Final Frontier, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The morning sun cast long shadows across the wasteland that had once been downtown Portland, its pale light revealing the skeletal remains of skyscrapers reaching toward a sky perpetually stained with ash. Elena Reyes pulled her worn canvas jacket tighter around her shoulders as she stood atop the overturned bus that served as her lookout post. Three years had passed since the Great Collapse, and still the world refused to heal. From her vantage point, she could see the Columbia River winding its way through the devastated landscape like a muddy scar. The water ran brown now, choked with debris and the runoff from countless industrial sites that had been abandoned when civilization crumbled. Sometimes she wondered if the fish that still swam in those polluted waters glowed in the dark, mutated by whatever chemicals had leached into the ecosystem during those chaotic final months. A movement in the distance caught her attention. Elena raised the binoculars she'd salvaged from a sporting goods store months ago, adjusting the focus until the blur resolved into human figures. Three of them, picking their way carefully through the rubble of what had been Pioneer Courthouse Square. They moved with the cautious deliberation of survivors, constantly scanning their surroundings for threats both human and otherwise. Elena had learned to read body language from a distance. These weren't raiders—their posture was too defensive, too careful. Raiders moved with predatory confidence, knowing they had superior numbers and firepower. These people looked like refugees, probably a family unit trying to find somewhere safe to hole up for the winter that was fast approaching.