The sun hadn't even rose, but she couldn't rest for any longer, nor did she want to. She knew who might be after her and Madeleine needed to move; she had been resting for far too long after she fell asleep last night on the side of the road, a huge mistake when you're trying to hide from the raiders that inevitably rise up out of disasters such as the bomb. The raiders were likely normal people once; they were people who had jobs and people who would work hard to provide for their families, but something inside of them must have changed when everything fell. No, she felt their ruthlessness is something found in a specific group of people, something that emerges after everyone else around them either goes into shock or survival mode. While the rest of the world fell, the corrupted rose into power, unveiling their true selves from a thin cover of society. This breed of person entered into neither shock nor survival mode but instead stayed the same as they had been; it was only a matter of time before their true self became unveiled.

Madeleine was fortunate to have been upwind from the blast: if she had been east of the blast she would have probably died of radiation poisoning within a year. Maddie looked down the newly-torn skin on her knees and knew she needed to dress the wound fast, or it would become infected. She reached over to the passenger glove compartment to find the first aid kid that hadn't been touched since her mother purchased it from a Rite-aid five years earlier. She pulled out a package of antiseptic wipes, ointment, and gauze to prevent her wound from getting infected. The wipes stung her knee as she tried to clean the wound of the tiny pebbles and pieces of dirt that had been in her wound since she fell at the park. When she was finished the wounds right underneath her knees looked like slimy, pink flesh with cores of pinkish-red blood vessels. She rolled up her pants and placed the sterile gauze over the tender skin and wrapped a compression wrap tightly around both of her knees.

After she finished wrapping her wounds, she started her car again and drove through the scenic backroads. For some reason the roads weren't as crowded as she thought they would be, she'd only seen a few cars drive by so far; it was as if some people just vanished. Most of the people driving the cars looked like hardcore survivalists and she'd tried to get a few of the cars to stop to give her some sort of idea as to what was going on, but as much as she tried, they would seem to ignore her as if nothing had happened. Madeline had been so exhausted from driving the last night that she forgot to eat, so she was relieved when she remembered the pears that she had stashed in her drawstring bag; she was not in the mood to be testing her odds at a gas mart where raiders might be lurking. Madeline didn't particularly enjoy interacting with other people, including her family, but now that everything around her seemed to be falling down, she felt lonely.

Madeleine had heard stories of people that went mad after they lost contact with society. Madeline's second greatest fear, next to her fear of death, was losing her sanity; people that have lost it are rarely aware of having lost their sanity. Many psych ward patients think that they are the only sane person around them, and in some cases, they are. She had to keep her mind active, she thought, or she would lose it. She remembered her family; she hoped she would see them again, but she didn't know where they were, or even if anyone in her family was still alive!

A few hours later she was entering Indiana. A silvery gray car passed her on the lane to the left of her. She looked through the shaded window and saw a little boy in the passenger seat and a teenage boy wearing a flannel driving the car. Something about the younger boy's face looked familiar to her. He had olive skin and large, downturned blue eyes. Maddie tried to signal to him to stop, but the driver didn't seem to understand and sped up. He knew she was there, and it was obvious that he thought that she was a threat. She cranked her window open, sped up, and placed her arm on the side of the car. He finally understood and stopped his car. She saw him step out of his car: "So are you gonna come out, or what?" he asked with a hint of impatience in his voice. Maddie stepped out of her car. "Yeah, do you know anything about the blast? I was out in the middle of nowhere when the bomb went off. Was any information given over the television?" "Well, there was a news broadcast about all the radiation, and according to my maps, we're out of the fallout zone right now, but I'd keep heading north if I were you." he replied. "Who's the boy in your car over there?" she asked. The traveler looked up from his shoe. "No idea; his parents must have forgotten about him or something. When I picked him up yesterday, he was knocked out inside of a camping store. I thought he was dead at first!" "What do you mean by 'blasts'? Do you mean there were multiple explosions!?" Madeleine asked. He pulled a map of the United States out of his pocket and handed it to her. He explained that the black marks were where bombs were reported to have landed before he left his home. "Wait here" he said as he ran off to his car. She started to look at the map: there was a mark near Austin, Texas, and another on Albuquerque, New Mexico. Atlanta and Jackson, Mississippi were marked as well as Cedar City in Utah, but she didn't see a mark in West Virginia, where she saw the first blast; his map was incomplete. She took a ballpoint pen from her pocket and scribbled something on West Virginia as the young man went back to his car. A moment later he walked back towards her with the boy walking next to him, his curly chocolate-brown hair was partially tucked into a black beanie hat. The boy was very skinny, and he looked like he could drown in the huge coat he was wearing. As he saw her, his face suddenly filled with recognition and shock.

As she drove west she started to notice snow falling from the cloudy sky.