HighHank
Four years.
Four years since the world ended. Four years since the helicopters stopped flying, the government collapsed, and the hope of rescue died in the mud of the American South. For the survivors, the apocalypse is no longer a crisis to endure-it is a permanent state of decay.
For Ellis, the weight of survival finally breaks when Zoey dies.
Without her voice to anchor him, the young mechanic spirals into a profound, suffocating depression. The world has grown too quiet, too brutal, and too empty. Haunted by the ghosts of the teammates he couldn't save, Ellis decides he is tired of breathing dust. He prepares to pull the trigger and end his own story on a forgotten stretch of highway.
But the wasteland isn't done with him yet.
On the brink of surrender, a sudden, blinding catalyst shatters the silence of the dead world. A shocking discovery on the horizon upends everything Ellis thought he knew about the wreckage they left behind. In an instant, the desire to die is replaced by a desperate, white-hot fury. There is something left out there worth fighting for-and it is trapped inside the territory of a ruthless, militaristic faction of bandits.
Seeing his young companion driven by a sudden, volatile purpose, Nick-the hardened, cynical con man-refuses to let him walk into a slaughterhouse alone. Bound by shared trauma and a debt paid in blood, the suit and the overalls form a tense, professional alliance.
Together, Nick and Ellis must navigate a landscape of lawless cruelty, plot a high-stakes tactical infiltration, and risk everything to drag a piece of their past out of the lion's den. But in a world written in rust, the cost of salvation might be the remaining shreds of their humanity.