Dane Whitlock has outlasted the fall of America by moving on before anyone else can settle on a route.
Solitude is the plan: a worn refrigerated truck, three guns, and scarce fuel are all he means to carry.
That changes when a dying doctor in rural Nebraska trusts him with a medical cooler, a hard drive, and a teenage girl named Nell Arbour.
Nell may be what it takes to slow the infection that has emptied the country, and the only place with the tools to help her is Harbor Nine, a fortified medical refuge nearly two thousand miles away on the Pacific coast.
Ruined checkpoints, frozen mountain passes, desperate survivors, and the Milemen—a road militia that seizes fuel, trade, and anyone who needs to pass—fill the distance between them.
As companions gather and every stretch of highway exacts a toll, Dane must decide whether Nell is cargo, an assignment, or a person he will not abandon.
