LOCATIONS BOOK II: THE EXODUS
THE SUMP
The Sump is a flooded settlement built aolongside the former Décarie highway, where slow brown water swallowed the old highway and forced survivors to adapt or drown. Lantern-lit markets, mutated crawfish traps, scavenged shelters, and improvised engineering projects line the cracked concrete banks beneath the overpasses. Dirty, unstable, and always one disaster away from collapse, the Sump is still one of the few places in the Lowlands where people have begun risking something more dangerous than survival: permanence.
THE DÉCARIE TRENCH
The Décarie Trench, called the Décarie River by those who live beside it, is the flooded scar of Montréal’s old highway system, where brown current now flows through cracked lanes buried beneath mud, wreckage, and collapsed overpasses. Once a dead transit corridor, the trench became one of the Lowlands’ few growing settlements after the floods transformed it into a source of water, crawfish, and trade.
FROST BASIN
The Frost Basin is a frozen microclimate pocket north of the Sump where winter never fully releases its grip. Cold air settles permanently into the ruined lowlands, coating broken highways and flooded structures in layers of ice even during warmer seasons elsewhere in the city. Frost creeps across concrete like crystal rot, visibility collapses without warning in sudden whiteouts, and the silence carries unnaturally far through the frozen air. Few people cross the Basin willingly. Those who do speak of preserved bodies trapped beneath the ice and shapes moving beneath the snow long after the wind has stopped.
QUICKSANDS
The Quicksands are a shifting stretch of unstable ground north-east of the Lowlands where floodwater, chemical runoff, and pulverized concrete turned entire neighborhoods into deep fields of liquefied earth. What looks solid can swallow a person in seconds. Roads collapse without warning, buildings lean half-submerged at impossible angles, and rusted vehicles protrude from the mud like fossils caught mid-sinking. The surface constantly reshapes itself after storms, making maps useless and familiar routes deadly. Travelers move through the Quicksands lightly, probing each step, knowing the ground itself has become another predator.
THINNER GROUNDS
The Thinner Grounds lies further northeast of the Lowlands, a region where the earth itself behaves wrong. Saturated with chemical runoff, pulverized limestone, and decades of unstable seepage, the terrain moves like a living Newtonian fluid: solid one moment, liquid the next depending on pressure and movement. Walking across it becomes exhausting and dangerous, every step sinking just enough to trap momentum and drain strength. Entire structures lean slowly into the unstable surface while abandoned vehicles rest half-consumed beneath the pale slurry. The faster someone struggles, the deeper the ground seems to pull them in
CONCRETE FACTORY
The Concrete Factory is the skeletal remains of a massive industrial complex where broken silos, collapsed conveyor systems, and rusted machinery still groan in the wind. Old concrete dust, clinging and caustic, prevents it from being used long term as a shelter. The silos are also a hazard, with the dust able to ignite under the slightest provocation.
THE GLASTORM
A violent microclimate deep within the wastelands where perpetual lightning storms hammer a growing desert of ash and chemical sand. Bolts strike constantly across the open flats, fusing the ground into rivers and pools of molten glass that cool into jagged black formations before shattering under the next impact. The air smells of ozone and burnt minerals, and the horizon flickers day and night with branching blue-white light. Travelers caught inside the storm risk being blinded, electrocuted, or trapped on islands of cooling glass while the desert reshapes itself around them.
THE FRANCON QUARRY VILLAGE
The Francon Quarry Village clings to the edges of the vast limestone quarry northeast of Montreal, where survivors carved homes, workshops, and defensive walls directly into the stone terraces left behind by decades of excavation. Dust hangs permanently in the air, coating skin, tools, and lungs alike, while narrow pathways wind between scavenged structures bolted into the quarry walls. The Village survives through stonework, salvage, fishing giant sturgeons in the black lime water lake and strict control of its limited fresh water reserves, but its exposed position makes it vulnerable to raids, sieges, and the distant pressure of the Stadium’s expanding influence.
THE FRANCON FOREST
The Francon Forest spreads across the overgrown limestone lands surrounding the old quarry, a dense wilderness where twisted roots crack through abandoned industrial roads and pale stone shelves emerge beneath the trees like exposed bones. The forest grows unevenly, fed by mineral-rich runoff and unstable weather patterns that leave sections unnaturally lush while others stand dead and silent. Fog settles low between the trunks, muffling distance and distorting sound, and travelers often lose their sense of direction beneath the heavy canopy.
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Stéphane Roy is a lifelong reader and writer with a deep love for science fiction, apocalyptic worlds, and tightly constructed mysteries. This is his first novel. He lives in the Yukon with his dog and his aquarium, where long winters, silence, and wide, sometimes glowing, skies leave plenty of room for imagining the end of the world, and what might come after it. He is also waiting, with cautious optimism, for the aliens to finally reveal themselves and straighten us all out.