Everyone remembers where they were on the night of the Pulse, when the government gave up trying to contain the computer virus and used a couple of high altitude nukes to wipe it out. Many would also like to forget what came after as society collapsed for a while and people had to rediscover skills they'd need to survive technology's absence.Oscar Ridell is a hero to most towns he visits as he travels west, paying for room and board by restoring equipment fried by the Pulse. Few guess he's part of a national recovery effort; fewer still that their hero is a reformed alcoholic, haunted by the voices of his estranged wife and child. When a bandit attack leaves him gut-shot and bleeding to death, Oscar awakens in an isolated town with no belongings and little to offer rescuers, other than his repair skills - something the town's leaders forbid he use lest he revive something harmful to their fragile community.Winter is approaching, bandits control the roads, and the only means of contacting someone back east for help rests in the hands of a national guard unit who, Oscar discovers, are the source of the bandit attacks.What Oscar wouldn't give for a working telephone... or a stiff drink.