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Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest. It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are fast, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.

It's been twelve years since the undead hordes swept over the earth forcing mankind to the brink of extinction. We now live like rats, scavenging in the ruins of our fallen civilization as the dead hunt us night and day. There is little left to scavenge, however. Grocery stores were emptied ages ago, gas tanks have long been dry and bullets are so precious that a man is lucky to have two to his name. Still, we survive. But for how much longer? Instinct and love have combined to turn Darwin's theory on its head. The strongest didn't survive in this world. They were the first to die, leaving behind a generation of orphans. It's a generation that's never had a full belly. It's a generation that has no idea what an Xbox did, or what algebra is for. It's a generation of children who never laugh out loud, and who have learned to cry softly because the dead are always near and the dead are always so very, very hungry.

As if a zombie apocalypse wasn't bad enough, the country is also in the throes of a second Civil War. Massachusetts has closed its borders to everyone, including the 101st Airborne Division and five million desperate refugees. It's an act of rebellion that the President won't stand for, and with nuclear missiles flying by the hundreds in China, he mulls the idea of using nukes on American soil for the first time.

With the great battle between man and the undead apparently won and the situation seemingly in hand, the president leaps into action to take all the credit he can for saving the country and defending the Quarantine Zone. Surrounded by battalions of television news crews, he authorizes Operation Swift Stand in which he commits the nation's entire rapid deployment force in a show-stopping extravaganza designed more to rekindle patriotic fervor and to lift his own sagging poll numbers than to stop the undead.

Quite simply, what could go wrong did go wrong. Given the choice between assuming leadership of a situation that is pure chaos, where the National Guard is forced into a position of going to war against a trapped and possibly infected citizenry, the President chooses to punt. He knows what enforcing a quarantined zone will require: the massacre of tens of thousands of terrified people demanding to get out, and there is no way he's going to have his name and legacy sullied.

In an apocalypse, there is definitely a beginning where mistakes are made and the seeds of evil are allowed to sprout and take shape. However, an end is not so certain. Once an apocalypse occurs, not even death is certain. Sometimes, death is only the beginning.