Burn

Storey jumps back, and the child slowly crawls out of the stowage compartment. She asks about Crystal, her dog. Jess says that he doesn’t know, and the girl begins to cry. When they ask her name, the girl seems too traumatized to tell them. Storey calms the girl until she falls asleep, and the friends discuss whether to return to the town to try to find the girl’s parents.

They carefully arrive back at the shore near town, hiding under cover of darkness and docking in an abandoned boathouse. They take the girl and head back into the town to look for her family.

When he was a kid, Storey’s mother loved Jess and frequently had him stay over with them. Unlike Storey, Jess was a quiet and thoughtful child, with a desire to eventually become a poet or a soccer star. Jess also loved being there, as Storey’s parents treated him like a beloved nephew, and were enthusiastic where Jess’s parents were cold.

Jess and Storey crest the top of the hill coming into town, the girl draped asleep over Storey’s shoulder. They set up camp and dry their clothing by the fire. When they awake in the morning, frost has covered the tarp above them.

In the morning, they light a fire to cook breakfast and gently wake the girl. She asks after her mother and her dog, Crystal, and Storey tells her that they’ll be looking for them after breakfast. To calm her down, Storey uses his phone’s precious battery life to show her a video of his dog. They eventually manage to convince her to eat, but she still hasn’t told them her name.

At the edge of town, they scan the lighthouse and environs with binoculars but see no further evidence of life. Jess checks his rifle, finding that he only has three bullets left. They decide to head into town to find the girl’s mother.

Jess remembers the time in which he, at the age of 17, slept with Storey’s mother, Hannah, in an impulsive moment for them both. Jess feels confused about the moment, understanding that the memory could have been traumatic for him. However, he feels grateful for what happened. After that, he and Storey’s mother carried on as they had before, with him remaining like an adopted member of the family. Jess feels as if he owes Storey a debt, and he struggles with long-withheld feelings of shame about the event.

Now, walking down the middle of the street in order to check for danger before Storey and the girl descend into town, Jess wonders whether he’s willing to put his life on the line because of that perceived debt. Suddenly, a boom shatters the silence, and a bullet slams into the earth next to him. Jess dives into a ditch at the side of the road for cover.

He realizes that the shot came from a shotgun, which was unlikely to seriously injure him at that distance, and he wonders why the shooter would fire so early, alerting him to the danger. Jess sneaks around the side of the road, weaving between buildings, and encounters an old man on a holding the shotgun. Jess hides against the siding of a house, deciding whether to take a shot toward the old man or hold back and try to hail him.

Jess decides to shout to the old man, who acts belligerent in such a way that it sends Jess into peals of laughter. They converse for a while, and when Jess reveals that another hunter is in the woods behind him, an ATV revs away from the house toward the woods. Jess braces for a shot, thinking that Storey will kill the old man, but no explosion comes.

Storey and the girl come out of the woods toward Jess. Storey tells him that he tried to flag down the ATV, but the old man accelerated away from him and into the woods. The girl, stressed by the sight of all the violence and bodies, collapses into a fit of emotion, requiring Storey to restrain her with a blanket. Jess manages to calm her down, and the girl leads them to her house at the top of a hill. The girl tells them her name—Collie.

At her house, Storey takes her off to the side while Jess hides the body of her dog, who has been shot and killed. They pretend as if they don’t know where the dog is as Collie continues to call for her. They walk up onto the porch, and Jess shoulders open the door to check whether it’s safe and find Collie’s mother. Inside, they find no bodies, but the place has been ransacked.

In the kitchen, Collie reveals a trapdoor hidden beneath a rug. They don’t find any people inside, but rather a supply of food, batteries, and a radio.

Jess knows a little about ham radios from spending time with his uncle, who’d been obsessed with them. He flips on the power switch but hears nothing from the radio. The device is dead and the batteries fully drained. Storey, who was digging through the family’s stored food, finds wrapped bundles inside of the food containers, which Jess identifies as bricks of C-4. The friends wonder whether Collie’s father was a member of the group that blew up the bridges to the south.

Jess and Storey remember that the truck out should have a battery in it, which they can connect to the radio. Before he removes the battery, Jess checks the local AM stations to see if he can pick up any signals. He manages to connect to a station run out of Quebec, and with his shaky French, he translates the broadcast. The president of the United States was assassinated by a Maine secessionist named Lamar Blodgett. Afterward, the Maine legislature voted to secede from the Union, and the federal government sent Marine troops into Maine to quell what they referred to as “riots,” though this excuse is a cover for their real goal of exterminating the residents of the state. Other nearby states, including Vermont and New Hampshire, have mobilized their National Guards to defend their borders against federal troops. Jess realizes that the town they’re in must be a regional command center for the rebels, which is why the Marines hadn’t destroyed it like they had the other towns: They must be searching for intel somewhere within its limits.

Storey and Collie emerge from the shelter, and Jess tells Storey what he heard over the radio. Storey blanches, terrified, as this news means that the border between states will be shut down, making it much harder to find his family. Jess and Storey pack up their supplies and cook food for the road.