THE HIBER NATION

Kevin’s community is an isolated and hidden agricultural group of survivors that live in a plateau between two mountains, trying to escape a deadly virus that was active six years ago. The transmission mechanism of this virus was never fully understood by scientists and it ended up killing most part of humanity, leading to the existence of two types of communities in this post-apocalyptic world: farmers and warriors. Warriors explore farmers and defend their territory from other warriors. When a community’s survivor alerts to the presence of a scout hot air balloon flying one night over camp, they quickly kill all the lights, but realize that their location’s likely to be compromised. Kevin disobeys his uncle’s orders and immediately starts chasing the balloon. He tries not to be seen by the pilot and keeps running through forests, lakes and prairies for many hours until the morning, when he sees the opportunity to contact the pilot, an elderly man named Francis (ex-retired biology teacher). Francis is suspicious at first, but he needs a co-pilot, so he ends up inviting Kevin on board, who claims he has been living alone, fishing on a lake. Francis teaches Kevin how to fly the balloon so that Francis can have the chance to sleep. Kevin takes that opportunity to erase the pencil written cross that marked the location of his village on Francis’ map and makes a new fake cross in another place of the map. He does the same to the cross that marked the location of another spotted community. The balloon arrives at its destination, the warrior community, a fortified police precinct, which perimeter was a contiguous line of big metal containers. Francis gives the map to its leader, an ex-police officer called Milton, a comedian bully who brags that he’s still doing the same job as before, as a cop. Milton complains that the communities’ locations are too far away but he ends up paying Francis for that info with some supplies. Milton convinces Kevin to join his group as he needs to recruit new people after having lost some men in battle. A few days later, Milton returns from his expedition to the locations marked by Francis’ crosses and he’s extremely pissed because he hasn’t found anything (the real locations had been erased by Kevin). So, when Francis finally returns with new locations, he gets a violent reception. Francis defends himself and accuses Kevin. Milton acts as a detective trying to find out which of the two man is guilty, but he’s not able to determine it, and thus ends up killing Francis, taking the balloon for his force, and he puts Kevin in jail, as he’s not sure if he can trust him. Kevin goes into the same cell as Pablo, a former convict and drug addict, that six years ago was used by a satanic sect to be a part of the team that spread the virus in the US. He was arrested as a terrorist by Milton in the last few days the virus stroke. Milton was keeping the virus flask in his fridge and Pablo alive as an insurance policy, in case he ever needed to use the virus as a weapon against any strong enemy that might arise. Although imprisoned, Kevin gets his new role as balloon pilot and he’s ordered to go in a few missions including confirming the recent locations that Francis had brought in his last trip. Milton’s gang try to make a protection deal with one of those communities, but they refuse the proposal and Milton’s men end up attacking them. Three women are taken prisoners and locked up in a cell next to Kevin’s. Their fate: to become the communities’ female companions. All prisoners agree to try to think about ways to escape jail. But everything changes with the return of Isaac, a former Milton’s lieutenant, that informs them that they would soon be visited by a big group called the Hiber Nation, which has already thousands of members in four states, trying to restore civilization. Everyone is invited to join, except for the warrior leaders, who may be accused of crimes against humanity and risk hanging. Milton, Isacc and his other two lieutenants decide to hide their other companions about the true nature of the Hiber Nation and they will try to quickly destroy the Hiber Nation. So, Milton orders Pablo to immediately start working on the project of spreading the virus. As the virus is spread by mosquitos’ bites, Pablo explains that he will need a few weeks to breed mosquitoes before he infects the mosquitoes with the virus. And he delivers Milton a list of all the items he’ll need to do the job. On that list, as a suggestion of one of the women, Rose, they include a few chemicals that will have a major role on their future attempt to escape prison (they’re planning to make nitric acid to dissolve the steel bars connections). Will Kevin let Pablo and Milton destroy civilization? Something he was longing for all his life? Will he be able to protect his community from further attacks? Will he and his friends be able to escape and survive?