In a dystopian future where climate change has melted the polar ice caps, coastlines have drastically changed and major coastal cities are underwater. The population on the Gulf Coast of the US has broken into clans that survive by scavenging wire and metals from the rusted hulks of wrecked tankers and freighters. Nailer, a 15-year-old member of a light crew on Bright Sands, crawls through a service passage on a grounded oil tanker, pulling copper wiring from the walls. The light crews—those scavengers who take only the lighter salvage such as wiring and steel clips from the ships—must be small enough to burrow through the narrow service ducts, and Nailer worries about how he will survive once he is too big to do the job. The work is hot and dangerous, and the only protection he has against the toxic dust is his filter mask, which doesn’t fit and is falling apart.

Once Nailer pulls his quota of copper wiring, he crawls to the open deck, where swarms of people tear the tanker apart for salvage, looking like an “ant’s nest of activity” (5). With fellow crewmember Sloth, Nailer moves the spool of wire to the lower deck, where the rest of the crew waits to strip the insulation from it.