Meanwhile Trev has been making his exhausting and dangerous trek to Michigan. Among the troubles he encounters along the way he finds a place called Newtown that’s been built up around several massive grain silos. The town has enough food to feed themselves and anyone who comes to trade with them, and Trev is able to purchase supplies. He also remembers the place as a potential source of supplies for his family on the way back, as well as for Aspen Hill if they can find some way to travel hundreds of miles to get it.
As he gets closer to Michigan he discovers that people are fleeing south and the Gold Bloc invasion has already begun. Traveling carefully to evade capture by the enemy soldiers, who people are pejoratively calling blockheads, he manages to reach his family’s home. He finds them already gone, although they left behind a cryptic message that only he’d be able to understand. They’re headed for Aspen Hill, and promise to leave regular markers so he can follow them if he comes.
Trev follows the markers, only to find that they soon stop. After a brief search he makes camp, despairing about what might’ve happened to his family. In the night a blockhead patrol, also following the markers, captures him. He’s taken to a prison camp on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where hundreds of thousands of captured Americans are being held.
There he receives a complete shock as he’s being taken into the camp. His uncle Lucas Halsson, Lewis’s dad, is the one who processes him. Lucas, his wife Eva, and their daughter Mary had been in Norway on sabbatical, getting in touch with their roots, when the Gulf burned. Lucas managed to talk his way into a position in logistics for the Gold Bloc military, and managed to get his family back to the United States traveling with the invading army.
With his uncle’s help Trev is able to reunite with his family inside the camp. He’s relieved to find that his mom and dad, Clair and George, and his siblings Linda and Jim are unhurt, although worried about their situation. Lucas can’t pull any strings to get them out, so while they try to figure out what to do they wait as patiently as they can.
Then comes the Retaliation.
What remains of the United States government had been negotiating with the Gold Bloc this entire time, warning them that if they invaded the US would deploy its nuclear arsenal against targets in all Gold Bloc nations. The Gold Bloc perceived it as a bluff and ignored the warning and a final ultimatum, and nukes fly.
One of those nukes lands on a blockhead military camp not far north of the prisoner camp Trev and his family are in. He sees the mushroom cloud with his own eyes, and realizes they’re in the fallout zone. In the resulting chaos Trev’s family manages to escape the camp. Rather than mindlessly fleeing, however, they’re able to steal a blockhead truck and drive west along the Upper Peninsula headed for home.
Back in Aspen Hill Matt and Lewis are shaken by the news of nuclear war obliterating over a billion lives in a matter of hours, with an even greater death toll to follow. Lewis is confident the town is out of the way of any fallout from the Gold Bloc’s retaliatory nuclear strikes, but they face the specter of nuclear winter, and the surviving blockheads are continuing to invade the United States. This concludes the events of Invasion.
Reclamation begins with Trev and his family on their way back to Aspen Hill, expecting to be there in a matter of days. Along with taking the truck they took enough fuel to get them the whole way. However, Trev suggests that since they have a vehicle capable of carrying a lot of supplies, they should stop in Newtown to fill it up with grain Aspen Hill desperately needs. In spite of the risk the family agrees, and Newtown’s Sheriff, Fred Vernon, welcomes them in and arranges for them to get everything they’re looking for, paid for by a few one-ounce gold coins Lucas carried with him.
It turns out to be a trick. Vernon and several of his deputies rob the family at gunpoint and steal the truck, using it to flee south from the approaching blockheads. The family is left to purchase a few handcarts and wagons and continue towards home on foot, despairing of getting there anytime soon, if they make it there at all. Newtown’s residents, including a woman named Deb Rutledge who Trev befriends, decide they have no option but to pack up and head south on foot following Vernon.
After days of wearily slogging towards home Trev’s family sees an approaching convoy. It turns out to be United States military, and a sergeant named Ethan Davis invites the family to join his squad in their truck, packing their supplies in the foot space and atop benches and strapping one of the handcarts to the back. With this stroke of good luck they’re able to make it most of the way back home, dropped off less than a day’s walk from Aspen Hill.
Meanwhile Lewis has been tending the garden he and Trev planted, and he and Matt go after a stray herd of sheep and manage to capture it, gaining the town some much-needed livestock. On the way back with the herd he spots a beehive, and resolves to come back later to harvest its honey.
Lewis is overjoyed to find that not only has his cousin managed to return with his family, but that his own parents and sister are with them. During the joyous reunion he introduces his new wife, Jane, who’s welcomed into the family. Matt’s family, Jane’s refugee group, and the Halsson and Smith families are all living at the shelter, and they turn their focus to surviving and prospering long term.
The peace doesn’t last long. When Trev and Lewis go for the beehive Lewis spotted they encounter a scouting patrol from the US military led by Corporal Kyle Williams. Williams brings news that the military is gathering as many refugees as they can in the Utah and Colorado Rockies, intending to make a last stand there and hold the blockheads back. He’s recruiting any volunteers willing to join the fight.
After some agonizing Matt and Trev lead two squads of Aspen Hill volunteers south to Huntington along Highway 31, while Lewis remains behind leading the town’s defenders in Matt’s absence. Outside Huntington Trev meets Sergeant Davis again, who’s been assigned to hold the highway where it enters the mountains a short ways northwest of the town. Corporal Williams is also assigned there, and with the Aspen Hill volunteers and a number of new recruits they’re responsible for holding back any attack that comes their way.
While guarding a canyon a short ways north of Highway 31 Trev’s squad ambushes a blockhead truck rolling up the road past their position. It turns out to be Fred Vernon and his men, who’ve managed to escape the mess to the south and have come to to join the fight. Trev protests that the man is a thief and abandoned the people he was responsible for, but Davis chooses to recruit them anyway.
The Gold Bloc attack finally comes, as they watch tens of thousands of soldiers poor into the area around Huntington. Meanwhile Aspen Hill receives enough warning to evacuate up Aspen Hill Canyon into the mountains west of them, following the plan Lewis had drawn up for the eventuality. They’re grieved about losing their town, especially when they watch enemy soldiers roll in and occupy it.
The blockheads attack along Highway 31, only to be turned back by a set demolition that drops a rocky hillside onto the road, leaving it impassable. After a fierce firefight they retreat to Huntington to dig in and hold the area, searching for alternate roads up into the mountains. One of those roads is up Aspen Hill Canyon. Lewis has been given the detonator for another rigged demolition that will drop a cliff on the road, destroying it, but he wants to do as much damage as he can before doing so. When blockhead scouts come up the canyon he ambushes them and wipes out their patrol, which is enough of a warning to get them to leave the canyon alone for now.