He crosses areas where every living thing had been vaporized, countryside where anthrax and radiation sickness are killing off the survivors, where gangs of homeless kids had reverted to savagery and would murder for a pair of shoes and where women had slipped to the last stages of degradation.

A crucial point in the book is the moment when Gavin finds a Soviet Air Force pilot who had parachuted onto American soil.

With no organized government left to establish Prisoner of War Camps and uphold the Geneva Conventions, the pilot was captured by boys who are constantly torturing and degrading him, venting upon him their anger and frustration.

Eventually, Gavin wins his struggle with Collingwood - a moral as well as material victory - and in the cautiously optimistic ending, finds a new love and the possibility of making a new start.

In this book, bestial and dark instincts make their very conspicuous appearance, but unlike in Lord of the Flies they can be overcome.