Book 2 picks up the story of Martin and Susan after they successfully reach his home in New Hampshire. While his modest homestead had several features of a good Bug Out Location, Martin and his wife Margaret were not expert preppers with every need and supply cached away.
Instead, their story is one of improvisation and adaptation. The old routines have been replaced. Manual labor replaced liesure. To survive the winter, everyone in the household had to pitch in.
The trouble is, hard work cannot create food out of nothing.
A major loss of the power grid seems likely to cause an economic collapse. So much of our current economy relies of fuel to ship goods long distances. When the power is out, the fuel stops. When the fuel stops, the trucks stop. When nothing new is being shipped in, the people of Cheshire have only whatever supplies they had onhand at the time.
In trying to secure alternate food sources, the people of Cheshire manage to cross a ruthless urban gang that is also desperate for food.