Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)

by Matt Dinniman

I never got to know Yolanda Martinez as much as I would’ve liked to. But I didn’t have to know her very well to know who she was. I knew she was a quiet, sweet woman who’d been a nurse her entire life. She’d worked sixty hours a week for years to pay for her son to go to college. Her husband had owned a landscaping company. At only 4’11, the woman had a presence much bigger than her stature suggested. There was a warmth about her, something I’d never felt as a kid. Just being in her presence imparted a feeling of longing in me, something difficult to describe. Like I wished I could relive my childhood, but this time, I’d have her as my mother, and she would have never, ever left me. When the apocalypse came for Yolanda, she didn’t once waver in her dedication to her patients. She was quick to laugh, quick to smile. And even though Yolanda Martinez was just as terrified as the rest of us, she stood her ground against a force she couldn’t possibly hold back. She lived her entire life as a hero. She died as one, too.

Best damn part of the book so far.