The section

On Interstate 80 in Iowa, a man named John watches the second hand on his wristwatch. Less than five minutes remain until something terrible. He is driving his family to a cabin, but a small crash in Nebraska slowed them down. Now they will not reach the exit in time. With his wife, Barbara, and their nine-year-old daughter, Emily, he pulls off the road and steers down the grassy bank. He backs the car up against the concrete post of a big billboard advertising cheap gas.

John tells them something very bad is about to happen. He sends Emily to the back seat to buckle up and hug her toy, Mr. Bunny. He has kept a secret for a year, partly because he never really believed it. He tells himself the three of them will be immune. He starts to confess to Barbara that he has been part of something worse than usual, but time runs out. On the dashboard sits a book called The Order. In the windshield it looks a little like the word "redo."

The hour arrives, and for a long while nothing happens. Emily asks to go and says she needs to pee. John laughs with huge relief. He thinks he was wrong. In his mind, the convention in Atlanta is just a convention. There will be no survivors living underground. His government did not put tiny time bombs in everyone's blood. Then Emily screams. A pickup truck flies off the highway and flips through the air, and lifeless bodies tumble out. A huge truck rolls off the road behind them. It is really happening. John's body has been protected against the invisible machines, so he lives. Twelve billion other people do not.

The story then jumps back to two days earlier, at John's home. His phone rings with a tune that reminds him of a one-night stand in Milan with a colleague named Tracy. The caller is Tracy. Barbara is washing dishes, so John pretends the line is bad and steps out into the garden. Tracy asks if he has made up his mind. Upstairs he has a leather book with instructions for the end of the world. He has read it many times in the past year. Tracy has seen it too, and she believes it.

John tells Tracy his plane to Atlanta leaves tomorrow. That is true, but it does not mean he will be on it. Tracy says her group can keep him safe. They know what was put inside him. She wants him to come to Colorado. John jokes about it being "New Moscow." He has checked out her group, which includes people on agency watch lists. Tracy says she has known a Professor Karpov for years, and that they will survive thanks to John. When John asks about his family, she pauses, then says yes, them too. He wonders what to tell Barbara. Tracy's answer is cold: lie to her, because he is good at it.

The section

Back on the roadside in Iowa, the huge truck fills John's mirror. Its trailer swings sideways and clips the back of their car, slamming it aside. Then the trailer rolls and bursts open, and brown packages fly everywhere. Up on the highway, tires squeal. It sounds alive, but John knows it is only newer cars braking by themselves. Then he sees a van racing across the grass toward Barbara's side. Tracy once told him he would only last five minutes out here on his own.

The story jumps to the day before. Every morning John whispers to the mirror that he is a hero, but he no longer believes it. He remembers his old work: sealing a poisoned letter meant for a religious leader in Istanbul, and guiding a sniper's shots. Sometimes the wrong person died. He keeps all this from Barbara. Now she is packing a nice dress for Atlanta. He almost tells her the truth. In his head, he has rehearsed the speech thousands of times. Years ago, the three of them sat in a tight medical chamber while Emily got treatment for her lungs. Tiny machines went into all three of them, to kill the bad machines everyone already carries.

The speech goes on. Everyone alive is a ticking time bomb, because the first side to strike wins. But not them. They will live underground. Barbara and Emily will sleep for a long time, and John will work with the other fathers. And it will all be okay in the end. That last part is the lie he can never say. So he will tell her they are going camping instead. He pictures her pretending to believe him, because she was always the brave one.

Back at the roadside, John sees two people slumped in the van, as if asleep. Emily scrambles into his lap. Barbara rolls out of her door, and John kicks his open. He and Emily dive into the grass as the van smashes into their car. The two vehicles tumble together, and camping gear spills out. Then everything goes quiet. Barbara wants to help the people in the van and starts dialing her phone. John says no one will answer. Everyone is gone. Barbara realizes he knew. John only thinks about getting another car. There are plenty nearby. He tells Barbara to keep Emily down there, so she will not see the highway, and he climbs up alone.

The story jumps back one year, to a hotel room in Milan. Tracy smokes after they have slept together. She tells him to move to Italy. They once worked down the same hall at the Pentagon without knowing each other's jobs. John nearly says there will be nowhere left to run. He only says he is scared. Tracy opens a drawer and finds his book. She thinks it is a Bible. He tells her it is about the end of the world. He knows the book is safe because it sounds unbelievable. The real secret is who wrote it. That night he dreams of burying Barbara and Emily in a crypt and living on alone for centuries. He wakes briefly to see Tracy still reading.

The section

Up on Interstate 80, the cars sit in neat lines, lights still blinking. They seem alive, but everyone inside is dead. John thinks about a whole world killed by elected leaders, and about how many of these drivers voted for them. He tells himself someone else would have done it eventually. Tiny machines that can build other machines are getting cheap. One madman could program them to hunt people by their DNA. He remembers printing his first gun as a teenager. That he understood. This new technology belongs to a younger generation.

He picks a black Lexus SUV, a car he always wanted. Dead faces watch him, with blood running from their noses and ears. He wipes his own nose and checks his knuckle. Nothing. He lets a barking dog out of a station wagon. The Lexus driver is a man in a tie, and there is no baby seat in the back, which relieves John. He lifts the man out. It reminds him of a chemical attack he saw in Syria. He drives the Lexus down the bank to his family.

The three of them load their gear into the new car. For Emily it is a scavenger hunt. A buzzard lands on the billboard. Emily finds the small radio John packed, and he wonders what hope made him bring it. Barbara stays silent until John explains. He says he hoped nothing would happen. She cannot reach anyone, not even her father. John says everyone is gone and it is just them. Barbara asks if this is because of his work, and he nods. She asks if he did it. Not directly, he says. She says it is something he went along with. He knows she is right. Going along is what he does. Then Emily brings him the blue book, The Order. He tells her it is nobody's and to leave it.

The story jumps back to the day before. In the rain, John takes two sets of plane tickets out of the blue book. He reads the security section, his future job underground. He imagines sealing his wife and daughter into silver coffins with one last lie. He is sure that not everyone who goes into the bunker will come out alive. The other tickets are for Colorado Springs, to Tracy's group, which he thinks is madness. In the garage he lights the old camping stove and remembers the burnt flapjacks Emily loved. He puts both envelopes on the flames. It is not a choice, he thinks, but a refusal to choose.

Now John's family reaches the cabin. It belongs to Carlos, an old friend from the army, and John has visited only once, years ago. The lake is as lovely as he remembers. There will be deer and fish, but it will be a strange, quiet life. Then a silent passenger jet glides low over the lake and crashes in the trees. There is no fire, because it has no fuel left. John thinks this life is still better than the bunker or Colorado. Barbara leans against him. His nose itches. When he wipes it, there is a spot of blood on his knuckle.

The section

In Colorado, inside a mountain, ten people called the founders wait by a pair of huge steel doors while snow falls. They found an old hole in the mountain, dug it deeper and turned it into a shelter. Their saying is "carry on." Igor, a man with a scarred hand, started it. Outside, piles of rubble and abandoned trucks and buses sit under the snow. The bus tracks from yesterday, when the invited guests arrived, are already filling in.

Tracy, the main character, stands between Anatoly, a heavy, bearded physicist, and Igor, who keeps checking a silver pocket watch. Igor says his hand comes from Chernobyl. Anatoly told Tracy it was a chemical burn. Tracy listens for a car. She hopes a man named John will rush in at the last second, like in the movies. With five minutes left, she admits to herself that he isn't coming. He went to Atlanta with the others, following orders. She feels that building this place for the two of them was a fantasy.

Igor says they should go inside. Patrice suddenly runs out, scoops up some snow and comes back eating it. Tracy thinks about grabbing a twig or a snowflake, but Anatoly guides her in. The founders shove the doors shut. They are four feet thick and screech like a wolf crying. One founder wails. Tracy remembers her first broken heart, when it felt like the end of the world. Today feels like that.

Inside are nearly five thousand confused people. They came for retreats, reunions and holidays. Now the founders must tell them the truth. Tracy used most of her invitations on soldiers, because once the world is clean she wants to see the people who did this shot. She has no real friends. Her only family is her father, her older sister April, and April's husband, Remy.

She goes to their room. They are dressed for the camping trip she promised them. She explains that tiny machines, like those used in hospitals to fight cancer, are in everyone's blood. They can kill as easily as heal. A switch now exists that could wipe out everyone, and some hacker would flip it one day. So "our government" acted first, to control what comes after. The founders didn't do it, she says. They found out, couldn't stop it, and built this place. Her family was protected by a shot on the bus. They will stay six months, maybe a year. Remy, an accountant and survivalist, refuses to believe it. Tracy says they are sure, which is a lie. Her father, whose memory is failing, asks if she did this. She says no.

She remembers a night in Milan with John, who is married. Looking for his gun in his dresser, she found a book with the word Order on the cover. John panicked. While he slept, she recorded every page with her phone. April asks when it will happen. In a few hours, Tracy says. When Tracy says she has to go to a meeting, April explodes and asks if they will decide who lives and dies. Remy holds her back. As Tracy shuts the door, April starts pounding on it.

The section

In the Colorado mountain, on the first day, Tracy walks to the command room with April's screams still in her ears. She realizes that saving someone against their will is not simple. As a teenager, she once told her mother she wished she'd never been born. Now she has made the same mistake her mother made: deciding for someone else. The shelter is an old bunker, built long ago for a different kind of disaster. The founders added two thousand rooms and invited three times the people it was built for, expecting a short stay. Igor and Anatoly leased it by pretending to hunt for neutrinos.

The command room has a round table, a ring of TV screens and a shiny steel pod. The pod was built from stolen plans. They first thought it would clear the machines from their blood, but it turned out to be a freezing device, a side project of the Atlanta team. The founders gather silently. Then the screens switch to a stage outside Atlanta, where a young girl in a black dress sings the national anthem. Tracy suddenly fears she is wrong, and that everyone will laugh at the people in the mountain. Strangely, that feels worse than twelve billion deaths. She searches the crowd for John.

The countdown clock reaches zero, and nothing happens. Someone says the people on screen are still breathing. Three seconds later, a reporter swears. A screen shows a flash and a mushroom cloud, then goes black. Another shows three mushroom clouds before it dies. Then, everywhere at once, the people on the screens slump over, blood running from their noses and ears. The founders stop doubting. Dmitry fumbles with the controls and lands on a comedy rerun with canned laughter. To Tracy, all humanity now feels canned.

The next night, Anatoly wakes Tracy from nightmares. Fights broke out at orientation. In the command room, Dmitry, the clever programmer who switched off the machines in their blood, has bad news. The program has changed. They can't go out for five hundred years, not six months. The code assembled itself after the attack. He can read it, but he can't change it. The book only covers one shift, he thinks. The pod probably lets people take turns across the centuries.

The food will last about a year, two at most with rationing. Sharon points out that people are already in restraints from the first round of bad news. Tracy says they now face the same choice the people in Atlanta made: the world is too small for everyone. Dmitry does the math. The food could feed fifteen people for five hundred years. Anatoly adds that there could be only one birth for each death. Natasha refuses, preferring one year with her family. Sherman warns that in a year they'll start thinking like starving settlers trapped in the mountains long ago.

Dmitry says it could be quick, using test machines he can program. Every month of delay costs one place. Patrice asks what the point is, if their descendants live in a hole for generations. Tracy says the point is that the people in Atlanta mustn't get away with it. Dmitry agrees. That is why they stocked guns. The fifteen will carry the story forward. Tracy asks for a day or two to think. Dmitry promises to do nothing without them. Sherman, not joking, wants a promise he'll wake up.

The section

In the Colorado mountain, the morning after the meeting, Tracy eats bread and canned ham in the mess hall with three other founders. No one speaks. Around them, thousands of strangers introduce themselves and try to adjust to their new home. Igor chews with empty eyes. Tracy knows he is thinking what she is thinking: the room is full of ghosts. What they must do can't be stopped.

For the first time, Tracy understands John. In restaurants, he used to glance around with a haunted look, and she thought he was searching for an exit. Now she sees he was looking at the people, knowing what would happen to them. Then April and Remy come out of the serving line with their trays. Tracy starts to wave, then stops. Seeing her sister among the doomed, she knows what she has to do. She leaves her tray and goes to find Dmitry.

The plan is set. Nine of the ten founders, plus six people they choose, will spend their lives writing a new Order for the generations to come. Tracy has decided not to be one of them. Without John, she can't pair off with one of the men. Instead she writes her own instructions, including how to open the great doors. She spends her days helping Dmitry change the pod, which was made for one person, so that it can hold two. She squeezes inside to test the fit while he works on the tubes.

She asks what happens if no one is left to open it. Dmitry says he can link it to the machines' network. When their timer runs out, the pod will open, whether that is twenty years away or twenty thousand. Then she asks what being frozen will feel like. Dmitry hesitates, then admits the truth. Nobody is fighting for a place in the pod because it is really a coffin. People have frozen their loved ones in these for years, and nobody ever wakes. Maybe, he says, it is really for the people outside the box. Tracy thinks about how selfish it all is: giving life without asking, taking life to save someone else. She says it all feels pointless. Dmitry tells her that is life. What she did was right, and the people who started this are to blame.

She checks a sealed storage trunk. Inside are her handwritten instructions, maps, two handguns, clothes, April and Remy's camping gear, and as much extra food as would fit. Then she realizes she was wrong to call this place a crypt, or tomb. The dead are outside. The mountain is a small bubble of life, now with room for fifteen people. Fifteen plus two.

At night, Tracy kisses her sleeping father goodbye. Igor and Anatoly wait outside April's door. They didn't like her choice but agreed to help. She has given up her own place for two others. The two men use syringes on Remy, then April, without waking them. When they wake, five hundred years will have passed in a blink, with a key around their necks and an apology from Tracy. Carrying them through the dark halls, she whispers "carry on." This time it sounds hopeful.

The section

This story begins with April, Tracy's older sister from In the Mountain. She wakes in the dark, freezing and shaking, squeezed inside a metal tube. A pump hums behind her head. Tubes run into her arm and up her leg, and another body is jammed in beside her. The last thing she remembers is going to sleep in a bunk deep inside a mountain in Colorado. She was told there that the world had been poisoned and everyone she knew was gone. Her sister had brought them there by bus.

Warmth slowly creeps back into her, partly through the tubes. The other person coughs. The lid above her cracks open, and harsh light floods in. The man by her feet is her husband, Remy. April crawls up to hold him. Both are naked, blue-lipped and trembling. Neither knows how they got into this steel pod.

She shoves the lid fully open. Above them, among pipes and wires, hangs a yellow storage trunk. One word is painted on it in black: her name. Remy spots a key on a thread around her neck, and a lock hangs from the trunk. April understands it is a message. The tubes, her stiff joints and the smell of death suggest they have slept far longer than one night. The band holding her IV fastens like Velcro, not tape, which makes her wonder if they were stored longer than glue can last. Whoever left them here expected them to wake alone, with no one to explain. April feels sure her sister Tracy is behind it.

They help each other pull out the IVs and the tubes in their bladders. She unties a rope and lowers the trunk. She thinks of Tracy's history: running off to join the army, then working for secret government agencies, and now locking thousands of people in a mountain and the two of them in a box. April snaps the thread, unlocks the trunk, and air hisses out as the seal breaks.

Inside are clothes, tins of water with vials of blue powder taped to them, and a note in Tracy's handwriting telling them to drink. April thinks of Alice in Wonderland. Remy asks if Tracy wants to help them or kill them. April says Tracy probably thinks she's helping, and will probably get them killed. They stir in the powder and drink. It tastes of metal and chalk. Under the clothes are their own camping backpacks, freeze-dried meals, more water, a first-aid kit, pills, Tracy's pocketknife, and a gun with loaded clips. There is also an old road atlas with a red circle drawn on one page, and a sealed letter for April.

The letter is an apology and a confession. It gives a short history of the end of the world and Tracy's part in watching it happen. April reads aloud that they have been asleep for five hundred years. Neither of them can believe it. They might be the only two people left on Earth. Tracy explains that the time before the air would be safe was badly misjudged, and there was only enough food to carry fifteen people through. Then she reaches the next part.

The section

The end of Tracy's letter says the people who destroyed the world are in Atlanta, and she has marked the spot on the map. April and whoever else is left in the facility are the only living people who know what they did. Tracy asks them to make those people pay, for everyone. Nothing can undo it, she writes, but there can be something like justice. April cries with grief and rage. The red circle sits on a plain stretch of land outside Atlanta. She has no idea what Tracy expects her to do. Then the door handle starts to move, jiggling like a child is playing with it. Something scratches and growls. April asks Remy if he knows how to use the gun.

The story jumps to the woods, where Elise is hunting. She is grown now, strong and fast, with six years of practice. Her bow once belonged to Juliette. Elise shoots a buck through the heart, and it falls at once. Her brother likes to joke that if she keeps feeding everyone, she will be mayor one day. She walks to her kill with the knife Solo gave her, forgetting Juliette's lesson that the hunt is never really over. Another noise makes her crouch. Something is watching her, and it is the most dangerous animal of all.

Back in the steel room, the door bursts open. A wild creature comes in on all fours, sniffing. It roars a word that sounds like "feef-deen" and leaps at April and Remy. It bites off two of Remy's fingers. Remy fires, and the creature drops. April wraps his bleeding hand in a shirt from the trunk. Looking closer, she sees it is mostly a man: naked, hairy and thin. A woman crawls in, says the same word, and gets ready to jump. Remy shoots her too. A third creature, another woman, looks at the two dead and the two living, says the word calmly, and wanders off as if satisfied.

In the woods, Elise calls out, thinking she sees two men. She asks if it is Rickson. A woman answers and asks her not to shoot. A couple steps out holding hands, palms up, wearing backpacks. They look ragged and starved, like the people who came out of Silo 37 a few years ago. Elise is thrilled by the chance of new topsiders. She believes people brave enough to leave their silos turn out to be good. The man says only that they were underground a long time. Elise holds back her questions.

The man says they met a group to the northwest, probably Debra's scouting party, gone a week. That group told them the people in charge live by the coast. He asks to be taken to their city. Elise says it is just a village. He offers to help with the deer. They seem harmless, and she is sure she could handle them if needed. They give their names: Remy and his wife, April. Shaking his hand, Elise notices he is missing two fingers.

The section

In the woods near the coast, Elise and Remy cut the best meat from the deer and wrap it in the hide. April and Remy carry it on their shoulders while Elise leads them toward camp. She holds back her questions. Juliette taught that newcomers share their stories, their "demons," only when they are ready. Elise suspects Juliette herself holds back the most. Juliette has been mayor for years, and hardly anyone votes for someone else. She freed everyone, yet a hard frown never leaves her face. Elise senses old secrets she will never share.

Elise explains the night fires, where people tell their stories. She is from Silo 17, which had only a few survivors. Many more came from Silo 18, like Juliette. She says they don't have to share how many of their people are left. April suddenly answers: fifteen, for the longest time, and now only two. Elise, whose own silo gave just five survivors, cannot imagine only two. Asked how many villagers there are, Elise says they don't count, because counting upsets many of them. There is talk of a second village to the north, maybe in the Carolinas. Remy repeats the word with a long "eye" sound. Elise corrects him. Everyone who can read and write gets a vote.

At the larder they drop off the meat, and Elise shoos away Haney, the butcher's boy. April asks if Juliette is in charge. Elise says she is the mayor and lives by the beach. Taking back paths, Elise notices April clutching her bag to her chest, looking afraid and determined. Juliette's home is a small shelter tied high in the trees. She once joked she was trying to reach heaven, just not in a hurry. Now she stands by the surf, watching a row of fishing rods. Solo is baiting a line and Charlotte is casting farther down the beach.

The couple are oddly unimpressed by the ocean. They only stare at Juliette. Elise introduces them. April asks if she is in charge of all this. Juliette glances at Solo and Charlotte and says they aren't strict about who is in charge. She offers food and rest. April says they will speak now. They aren't here to be saved, she says. They died long ago and have walked for years to say one thing: you didn't get away with it.

April drops the bag. She is holding a silver gun aimed at Juliette. Elise steps in front, but Juliette pushes her aside and asks April to wait. April says they have waited long enough and fires. Juliette falls. Elise looses an arrow before a second shot. It strikes April in the throat. Remy grabs for the gun. Elise shoots him in the side, hoping not to kill him. When he reaches again, she shoots him through the heart, her second such shot that day.

Solo and Charlotte come running. Elise rolls Juliette over. Blood is spreading across her chest. Elise begs her to be strong. A tear slides down Juliette's face, and then she smiles and whispers that it already is okay. Her eyes close, her frown smooths away, and her jaw relaxes. The story ends there, with her demons scattering and a strong sense that she is dying at peace.