The Pesthouse

　　Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a barren, lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow, the soil contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope left: passage on a ship to Europe.

　　Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated hovel. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman suffering from a deadly infection and confined to The Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces. As they make their way through the stark ruins of old America, their wariness of one another is replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before. Their journey eventually brings them to The Ark, a religious community that offers food and beds to weary travelers awaiting emigration. Franklin and Margaret turn their thoughts to the future and realize that fulfilling their dream of creating a safe, loving home together means taking a path far different from the one they anticipated.