Way again in 2019, io9 revealed an excerpt from Chuck Wendig’s apocalyptic thriller Wanderers—a e book a couple of pandemic of types that went on to be a hit amid a real-world pandemic. Then, in late 2021, we revealed the duvet and prologue for its sequel, Wayward, which was initially due in August 2022. That received bumped a couple of months, however the time of arrival is nearly right here, and we’ve received another peek at Wendig’s newest to share.

Here’s the abstract, in case you want a refresher:

Five years in the past, unusual Americans fell below the grip of an odd new illness that precipitated them to sleepwalk throughout the nation to a vacation spot solely they knew. They have been adopted on their quest by the shepherds: family and friends who gave up all the things to guard them.

Their secret vacation spot: Ouray, a small city in Colorado that might change into one of many final outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was solely the primary in a series of occasions that led to the top of the world—and the delivery of a brand new one.

The survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling by grief to steer the city; Marcy, the previous police officer who desires solely to take care of the individuals she loves; and Shana, the teenage lady who grew to become the primary shepherd—and an unlikely hero whose braveness shall be wanted once more.

Because the individuals of Ouray should not the one survivors, and the world they’re constructing is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing below the management of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And within the very coronary heart of Ouray, essentially the most highly effective survivor of all is plotting its personal imaginative and prescient for the brand new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse.

Against these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the remainder have just one hope: each other. Because the one solution to survive the top of the world is collectively.

Here’s a take a look at the complete cowl, adopted by the excerpt!

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1

BLACK SWIFT

Civilization falls in a single place however rises in one other.

—Annalee Newitz, Reddit AMA

SEPTEMBER 1, 2025

Ouray, Colorado

I’M NOT ALONE OUT HERE, Benji thought. It was within the air—a white noise vibration, the faintest disruption of the silence that had seized the world.

Over the years right here in Ouray, because the Sleepwalkers slept, and finally as they woke up, he’d seen one thing up right here, west of city. A fowl, he’d thought on the time. But it glinted a bit within the solar. And it didn’t transfer like a fowl, by no means. One time, a pair years again, he’d seen it once more on a foggy day—a form shifting above the bushes earlier than dropping straight down. A 12 months later, as night settled in, he noticed it as soon as extra, perhaps 1 / 4 mile off: a darkish little mote, like a crow. It rushed ahead, then went quick in the other way earlier than once more disappearing.

Benji had been chasing it ever since. He got here out right here a pair instances per week—to get in a stroll, to assist feed the townsfolk by searching deer within the spring or bighorn within the winter, but additionally simply on the off probability he’d spy it once more.

He felt like a loopy individual. No one else had seen it. But Benji was a person of each science and religion. He had religion he’d see it once more. A speculation he examined usually.

This morning, he’d gone off the Oak Creek path, stalking an outdated deer path by the spruce, about halfway as much as the overlook on Hayden Mountain.

And he was positive that as we speak was the day. He might really feel it in his tooth. He knew he wasn’t alone out right here: a undeniable fact that each thrilled him and troubled him in equal measure. Because being alone out right here wasn’t good. The world was largely gone. Civilization with it. So, if it wasn’t an individual out right here—and if it wasn’t the little UFO he’d been monitoring—then that would imply a black bear.

Or worse, a mountain lion.

Such predators didn’t care a lot for human prey, particularly now that these animals have been now not pressured to forage for rubbish or human meals—however ought to he come across one with its household close by? He’d be torn to pink ribbons.

His palms tightened across the chilly metallic of the Winchester lever-action rifle. And then, forward, he heard one thing. Not a telltale snap of twig or crunch of leaf. No, this sound was a low, mechanical whine, like a distant drill spinning.

Not a bear. Not a cougar.

And it was coming nearer.

He introduced the butt of the weapon to his shoulder however stored the barrel low. His heartbeat kicked up like a galloping horse.

Vmmmmm.

That sound, closing in. Ahead, he noticed one thing shake the leaves of an aspen, and shudder the branches of a blue spruce.

There was a beat the place he heard nothing, noticed nothing—But then Benji staggered again as a form broke by the tree line onto the path simply forward of him. The rifle went up—and down the sights, he noticed what had emerged:

A drone. No larger than a dinner plate and matte grey with 4 propellers—two within the again raised up, and two within the entrance down low, the way in which {that a} crab held its claws. The drone hovered midair and pivoted care-fully towards him. Four pink lights marked the corners beneath every propeller, and beneath its physique, in a wire mesh cage, was what appeared like a digicam.

The drone was filthy and corroded. Bits of twig and vegetation dangled from it. It hovered about thirty ft in entrance of him.

He nearly laughed. There it was. He’d discovered it. He hadn’t misplaced his thoughts!

Vmmmmm.

“Who are you?” he requested. It felt silly to ask it a query: The drone was a tool, not an individual. But it did have a digicam. And somebody needed to be piloting it, proper? Unless it was autonomous. Weren’t there tales from years in the past about drones flying over the Western states? Google, maybe? Bureau of Land Management? But might such a drone nonetheless be powered up and flying about?

The drone continued to hover in place. As if it was concerning him the identical manner he was concerning it.

And then, similar to that, it spun the other way and darted away from him. Benji had no time to assume, so he let his physique react: He levered a spherical into the chamber, thumbed off the security, took intention, and—The gun bucked towards his shoulder as he pulled the set off. His ears misplaced all sound as he discharged the weapon, and now Benji cursed himself, as a result of he wanted his ears out right here. He didn’t need the sound of a mountain lion creeping up on him to be misplaced beneath a crush of tinnitus. Damnit.

He set his jaw and broke right into a run, bolting down the path. He noticed the glint of the drone buzzing by the bushes forward, and he had no confidence in his capacity to catch it—it glided by the air effortlessly, with none friction to hinder its escape. Benji, in the meantime, hard-charged ahead—although he was older nowadays, he was stronger, quicker, extra bodily succesful than he’d been within the Beforetimes (as Shana and among the different townsfolk known as it). Just the identical, the path was uneven, overgrown, hewn roughly from the panorama as if by a crude, broken-tipped knife. It narrowed forward, too, and he needed to tighten his gait even because the drone zipped ahead.

I might cease. I might shoot once more. One final probability, a final shot, to take the drone down. If solely to see what it was, perhaps the place it got here from. So he lifted the rifle once more—however someplace, his physique made a grave miscalculation, concentrating for one second on the gun and the drone forward however not on the path beneath his ft. He felt his footstep simply off the path, right into a patch of Indian ricegrass deeper than anticipated—his heel dropped far, too far, and the ankle twisted. With it, a pop. The gun went off, the shot going excessive, after which he felt his entire physique shift laborious—

His shoulder hit the bottom first. His head smacked down subsequent. The remainder of his physique slammed into the earth and turned finish over finish, down the slope he went. Dry grasses and shrub branches whipped previous, clawing at his face. The gun was gone now, and his palms scrambled to cease his descent—however they solely pinwheeled as he somersaulted down the slope, scree sliding with him. The world spun like he was in a washer, after which—

Wham. His shoulder and again—after which the bottom of his cranium—slammed laborious right into a bone-white birch tree. His ears rang. His imaginative and prescient radiated out, ripples on disturbed water. His tongue felt fats. He tasted blood.

***

Truth was, as Benji hunted the drone, one thing else had been searching him.

And now that he lay slumped towards the tree, blood drooling over his lip, wanting up at a robin’s egg sky, inhaling air that tasted as crisp as paper, the beast had discovered him, and pinned him to the earth with its claws.

That beast?

Guilt.

This wasn’t the primary time it had discovered him. It at all times discovered him in quiet moments like this, didn’t it?

Benji heard no planes, no engines, no distant murmur of voices. He heard the trill of a mountain bluebird. He heard wind whisking by the comb-tines of spruce bushes. In the early days of his time in Ouray, after the autumn of the world below the onslaught of White Mask, he remembered the primary time he observed the absence of a specific sound: a background hum just like the almost-imperceptible white noise of a tv turned on a couple of rooms away. It was the sound of individuals. And it was gone. Humankind remained on the earth, nevertheless it was now not its grasp.

It was horrible.

It was fantastic.

Hence—the guilt.

But it wasn’t so clear and simple as survivor’s guilt, oh no. This was a extra peculiar factor, like a type of difficult feelings solely the Germans had a phrase for. Yes, there was the guilt of getting survived—of not deserving survival when so many others, like Sadie, did. But worse and stranger nonetheless was that Benji…

Well, Benji didn’t hate this new world. It was peaceable in a manner he’d by no means actually skilled earlier than. No equipment. No gunfire. No fireworks, no site visitors, no automotive horns honking, no dust bikes, no helicopters overhead, no leaf blowers subsequent door, no sirens, no 9 to 5, no cellphone ringing, no Twitter, no Facebook, no TikTok, no e-mail, no spam calls, no unsolicited mail, no conferences, none of it.

There was solely stillness. And there was solace in that stillness.

Was it higher for the world that humankind had been shaken from it like so many fleas? He hated questioning that. His chilly clinician’s evaluation was that the world was therapeutic in a manner it couldn’t have, had White Mask not ravaged the world. Yes, Benji felt the grief and sorrow of a lot ache, a lot loss of life, so many lives misplaced. Lives and minds and hearts. Mothers and fathers, scientists and writers, clergymen and librarians and medical doctors and astronauts and, and, and…(And Sadie. Just pondering her identify nearly knocked him out chilly.) All taken by the mind-thieving fungus, both instantly or by the chaos that choked civilization and drove it to its knees. The world had gone to an enormous graveyard.

And but.

And but.

The air, so clear. The world, so quiet. What settled upon it (what settled upon him) was an intrusive, insistent serenity that he intimately knew was merciless and grotesque, an aberration…however that didn’t cease him from feeling it.

Even now, above his head—he noticed darkish birds, birds like boomerangs, kiting by the sky.

The black swift.

(And any time he considered that fowl, the black swift, how might he not additionally consider Black Swan? The synthetic intelligence who, linked with its future self, noticed the top of the world coming and ready for it by creating the very Sleepwalker Flock that Benji helped to Shepherd to Ouray within the first place.)

The fowl appeared right here to show a degree, it appeared. As if the universe have been attempting to talk to him, to reply his guilt. See, the black swift was a rara avis within the truest sense: a creature as soon as in grave decline within the United States. A sooty grey fowl, the black swift hid its mossy mud-cup nests on cliff-faces and in caves behind outcropped bushes or behind cascading water-falls. The waterfall of Ouray’s Box Canyon (Sadie’s waterfall, he thought with a consumptive pit forming in his center) was dwelling to a inhabitants of black swifts. They’d are available spring, lay a single egg in these mossy nests, and hunt for flying bugs, equivalent to ants and beetles. They wheeled about, their pick-axe wings chipping away on the sky. Then, after elevating their younger, they’d all go away earlier than winter, heading to the Amazon lowlands. For years, the black swift numbers had repeatedly dwindled—not due to unfriendly situations in Ouray, however reasonably, as their second dwelling within the rain forest was plundered by vicious, grasping males. And with the rain forest died a library of nature, a physique of wildlife that would by no means return.

As the rain forest fell, so did the black swift of Ouray.

Or, would have, had it not been for White Mask.

Benji knew the black swift was in decline solely from studying a e book he’d discovered within the Ouray library concerning the birds of Colorado. Because from his personal expertise now, the birds have been in no hazard in any respect. In the 5 years he’d been in Colorado, he noticed their numbers enhance 12 months over 12 months, from only a handful the primary 12 months, then a couple of extra the 12 months after, till within the third 12 months their numbers exploded, simply doubling. Five years later, the birds have been in all places. And they’d taken on new prey: fir engraver beetles and spruce beetles. The fowl consuming these bugs then helped to gradual the speedy decline of Ouray’s blue spruces and Douglas fir bushes. More birds then meant extra bushes. The return of the black swift meant more healthy forests throughout Ouray—

And, Benji guessed, it signaled a returning Amazonian rain forest.

All that, because of the sharp die-off of Earth’s most offensive resident:

Humanity.

Again, it made him sick to think about it that manner. He was human. Sadie was human. The Flock, the Shepherds, and all that remained past Ouray, they have been all human. And all of them deserved an opportunity at life.

And those that died didn’t deserve their loss of life.

But right here they have been. The world, the people-free world, was therapeutic. Better off with out us, he thought gravely.

As he lay there, a tough birch as his pillow, his ears nonetheless ringing, guilt working by him like a fever, his imaginative and prescient cleared.

And there, in entrance of him, was the largest goddamn wolf Benji had ever seen. Here to complete the job, Benji thought madly. Rid this place of us.

The wolf lifted its lip and confirmed its tooth in a low, thunder-rumble growl.

From the e book Wayward by Chuck Wendig. Copyright © 2022 by Chuck Wendig. 
Reprinted by association with Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Chuck Wendig’s Wayward shall be launched November 15; you’ll be able to pre-order a replica here.

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