Summary

In The Wheat, the wheat grows, but there is no harvest as the farmer died of plague and his family fled to town only to perish in the Third Wave. Previously strangers, five refugees are bound together as they take shelter in the abandoned farmhouse and wonder what will happen next after the plague that has killed billions. The wheat parts, revealing a stumbling child, and one of the women prevent the others from killing the child who complains of a sore throat. As the woman peers into the child's mouth, the carbon dioxide in her breath causes the bomb to detonate, and the explosion consumes the house and the fields.

In Book One, Part I: The Problem of Rats, Chapter 1 begins with Ringer joining Cassie at the window as she keeps watch, knowing that she...