Elsewhere, a group of vagrants encounter spherical machines that are incinerating every trace of humanity left on Earth. Fleeing the machines, the group runs afoul of Anderson's community, who kill all but two of their number: Jeremiah Orville, a mining engineer, and Alice Nemerov, a nurse. The novel implies that the dead are ground into sausage meat and consumed. Jeremiah assimilates into the community, but secretly plots revenge on Anderson and his family. In the process, he courts Anderson's thirteen-year-old daughter, Blossom, and befriends Anderson's educated son, Buddy.