He stared into her eyes and said, “Until the day David Pilcher came to me and said I’d been chosen for a nomad mission beyond the fence, I only knew what you knew.”

“Why did he send you out there?”

“To explore. To search for signs of human life outside our valley.”

“Did you find any?”

“My last entry out there . . .” Hassler flipped to the end of his journal. “I wrote, ‘I alone have the key to what will save us all. I’m literally the one man in the world who can save the world.’”

“So what is it?” Theresa asked. “What’s the key?”

“To make our peace.”

“With what?”

“With the fact that this is truly the end. The world belongs to the abbies now.”

Even through her grief and shock, this statement registered.

Theresa felt suddenly, completely, alone.

“There isn’t going to be some discovery that saves us,” Hassler said. “That puts us back on the top of the food chain. This valley is the only place where we can survive. We’re going to become extinct. That’s simply a fact. Might as well do it with grace. Savor each day, each moment.”

MUSTIN

MUSTIN

Mustin brushed the snow off the rocks and settled down into his perch. Due to the sheer quantity of ammo he’d brought along this time, it had taken him an extra hour to reach the peak.

He’d scoped the town before, but of course he’d never had a target in the valley.

He zeroed out the scope on what was left of Sheriff Burke’s Bronco.

It took him three shots, followed by three minor adjustments to the parallax, before he put a round exactly where he wanted it—through the front tire on the driver side.

The town had been laid out in regular blocks, three hundred feet long on each side, which meant that further adjustments would be simple now that he had his point of reference.

He cracked his neck.

Grabbing the bolt, he opened the breach and jacked the first round out of the five-capacity magazine.

Settling in behind the focus, he enabled his headset as he glassed Main Street.

“Mustin here, in position. Over.”

Ethan Burke responded, “We’re at the tunnel door. Over.”

“Copy that. Beginning my first pass now. Stand by. Out.”

There were bodies scattered up and down Main.

Five abbies feeding in the middle of the street in front of the Steaming Bean.

For now, he ignored the forest and the cliffs surrounding the town and took his time studying the east-west-running avenues, the north-south-running streets.

He scribbled a notation on his pad after every sighting.

Eleven minutes later, he tapped the TALK button on his headset.

“Mustin back. Over.”

“Go ahead,” Ethan said.