Hello, Brother, Die

«Hello, Brother, Die» — a post-apocalyptic novel about a teenager who believes he is the last person on the surface of the Earth after the demise of almost all humanity. The world is destroyed by a retrovirus found in the area of the subglacial lake «Vostok 18»: cities are abandoned, forests have become dangerous, and the familiar order of life has vanished. Eduard Verkin, who previously published under the pseudonym Max Ostrogin, writes this story in a vivid, dynamic language with a conversational tone. The book will appeal to those who seek not only a tense survival plot but also science fiction with moral choices, loneliness, and the question of what remains of a person after a catastrophe.

The teenager has learned to survive in solitude: he hunts, draws little people on the walls, and waits for «real people» to return from the sky someday. His world is organized and understandable — until he discovers that someone is stealing his supplies, taking over his territory, and killing animals. This means there is someone else on the planet. Who exactly and why — questions that determine not just the familiar way of life, but life itself. The story is not limited to Earth: a parallel line on Mercury emerges, where survivors look at their home planet as a resource depot. The main conflict of the novel is built on this clash of perspectives.

• Alex — a teenager who has spent years in solitude on the deserted Earth. He remembers his former life only in fragments and has built his own order of survival.
• Alex U. — a mysterious figure whom other survivors speak of almost as a legend. His role in the events unfolds gradually.
• The Lame — a character from the circle of survivors through whom part of the past and present of this world is revealed.

The Earth after the epidemic — is not just ruins, but a space divided between those who remained and those who left and returned completely changed. On Mercury, its own community of survivors has formed, for whom the home planet has become a resource base rather than a home. The retrovirus discovered at the «Vostok 18» station triggered not only a catastrophe but also a deep divide between different versions of humanity's future.