The Dream of the Dead. The Culling, #1

Why are you still alive, at the end of the world? What determines you so hard to survive, at the very end of the world? Can it be raw instinct, along with greed and revenge? Or can it be love, the sweet feeling of love to have emerged right now, right at the end, as an irony of life, to overwhelm you now in powerful feelings of joy and temptation, at the very end of the world? The Culling unfolds now in death, chaos, loss, and destruction, and throughout these incredible events, Dickens, a young and highly aspiring poet, has to live his life moment by moment throughout the ever-present loss and exasperation of these atrocious times, while he is forced to experience it all through the intense feelings of his tender, sensitive soul.
Carried throughout chains of unexpected events, Dickens discovers the incredible meanings and circumstances of the world at its end, not only through the brute need for survival present in everyone around, but he arrives to discover the consistent, true nature of life all around, perspective that he gains directly through his inquiring nature, perspective that he would have never achieved in a normal life.
How far can Dickens hold on throughout his extraordinary encounters at the very end of the world and at the very threshold between life and death? You would never believe!