Alicia’s leg is badly wounded. Michael remembers that Sara is gone, and that Amy had pulled him into the truck at the last moment. Hours later, the doors open, and someone tells them to surrender their weapons. A woman gives them a pail to urinate in and they keep riding.

When they stop again, a man named Olson Hand introduces himself. Michael thinks he sees Theo before losing consciousness. He wakes in an infirmary with a woman sitting at his bedside. He remembers a woman breathing smoke as Peter enters. The woman, Billie, says that Michael had heatstroke. They’re in a community, over 300 strong, called the Haven.

Alicia enters on crutches with a blue-eyed man named Jude Cripp. To Michael’s relief, Peter says Sara is alive and nearby. Hollis and Billie had returned to Vegas and found Sara beneath a table in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. She only remembers waking in the truck with Hollis.

Jude says they were in Vegas on routine scavenging patrols. Michael is uneasy. He doesn’t believe Jude. Sara kisses him and tells him to get well as she passes him a note that says, “Tell them nothing” (551).