel of the heavy door shutting off the otherworldly madness on the outside. His suburban oasis had a smooth white tiled entrance hall. An oak banister on the right snaked along the stairs leading to the second floor of the three-bedroom house. Mo didnât bother removing his or Benâs shoes. He led the boy into the living room at the end of the hall where a tall bookcase stood next to the TV.
âHave a seat, Ben.â Mo pointed towards the black leather sofa. âLetâs see.â He crouched down to the bottom shelves of the bookcase. âHere it is.â He pulled a tall, slender book out from the last shelf of the pine and white enamel Ikea bookcase. He brought it over to Ben, who had already taken a seat on the sofa.
Ben giggled. âWhy is your face on it?â
Mo smiled, looking at the cover. A small picture of Moâs face covered a rather large brontosaurusâs head. âMy friend thought that would be funny when she gave it to me,â Mo explained.
Ben giggled again, his small fingers passing over the taped photograph. He then turned the first pages of the book and looked at the various colorfully illustrated dinosaurs.
Looking for the T-rex, Mo thought. The shock that this boy was now his new charge started to sink in. What have I done?
It was ironic that people who had feared getting infected by Mo were now running to him, knowing that he would survive the current apocalyptic death rate. He had survived delta, omicron, the devastating theta, and the host of other variants that came along after them. He had fought for his right to remain unvaccinated, even in the face of the deadliest and most virulent variants. Some shunned him, some resented him, and more than a few expressed a visceral hatred that he couldnât understand.
Ben slipped off the sofa and slammed the dinosaur book onto the coffee table with all the grace of a four-year-old. He kneeled on the carpet and continued reading.
âEasy there, little buddy,â Mo said, rescuing his laptop from under the book. Not that itâs much use anymore, he thought. With the internet down, the chimes of new posts in his provocatively titled blog You Never Know had been silenced. His blog had attracted both ends of the extremists. Those who thought he was condemning people to death, and those who were convinced the vaccine was a government sponsored way to inject monitoring or controlling nanotechnology into their bloodstream. Mo had argued that thereâd been insufficient time to study the long-term effects of the vaccine. He feared the FDA had recklessly approved its use and saw himself as a bit of a Frances Kelsey, fighting against thalidomide approval in the sixties.
But as the weeks and months of controversy turned into years, with no side effects coming to light, his blogâs popularity waned. Only the crazies left, he had thought, despondently.
When the elderly started dying, there was a mad scramble to find the cause. Authorities suspected, but failed to identify, a new virus. It wasnât long after the health care workers started dying, the second category of people to be vaccinated, that the authorities laid the link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the mounting deaths. Though they could not explain the reason, they did establish a roughly five-year timeline. Like a ticking time bomb, the vaccinated were dying five years after having had their first shot. The number of boosters also seemed to play a role in the timing of the death. The Vax Plague, or VP, as the headline-hungry media had dubbed it, seemed inescapable.
Extremists still following his blog almost jumped for joy. They had urged him to write some âI told you soâ type of entries. But Mo didnât feel any sense of vindication â only sadness and fear.
With most of the health care and virology workers dying in the first months after the VP discovery, research had ground to a halt. The world turned away from understanding the why, to coping with the new reality of their limited remaining time. Some turned to family, some to religion, and others to anarchic violence.
Despite the crumbling society, there were signs of humanity that impressed Mo. Overall, the rate of violence could have been a lot worse. It turned out that at the end of times, humans were not all bands of villains portrayed in shows like The Walking Dead. Compassion and a sense of togetherness fueled by trauma held the basic fabric of community together.
Mo seemed incapable of thinking about the future. He had retreated into his house, waiting for â what exactly? The end of the VP, he thought. When the dying finished, he would think about the future. For now, he preferred doing the ostrich thing, head in the sand, warming his cans of beans on the BBQ. His mind was incapable of handling anything else. Until Ben unexpectantly plopped into his life.
âWhy donât you have a name?â Ben asked.
Benâs question startled Mo out of his reverie. After a month without TV, telephones, or internet, he was getting used to the utter silence in his house.
âA name?â he responded, confused.
âYou said you didnât have a name,â Ben reaffirmed.
Mo smiled at him. âOh, I was just kidding,â he replied. âMy name is Maurice. But you can call me Mo.â
âWhy would I call you Mo if your name is Maurice?â Ben asked.
âMo is just short for Maurice.â
Ben frowned. âYour name is Maurice, not Mo,â he concluded. âIâm hungry,â he added.
âSo am I. How about peanut butter on crackers?â
âI love peanut butter.â Ben nodded emphatically.
Mo entered the adjoining kitchen and gradually opened the pantry door, being careful not to let the precariously stacked jars and cans tumble onto the floor again. Being a vaccine skeptic and a borderline conspiracy theorist had worked in his favor. He had stocked up on necessities before most of the incredulous population understood the significance of the early signs of the VP. Then the looting and hoarding began. People quickly emptied store shelves and supply chains ground to a halt. He still felt somewhat guilty about the six propane tanks for his BBQ, which were locked inside his garage.
Mo froze at the sudden sound of the doorbell chime. What now?
He ran back into the living room. âStay here,â he commanded, briefly putting his hand on Benâs shoulder.
The Unvaccinated is not as polarizing as it might sound! In the post-apocalyptic United States, those who received the COVID-19 vaccine begin to succumb to dizzy spells and pass away, and often time, those who are unvaccinated begin to realize, they leave behind young and helpless children. As a small community of people with diverse skills and backgrounds begins to form to support these rescued children, identities and ideologies start to clash.
The premise of this book was intriguing and thought-provokingâwhat if we lived in a world in which vaccines were more harmful than good? But ultimately, I felt like this story was quite surface-level and too dialogue-heavy; even then, the conversations were never that deep or pivotal. Potential story arcs that might have had more impact if they were drawn out and returned to at a later point after some character growth were instead wrapped up after a few back-and-forth discussions. There were several storylines that had the potential to be complex and more emotional, but instead felt rushed and underdeveloped. Any action or dramatic turn of events were often glossed over or simply alluded to and then we jump to the characters discussing the after-effects.
Even still, I found the characters to be well-rounded, diverse, and lovable. I was worried this would be an overtly political book, but there was very little discussion or an overt pointedness about what is right or wrong. The way the author navigated the idea of anti-vaxxers and their reasonings was well thought-out and more nuanced than I imagined it would be. The good and bad parts of society are still present and explored through this group of people and their interactions, and more than anything, I appreciated the boldness of many characters and the exploration of the universal truth that when faced so closely with death, people are going to be more honest, open, and (sometimes) trusting, because what else is there to lose?
Readers who enjoy character-based post-apocalyptic dramas will find this quick read enjoyable and digestibleâif youâre like me and the bold title caught your attention, I promise the book is not what you think it is (in the best way!).