Sloane picked up another, gripping the handle tightly.
I took the last one and tested my weight on my ankle.
“You sure you’re good?” Sloane asked quietly.
I gave her a crooked smile.
“Good enough.”
The Mariner bumped gently against the dock. Ethan tossed the rope over one of the wooden posts and secured itwith quick, practiced hands. The dock groaned under the added weight, old wood flexing beneath the hull.
For a moment, the four of us just stood there.
Listening.
Nothing.
Waves tapping against the pilings. The distant cry of seabirds somewhere overhead. Wind moving through the pines in long, slow cries.
No voices. No engines. No sign that anyone knew we’d arrived.
Jeff stepped forward first, gun held low but ready. He climbed onto the dock slowly, boots careful on the weathered planks, eyes sweeping the shoreline in both directions before he motioned us forward.
The rest of us followed.
My boots hit the dock with a dull thud. I steadied myself beside Sloane, keeping the weight off my bad ankle as much as I could without making it obvious.
Jeff turned toward the narrow path that led from the dock into the trees. Dense pines closed in on both sides; the trail disappearing into shadow after the first twenty yards. He lifted the gun slightly, thumb resting beside the safety.
“Alright,” he said quietly.
His eyes moved once more across the silent shoreline, the empty sailboat, the still trees.
“Let’s find out who else made it to the end of the world.”
We had just cleared the treeline when the compound cameinto view.
Even after a few years, it still looked the same. Finn had built something incredible out here.
The main cabin sat in the center of the clearing—a big timber structure with a wide wraparound porch and a stone chimney rising up the side. The wood had weathered into that deep silver-gray that only comes from standing through a lot of winters.
Around it were four smaller cabins spaced in a rough circle. Guest cabins, Finn had called them the first time he walked me through the property. Places for family, he’d said.
To the right stood the barn, red paint faded and peeling. It had held chickens, ducks, a stubborn goat, and two cows. Finn insisted he’d learn to milk. He never did, but he kept them anyway, because Finn never quit anything he started—even the things he probably should have.
I knew what sat underneath that barn, though.
Most people didn’t.
Concrete walls. Steel door. Storage rooms packed floor to ceiling with supplies. Finn had shown it to me late one night over whiskey, grinning like a man who’d cracked a code nobody else even knew existed.
Turns out he might have.
Beyond the barn, partially built into the ground, the greenhouses stretched in neat rows. From where we stood, only the glass tops showed, angled toward the sun, catching the last light of the day.
Finn had always been obsessive about growing his own food, about self-sufficiency, about preparing for the thing nobody believed would actually come.
Back then, I thought he’d lost his mind; now I stood herepraying he’d lost it thoroughly enough.