The Event -- Down From the Tower - Dan C. Boutwell [Nm]

What do you do after you realize the rest of the world has vanished? First, you determine if you are all alone. Dan Jackson woke up one morning and everyone he knew had been morphed into a pile of rusty colored sandy residue. It happened in the instant of the blink of an eye, as he slept.

In the first book of this series, The Event—Apocalypse Dawning, Dan searched to see if there was by chance another living being. To his relief he found a young girl named Willy. After taking stock of their situation they struck out to reclaim their world and their lives, which they realize also meant they needed to repopulate the world. This was not without personal ethical and moral conflict and very real physical hurdles.

In the second instalment of the series: The Event—Down From the Tower, Dan and his young partner, Willy, establish a small community of survivors, only to find there are other larger and dangerous groups reaching out to find them. Led by an egotistical tyrant going by the title of The Colonel, a paramilitary group seeks to overpower the small contingent at The Tower and enlist their women in a plan to populate and grow a personal army.

In addition, the world’s great buildings and creations, as well as the infrastructure, created by mankind is deteriorating around them from the lack of attention of a vanished population. The survival of the small community located in the Tower and the future of society, as they once knew it, depends on how they confront these challenges.