Summary

During the night, Simon and Catareen awake to the noises of other people entering the house. A group of Christian religious extremists find Simon and Catareen. Their leader is a boy named Luke. The extremists wish to kill Simon and Catareen. However, Luke suddenly betrays the extremists and helps Simon and Catareen escape in the extremists’ car. Luke says that he is a devout Christian but that he does not agree with the extremists’ cruelty. Luke was raised by an impoverished single mother who abandoned Luke after forming a romantic relationship with a man. They drive away. Simon and Luke converse about past historical events, revealing to the reader that society was much disrupted by widespread terrorist attacks carried out using groups of brainwashed children. They continue to travel west. One day, while looking at Catareen, Simon seems to almost feel a...