The Last One

For 422 days, Eli has believed he is the last man alive.

After a catastrophic geomagnetic event brings down the power grid and modern society collapses with it, former Army Combat Engineer Eli retreats into the one thing he understands: survival.

Alone in the mountains above the abandoned town of Blackwood, he lives by routine. Check the perimeter. Maintain the supplies. Scan the silent radio frequencies. Stay alive.

Then an abandoned car moves.

Someone has been in Blackwood.

A yellow survey card left behind carries five cryptic lines-an infrastructure designation, a hydraulic asset, a seventy-two-hour window, and one entry Eli can't ignore:

REMAINDER COUNT: 01 (UNVERIFIED)

Eli assumes the number means him.

He's wrong.

What begins as a search for another survivor pulls him into a world he thought had disappeared-and toward people making impossible choices about who gets shelter, who gets turned away, and how much one life is worth when there isn't enough to save everyone.

Eli spent years preparing to survive the end of the world.

He never prepared to survive it alone.