The Empty City

The Empty City is the first book in the Survivors series, written under the name Erin Hunter and published in 2012. The novels are told from the point of view of dogs rather than people, and they give their characters names, loyalties and social rules of their own.

Lucky is a lone dog who has always managed without a pack, reading the streets of his city and avoiding the leashed dogs and their owners. When the Big Growl arrives it is a disaster on a scale no animal in the story has a word for: buildings come down, the humans disappear, and the city becomes a place with no food deliveries and no rules. Lucky is thrown together with a group of former pets who have been separated from their owners and have no idea how to find water, how to get across a broken road or who should decide anything for the group.

The series is adventure fiction built on a pack structure, and Lucky's story turns on the difference between surviving alone and belonging to something larger than himself. It continues through several further volumes as the dogs learn to live in a city that no longer has people in it.