All the Love in the World by Cat Sparks

This was an nice departure on the post-apocalypse story.  This one is smack dab in the "post" part of history and centers around a woman who lives in a walled-in suburban street.  All the neighbors work together to keep their community safe and to cope with the end of civilization as best they can.

But it's not as bad as you might think.  What I liked about the story was the lack of pillaging and chaos.  Instead people do what you'd like to think they would - they try and survive by helping each other. What also made the story credible was how no one really knew what had happened.  There was a war of some kind and civilization has stopped functioning but no one knows why.  As you might expect one of the first things to be lost was communications; TV news was gone, radio and telephones too, what electricity there is is produced locally.  There are sometimes scratchy messages over short wave radio but that is the extent of news from the outside world that can be gathered.

Some people become sick and medicine is needed.  A hazardous walk into town must be made to try and find a doctor who can provide the needed medicine.  Dangers are found along the way but not nearly as intense as expected.  What is found are people just trying to make the best of things as they are.

Life goes on.

Well done indeed.  A nice fresh play on an old type of story.

The author's website is HERE

More on her writing can be found HERE