Poor Josiah. Poor, filthy, illiterate Josiah Mench. Not even Liam, the closest thing he has to a friend, can stand to be near him. But friendship of any kind becomes a matter of survival when pandemic tears the world to pieces. Now, the survivors--children here and there, untouched by the plague--must hang together or die. Catastropolis is a book of endings. When a single generation is lost, the structures of society fail--utterly, maybe forever. But there are beginnings too, visions of what life in a new future might hold for those willing to fight for it. It is here in this new, primitive age that Josiah finds his voice, and a new people find a prophet to lead them out of the wilderness. But it is also here that heaven and hell will contend for them first. Chapter 1 My neighbors see this work as a chartered undertaking, a sanctioned effort. They want to be a part of it, and rightly so, for this is their story. So at all opportunities they encourage me with helpful offerings. I try to accept them with grace. Dori Kelso's funeral last week brought me this: Max Gailey whispering in one ear that I must remember the corn blight of '28, his grandson in the other that I must not forget the tornados that took houses on three straight days in September of '42. Three straight days Noah Street, who boards our cow and delivers our milk in the morning, is a walking catalogue of obituaries filed by year and cause of death. His wife, who accompanies him on alternate days, manages the births, and from them both I receive faded bulletins at no fee. Even the children bring me scraps of history, some stretched in the telling of their elders beyond all recognition. At these I smile and say, "A tale for your own hearth maybe." Be it calamity or bounty, war or truce, signs in the heavens or signs at our feet, all of it, according to my neighbors, is to have a place in this chronicle. And yet, as broadly cast as the fragments are, there is one memory that recurs in us, in all of us from that first generation. At the conclusion of an interview or following a relived bygone that simply must have its own chapter, my New Alaiedon neighbor will go wistful and nostalgic, or steely-eyed and amazed, and he'll remember him. He may share a story, or he may go quiet for a time at the recollection. Sometimes a hand will rise of its own impulse and touch lightly the forehead, as if in blessing. But eventually, they'll all say something like, "And of course you'll have to tell them about Josiah. Josiah Mench, I mean."