January [Paperback]

COUNTDOWN
It's 1999.
Party like there's no tomorrow.
Pray that there will be.
JANUARY
On New Year's Day, it happens:
Over six billion people die within twenty-four hours.
The stunned survivors are left to fend for themselves in a world where chaos reigns. A world with no rules, no order...and no adults.
Because the only people left are teenagers.Daniel Parker is the author of over twenty books for children and young adults. He lives in New York City with his wife, a dog, and a psychotic cat named Bootsie. He is a Leo. When he isn't writing, he is tirelessly traveling the world on a doomed mission to achieve rock-and-roll stardom. As of this date, his musical credits include the composition of bluegrass soundtrack numbers for the film The Grave (starring a bloated Anthony Michael Hall) and a brief stint performing live rap music to baffled Filipino audiences in Hong Kong. Mr. Parker once worked in a cheese shop. He was fired.CHAPTER ONE
187 Puget Drive
Babylon, Washington
11:56 p.m.
This is where it getsreallycrazy....
Ariel Collins picked at the label of her empty beer bottle. She'd never been so bored. She was so bored, she thought she was going to die or something.
I can't believe Jez hasn't shut up yet.
No, actually she could believe it. Jezebel Howe hardly ever shut up. Ariel just couldn't believe she was wasting New Year's Eve, 1998 -- the biggest New Year's Eve of her entire seventeen-year-old life -- listening to this garbage. Why couldn't she be somewhere else? Babylon was the worst. It wasn't even a real town. It was asuburb-- a suburb of Seattle, no less. And as far as cities went, Seattle was pretty lame, too.
...so this guy guns the car up to like eighty five, right? Jezebel was saying. Her porcelain face glowed blue in the flickering light of the muted TV. Meanwhile Brian is totally freaking out. He's all like, 'Slow down, man! We'rl3Ü