The situation around the Sanders’ farm is bleak, and likely to remain that way. A region trying to right itself after an incredible disaster is now hit once again. This time, it may well be a knockout blow for many. The farm is still running, still surviving, and still trying to get things restarted. Isolation has been the only preventative for the plague, however, and this leaves them with little to no news of anything happening in the wider world, good or bad. That is about to change, because there are large changes coming for them, just as fast as they can go.

The Fires of America seem to have truly burned out, leaving nothing more than a few embers. But embers can still burn…

EXCERPT

Christmas and New Year’s had come to the Sanders’ farm with little fanfare and no celebrations. Small groups gathered for mealtime and to be thankful for what they had, but there was no celebration as there had been the year before. There were no laughing, playing children, romping in the newly fallen snow. No merrymaking. 

There was in fact little enough to be merry about. The plague sweeping through the area had wreaked havoc on those who had survived so much since the disaster that was the Storm. Those who had made it through starvation, dysentery, violence, and bloodshed had in the end fallen prey to a killer they couldn’t see, and ultimately couldn’t fight. 

Clay’s last orders from the Area Commander of the National Guard, Captain Adcock, were to close the farm to all traffic in order to preserve the resources the Sanders’ farm represented for the future, assuming any of them had one. No one had heard from Adcock or anyone else in over two weeks. The only information they had received from Jordan had been in the form of information passed on by a former constable who wanted food to try and make the trip south to safer conditions. If there was such a thing at this point. 

So, there had been no merrymaking. Instead, there was hard work. Including the training of all the school-age children in how to survive in the new world they found themselves living in.

- 

The truck rattled along the back road, wind whipping around the cab and buffeting the teenagers in the back. All were huddled together for warmth, packs clutched tight as they waited to arrive at their destination.

Finally, with ears threatening to turn frostbitten in the windchill despite scarves and caps, the truck slowed and came to a stop.

“End of the line, plebes!” Mitchell Nolan declared as he stepped out of the warm truck cab. “On the ground! Let’s go! Hustle!”

Nathan Caudell, JJ Jackson, Seth Webb, Janice Hardy, Anthony Goodrum, Lila Webb, and finally Millie Long all disembarked, slinging sparse packs onto their backs even as Mitchell continued to harangue them. 

“You’ve got a map, you’ve got a compass,” Mitchell told them. “You’ve got a sleeping bag, food, and water for two days, and the ability and means to get more if you need it, providing you can manage it. You know your starting point, and there are 11 fixed navigation points along your way. You must identify them all and return to Building Two in 48 hours. Note that I say, ‘Building Two’, and not ‘the Farm’,” he stressed. “The farm is a huge area and Building Two is not near the edge.”

“Once we leave, you are on your own,” he warned. “You better learn to depend on one another and to work together, and I suggest you do it in a hurry before you freeze to death, or starve to death, or the wolves get you. Any of the above happens, you will of course be given a failing grade for this excursion. Any questions? Excellent!” 

He clapped his hands without giving anyone a chance to ask. “Get moving! Clock starts now."