“We can’t just stop,” said Kira. “It’s, like, right there.” She pointed at the black spire and the mountains beyond, now so close that they towered over them. “I can’t just camp down for the night if the thing we’ve been looking for is right there, just . . . We have to keep going.”

“We can barely see,” said Samm, glancing at the myriad streetlights, useless in a world without electricity. “It’s dark, the horses are beat, and that much cloud cover means rain.”

Kira growled in frustration, clenching her hands into fists as she turned, casting around for anything she could find that might solve her problem. She spied a grocery store and pulled Bobo toward it. “There. We’ll leave the horses and go on foot.” They unsaddled the horses in a break room in the back of the store, filling a plastic tub with as much bottled water as they could scrounge, and closed the door to keep them from wandering away. Kira emptied most of her pack as well, bringing only the essentials: water, a heavy tarp for protection, and the depowered computer screen with all the information they’d downloaded at the Chicago data center; she didn’t want to go anywhere without it. Samm brought his rifle and several clips of ammunition, and Kira realized she should do the same. Prepped and ready, they stole out into the night. The sky was clearing, and the starlight made the city look blank and colorless.

Arvada was less industrial than much of the city they’d walked through, though this only made it more depressing in the toxic fallout—instead of bleached buildings, they walked through dry, dusty parks and residential streets full of drooping houses and stunted, misshapen trees. Samm seemed more nervous than eager, but his mood turned when they came upon a wide lake of fresh water—not just saltless but literally fresh, completely clean of the poisons and chemicals that had plagued all water they’d passed in a month. A breeze blew gently from the mountains, and Kira smelled clean air for the first time in weeks: green leaves, fresh fruit, and . . . Yes, she thought, just a hint of baked bread.

What’s going on here?

The land beyond the lake was green—they couldn’t see it, but they could smell it in the air, and feel it in the soft give of the healthy grass beneath their feet. Somehow, against all logic, there was a patch of healthy grass at the base of the mountain, stretching out from the fence that marked the borders of the Rocky Flats Preserve. Kira frowned and approached the fence carefully. It was old and rusty, but the land beyond it was rich and verdant, even in the darkness. An oasis of life, thriving in the midst of desolation. The black spire rose up like a gash in the sky. Lights flickered through the trees, and Kira raised her gun protectively.