Alma Saves The World

High schooler Alma Clodean’s sisters are all grown and her mother has moved away for a new career in the city.  Alma’s bitterly angry father spews verbal abuse day and night.  In just two short years, she’ll walk away from him and his trailer and never look back.

When Alma is invited to a group whose efforts lay in supplies to survive the end of the world, she is eager to join. The end probably isn’t near at all, she figures, but a stocked bunker would give her somewhere to run to if things at home get any worse. The fatherly leader praises Alma for the used books she gathers for their end of days library, and she would do almost anything to keep that approval coming.

But Alma’s father won’t let anyone take her away from him now, when she is the only one he has left to bring him a beer and make him a sandwich while he sits on the couch and watches tv, chain-smoking for the rest of his life.  He’s even willing to sink her hopes of going to college, and is not above making her believe her mother left because of her, not because of him.

Her only hope is the apocalypse giving her a chance with the newfound family of doomsday survivalists, in whatever fiery zombie hellscape may be just over the horizon.