Hell Or High Water As Cities Burn Zip Guide

The last train out of Chicago didn’t have a horn. Didn’t have lights. Didn’t have a driver. Just a long, rust-veined snake of freight cars rattling south through the ash-dark afternoon. Kael swung himself into an open hopper car a mile past the railyard, landing hard on a bed of crushed limestone and shattered glass. His knees screamed. He ignored them.

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Morning came dirty and gray. The train slowed near a collapsed overpass, and Kael jumped, rolling into a ditch full of charred cornstalks. He lay there a moment, listening. No engines. No helicopters. Just the whisper of ash falling like dirty snow. The last train out of Chicago didn’t have a horn

He went walking. And the cities burned behind him, one by one, like fallen stars. Just a long, rust-veined snake of freight cars

Then came hell.

High water came first. The Mississippi had swallowed St. Louis before Memorial Day. Then the levees broke around Cairo, and the Ohio clawed its way up through Kentucky like a drowning hand. FEMA stopped answering phones in June. By July, the networks were just static and prayer loops.

Then at least he went walking. With his sister’s face over his heart and the taste of canned peaches on his tongue and a three-bullet pistol riding his hip.