The school has food, beds, and men at the windows. The razor wire leans in.

Ashlynn, Leith, and eleven-year-old Katrina have survived the road north. With winter closing in and their food running out, they need somewhere to stay. The fortified high school in Pleasantville offers hot meals, clean clothes, and a room where they can sleep together.

Ashlynn notices how carefully everyone avoids questions. Leith notices the chained fire exit. They stay anyway.

Inside, the men who control the food know how to make themselves indispensable. Leith is given work he is good at. Katrina finally has other children to play with. And Ashlynn is offered the one thing she has been trying to live without.

As they begin to understand what keeps the school running, leaving means giving up everything they came looking for. Staying means trusting people who already know what each of them needs—and how to use it.

Ashlynn and Leith promised to keep each other alive. Getting their family out of Pleasantville will test what they are willing to do for that promise.

We Will Not Be Taken Here is Book Two of The Unburied, a dark post-apocalyptic series about love, addiction, and the families we choose when the world falls apart. Begin with We Will Never Have to Bury Each Other.

The City That Never Sleeps has gone dark.

Ashlynn is stranded in a Park Avenue apartment with thirty-one pills, a grief she refuses to name, and a candle burning in the window. She tells herself the light is practical. She knows it is a plea.

Leith is moving north through Manhattan with an open wound, an empty pistol, and a deadline. He survives by planning every possible version of disaster. The version where he ignores the candle is safer.