With the help of "The Fireman," a strange man dressed in firefighting gear, and two children named Allie and Nick, Harper escapes Jakob's attempt to kill her and flees their home.

Retaking her maiden name of Willowes, Harper is quickly enlisted as a camp nurse and meets Father Tom Storey, its leader and the grandfather of Allie and Nick.

Harold had shared information with medical communities in the hope of learning more about Dragonscale, and had discovered that the spores became dormant upon exposure to high levels of the hormone oxytocin, released during activities that foster a strong sense of social bonding.

Harper sneaks away from the camp to collect medical supplies from her home, but is forced to hide for several hours when Jakob arrives with a gang of men who have been killing and incinerating the infected.

By this point, Tom's other daughter Carol has assumed dictatorial control of the camp and begun to punish rulebreakers by making them hold stones in their mouths for set lengths of time.

Michael admits to assaulting Tom and has now killed him to prevent him from revealing the truth, and Carol uses fabricated evidence to falsely accuse Harper of his murder and of plotting to take over the camp.

Led by a captured survivor of the hijacking, Jakob's gang invades the camp and kills many residents with gunfire; the rest take shelter in an onsite church, but most of them ignite and die when the spores in their bodies react to the overwhelming stress of the situation.

Harper, John, Allie, and Nick escape the church as Jakob destroys it with a snowplow, and they and fellow resident Renee Gilmonton take shelter in a maintenance garage at a nearby cemetery.

Learning from a radio broadcast that a detachment of firefighters is scheduled to enter neighboring Maine, the five make plans to sneak across the state line with them and then travel to an island near the town of Machias allegedly offering safety to Dragonscale sufferers.

Harper gives birth to her baby, a daughter she names Ashley, and the group set sail across the Atlantic Ocean to seek out a rumored refuge on an island off the coast of Ireland.

A short epilogue hidden in the book's credits section reveals that the boat arrives at an unspecified safe haven, with a phoenix propelling it by generating wind for its sails.