Prologue
Joan Johnson: a nineteen year old girl from Florida. She was alive at the time of The Great Darkness, a worldwide black out that killed many of the Earth's population and the survivors cant age passed the age of their prime. For her it is in between the age of nineteen and her early 20's. Her brown hair hangs past her shoulder and goes up in a geometric cut, normally pulled into an oily pony tail. She wears clothes that hide her figure and is normally barefoot or wearing flip-flops or sneakers. She has a ring on her index finger that's a purity ring, meaning she is waiting for the right man to come along, but really she mostly wears it because it was a gift from her father, who the officers murdered when they found out he was a pastor before the right to religion was given back. She normally carries a straight razor on her person in the case of an emergency. Her dark brown eyes normally have bags around them from lack of sleep. And she has a fishing hook in her ear as an earring and a regular earring depending on her mood in her other ear. She lives with her mother who is a nurse and her families have all come together into the same village; both her mother's and her late father's.
The survivors of the Darkness have moved on and tried to make the best of life as they can. Children have become children again with the lack of easy electricity and have surprisingly gotten more into school as a distraction from their hard lives as well as to wish for a better future for their families. With the lack of electricity to power abortions the birthrate has also climbed up high, the remaining Earth's population wishing to go back to the 6 billion that it was before. Women have become a treasure as more and more disappear. And girls are getting married at ages as young as 14, being as life is fragile now even if they can't age as quickly they can still die easy.
The Amish people have left their towns and have traveled the world to help people get used to the lack of easy energy and have surprisingly discovered another energy source called Claudia, named after the little girl who discovered it. Joan has a knack for fixing the mechanical animals that people use to help themselves with their daily lives. She also looks out for the children of the village when the teens and adults are out in the fields or on boats or just at jobs. She has help from Katie, a New Amish (Amish that believe that Claudia is okay to use and only Claudia) that is a friend of hers and is her new sister-in-law since Sally died in The Great Rebellion against Umbrella.
The Umbrella Corporation has taken over with a king that stays in secret. No one knows if there really is a king or if the king is real he could be any stranger that walks into town. The infections of the viruses have become a part of daily lives and since the Darkness more people are in control the viruses that have infected them. A new discovery was made, that men who carry any of the viruses have a need for DNA that could fit the viruses suitably, as mates. Any female is fair game as long as the virus chooses that girl. Once they see or smell the female they become obsessed with her. Drawing the male to near insanity until the male gets the girl and sees her nearly every day.
For some reason this mostly happens to the Umbrella people, though, many have heard of the rogue young man kidnapping a young woman, something that is feared by all girls. John, Joan's brother, had this, he didn't kidnap Katie, just followed her everywhere until she was allowed to court him. He waited until she told him she loved him to pop the question. Girls normally have a blood test to see if they are likely for this to happen; girls that find out that they are likely to be taken try to make themselves seem like men or teen boys; a surprising deterrent to the sight and smell of a young man eager for a young woman to take to his bed or for a mate.