Chapter 17
I COULDN’T just stand at the edge of the devastation and quietly freak out. A dead, incinerated world might surround Frayville, but behind me were hundreds of people. Sort of people. Creatures with the memories and passions of people. Whatever they were, they needed my help.
If we truly lived in a little island of life, alone on the Earth, we couldn’t afford to lose any more of us. We were as close to human as probably still existed on the Earth. I couldn’t bear to see that vanish.
We’d had one murder. One assault. An attempt on my life—and worse, on Alice and Ceren.
I took a deep breath, imagining calm flowing through me with each exhalation, and narrowed my focus to block the plain of cinders. The blue plastic awning we stood beneath. Frost and Langley, biologist and geolo
