Eleven hundred miles of broken country between four strangers and the only town that still has its lights on.
Three years after the grid went down for good, the country is a patchwork of locked towns, toll roads and empty highways. Word has come that a town on the northern lakes has power, water and room, and that it opens its gates once a year, on the first day of winter. Four strangers who need to get there have pooled what they have: one truck that runs on almost anything, one map that is mostly right, and not nearly enough trust. Everything between here and there wants something from them.
4 roles. You take one; your friends take the rest, and the narrator plays any left over. Anyone can bring a character of their own into a role instead.
A diesel mechanic who rebuilt the truck from three dead ones and treats it with more tenderness than he treats people.
A high-school chemistry teacher who has kept nine children alive for three years and is now walking north with the last of them grown.
A teenager who grew up in the ruins, knows every roof between here and the river, and joined the group because the truck was worth stealing.
A National Guard sergeant who held a refugee checkpoint for a year after the collapse and walked away from it one night without explanation.