Ashes of the Long Road

Sixty years after the Long Burn turned the country west of the river to glass, three hundred people live inside the walls of an old water-treatment plant they call the Hearth, because water still runs from its pipes. The pumps are failing, the walls are thin, and the Zone beyond holds everything the Hearth needs: copper on the pylons, seed under a drowned arcade, a relay on a hill, books under the ash. It also holds a rival settlement that is dying of thirst, a road-cult singing its way toward a second fire, and scavenger lords who own every machine that still runs. Every expedition brings home a find and a question, and every question points up the gorge to Halden Dam, where the Burn was lit, where the Hearth’s water comes from, and where a woman’s recorded voice is still saying sorry.