Laurie Parkinson, who’s lived in Laurel Hills all his life, is a gay sheet metal worker who’d rather be a gay hairdresser. Wheat Dupuis, who’s also gay, is the scion of one of Laurel Hill’s wealthiest families. He’d rather grow grapes than become CFO of Dupuis International. Laurie wakes one morning to discover his family gone and his town decimated by a bacteria that has lain dormant for millennia, incased in ice. With the melting of the ice caps, the bacteria is released, and mankind faces a pandemic that could surpass the Black Plague. Wheat and his family are on their way to safety when the unthinkable happens and he’s left behind. Laurie knows of a bunker in the woods outside Laurel Hill, where he intends to take refuge. On the way there, Laurie finds and rescues Wheat. Can two such dissimilar men work together through a pandemic to find their families ... and possibly find love, as well?

Pandemic

“It’s too bad we don’t have any lights,” Wheat murmured as he set the grill on the table, and now that he studied it, Laurie could see the scorch marks the hibachi must have left on the fine grain of the wood. “But it probably would have drawn attention to the cottage.”


“Yes.” They’d have to work fast. Laurie removed the cooking grids and poured the charcoal into the hibachi. “Do we have matches or a lighter?”


“Father always kept a butane lighter in the shed. Sometimes…Sometimes he and Mother liked to rough it, and they’d do the cooking. I should have brought it.”


Laurie watched him walk back to the shed. He was worried about Wheat, not so much because his boyfriend was exhausted—the situation was getting to them, and with very little sleep, they all were tired—but more because seeing his parents becoming sick was affecting him. Laurie sighed, shook his head, and began squirting starter fluid over the briquettes.


Chapter 59