Their wish had been granted—they were cut off, detached from the network.

On their own.

Around the settlement grew ragged fields of wheat and tattered stalks of sun-baked vegetables. Crude handmade tools had been distributed, primitive artifacts hammered out with great labor by the various settlements. The settlements were linked only by horsedrawn carts and by the slow stutter of the telegraph key.

They had managed to keep their organization, though. Goods and services were exchanged on a slow, steady basis. Basic commodities were produced and distributed. The clothing that O’Neill and his wife and Earl Ferine wore was coarse and unbleached, but sturdy. And they had managed to convert a few of the trucks from gasoline to wood.

“Here we are,” O’Neill said. “We can see from here.”

“Is it worth it?” Judith asked, exhausted. Bending down, she plucked aimlessly at her shoe, trying to dig a pebble from the soft hide sole. “It’s a long way to come, to see something we’ve seen every day for thirteen months.”

“True,” O’Neill admitted, his hand briefly resting on his wife’s limp shoulder. “But this may be the last. And that’s what we want to see.”

In the gray sky above them, a swift circling dot of opaque black moved. High, remote, the dot spun and darted, following an intricate and wary course. Gradually, its gyrations moved it toward the mountains and the bleak expanse of bomb-rubbled structure sunk in their base.

“San Francisco,” O’Neill explained. “One of those long-range hawk projectiles, all the way from the West Coast.”

“And you think it’s the last?” Ferine asked.

“It’s the only one we’ve seen this month.” O’Neill seated himself and began sprinkling dried bits of tobacco into a trench of brown paper. “And we used to see hundreds.”