Road (novel)

The novel takes place years after a global catastrophe, possibly a nuclear war that destroyed cities and caused the death of people, animals and plants. The main characters - father and little son, born after the disaster - try to cross the territory of the former USA on foot and go to the distant and coveted sea. They suffer from disease, hunger and fear of other people - bandits and cannibals. The boy’s mother, having lost all hope, committed suicide long before the events of the book, the father is sick, coughs up blood and realizes that he will die soon. The last hope for the future for his son he places on a journey to the sea; he repeats to his son “we are good” and “we carry fire” as opposed to bandits who have lost their human appearance.

Father and son are transporting their supplies on a cart from the hypermarket, father is armed with a revolver with the last two cartridges. They visit the ruined city and the house in which his father's childhood passed. It is getting colder, snow is falling. Father and son meet a group of looters moving in a truck; one of them, having retired to the forest for needs, stumbles upon a father and son and threatens his son with a knife. Father kills him with a shot from a revolver, and when they flee they have to drop the cart. In the ruins of the city, they meet another small boy, the same age as his son, but he runs away from them. Later, father and son enter the territory captured by some powerful gang, see stakes with severed heads, and later - an marching army of armed thugs, accompanied by slaves and carts with booty.

In search of food, father and son break into an old manor and find mutilated people locked in a cellar asking for help. The father understands that he was in the lair of the bandits, and hastily leads his son out of the estate. Later, on an abandoned farm, his father discovers a priceless cache - a well-hidden bunker with supplies; for the first time in their journey, they manage to wash themselves and eat properly. Father decides that it is dangerous to stay in one place for a long time, and they continue their journey to the sea, loading food with a new cart, seized on the ruins of a neighboring town.

They meet an old man named Eli and share food with him; Eli, as frightened and distrustful as they are, sparingly talks about himself and gloomily remarks that he will be “calmer” when no one is left on earth. On the road, it seems to their father that someone is chasing them, and they are hiding, having really seen a passing group of exhausted travelers - three men and a woman in their final pregnancy. Later, the father and son find the camp left by these passers-by and in it are the remains of the eaten newborn child.

Father and son finally go to the sea, cold and gloomy, and do not know what to do next. The father finds the yacht thrown on the stones and looks for useful supplies on it; he is armed with a flare gun with flares. The son has a cold and is very ill; while his father is caring for him, a tramp appears on the shore and steals a food cart from them. Father catches up with the thief and at the point of a revolver forces him to give back not only stolen goods, but also clothes and shoes. Father and son continue their journey, realizing that a stripped thief will inevitably freeze and die.

In a coastal town armed with a bow and arrows, a local resident fires them from the window and hits his father with an arrow in the leg. Father seriously wounds him by firing a flare out of the window. The wound becomes inflamed, although the father tries to rinse and sew it up independently; he is getting worse and worse, and by the river, blocking the further path to the south, he asks his son to abandon him and move on alone. The son leaves, but then returns and remains in the camp until his father dies in a dream. Later, the son meets a benevolent family - a man, a woman and two children who take him with them; the son continues to talk with the deceased father, as if he were nearby.

• "Road" on the site " Science Fiction Laboratory "