Wolfe sits beside me in the jeep and Stryker is in the back. Silence fills the miles as we make our way from Sanctuary out to the last working nuclear power plant in the region. A monumental and dangerous task faces us. Several other cars follow the wake of our dusty trail. Other soldiers, men who will hold off the Primitives once we arrive.

In one of the cars, buried in the middle of the pack is the most important member of our team. An eighty-one-year-old historian who ...