A 22-year-old deaf-mute drifter and hero, originally from Caslin, Nebraska, Andros is beaten and robbed outside of (fictional) Shoyo, Arkansas by some local thugs, shortly after the begininng of the tale. Kind of injured, Andros is befriended by the local sheriff and his wife, but watches them die as the superflu hits. As it turns out, Andros becomes the newest deputy, due to the absence of any other healthy people, and watches two of the four thugs who beat him up outside of Shoyo die of the plague in the local jail. Andros later frees the third prisoner, but is then confronted by the fourth, Ray Booth, who has returned to both blind and kill him (included only in the narrative of the revised–expanded version of the novel). Andros nearly dies as a result of a minor gunshot wound sustained