The year is around 1980. A sense of quiet anticipation hung in the air over the Boulder Free Zone, a fragile hope nestled in the Rocky Mountains’ embrace. As the sun slipped over the jagged peaks, the town below, its streets once abandoned, now stir with life and purpose. The survivors had come from all over — New York, Texas, California — drawn westward by some primal need for community, sanctuary, maybe even redemption. Some had been drawn by those dreams, others by the signs that Harold Lauder had spray painted. They were all strangers bound by a common ordeal, each bearing their own stories of loss, endurance, and narrow escapes. Old storefronts and homes, dormant for so long, now hummed with new electricity. Candlelit windows and the occasional smell of cooking drifted from open doors, a sign that, in some places, warmth and humanity still had a place.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sharp, pine-laced air of the Colorado mountains. It was a strange contrast, the freshness of the air against the echoes of death that clung to his memory. A singer turned survivor, Larry never imagined he would trade his up coming success for committees on food rations and water purification. Yet here he was.