Whisper of Death

Whisper of Death is a novel by the American writer Christopher Pike, published in 1991. It begins as a story about a couple trying to repair a relationship and turns into something much stranger.

Roxanne and Pepper are teenagers whose relationship is in trouble. They leave their small town for a weekend in the hope of working out what is wrong between them, and the trip does not go well; when they drive back, the argument they were trying to settle is still with them and the town is empty.

The emptiness turns out not to be local. When they telephone other towns there is nobody there, and it becomes clear that the whole world is in the same condition. Eventually they find three other young people of their own age who are still alive, and the five of them have to work out why they have been left behind and what is expected of them. Pike treats the silence itself as the threat rather than anything that moves inside it.