In Neil's mind it started with the man in the park. Or, more specifically, with the vicious bite the man had given Neil. He was wrong about that. The December Plague had started weeks earlier, though no one knew it. The early symptoms were so mild that almost no one noticed them. A scratchy throat. A feeling of lethargy that you just can't shake. But then the slurring started. And an intense irritability. Finally, an irresistible urge to bite and consume accompanying an uncontrollable rage. The Infected cannot be reasoned with and there is no known cure. They cannot recognize even their closest friends. Anything that attracts their notice risks being torn apart, including one another. Quarantined in a desperate attempt to contain the December Plague, the patients and staff of Wing Memorial hospital are left to fend for themselves. When the small security force sent to aid them are wiped out, the Infected run loose in the halls and Neil is trapped inside with them. Even worse is the knowledge that containment has failed and the outside world has no idea what’s coming.

The December Plague stripped thousands of people of their reason and basic humanity for two years. The disease left their bodies mostly untouched but their minds were ravaged by an uncontrollable fury and an insatiable urge to consume any meat they could find. The remaining immune population struggled to withstand the relentless waves of violent Infected until a cure for the disease was found. Neil Newton was one of the Infected. He spent two and a half years ill and trapped in a quarantined hospital until a cure team found him. Recalled to sanity by the cure, he finds the world is not the one he remembers. He wakes up surrounded by strangers in a place he does not recognize. His body is starved and scarred by the unending battles during his illness. His memory of what he has done to survive the past few years begins to return in pieces. And his family, including his eleven-year-old daughter, is missing in the chaos. In the shattered remains of human society, there are no real mechanisms to help him find his young daughter and her mother. No police to track them down. No widespread communications to appeal to for news. There is only a pitiful list of names of those who remain and the few strangers he meets who are willing to help him. The empty country is a vast web of abandoned roads, remaining Infected and dangerous pockets of Immunes who have become desperate as supplies and food dwindle. Neil risks the long trip home, hoping to find his family safe and fearing they'll never be able to accept what he's done to survive.

The City was gone. Neil should have reached it years before and once he stood on the crumbling debris of its concrete wall, he couldn't help but mourn the months he'd spent fruitlessly searching for his daughter instead. The City was gone. The Cure was gone. And Elijah was a hundred miles away, struggling to care for the eight Infected they'd found alone. His friend would never forgive him.He began climbing over the rubble."Where are you going?" cried the leader of his group."I have to find some doses," he told her. "Just eight. I just need eight doses.""Can't you read the sign? They're dead. There's no cure." She pointed to the messy spray painted warning that sprawled across the remaining wall. "There is no Cure," it read. "Never go inside. Shoot whatever comes out. Even your friends.”"It's just graffiti. I need those doses. I know they're here.""These people are dead. It's- I don't know what could kill this many. Poison? Infected? We have to get out of here, now, before whatever happened starts happening to us, too."Neil stared down at the skeletal remains carpeting the ground inside the wall. "Whatever happened was years ago. These aren't fresh. I know there are doses in there somewhere. I just have to-" He took a step and stopped as he heard the click of a gun behind him."I'm sorry, Neil, I really am. But you go in and I'll wait for you. When you come back, I'll shoot you to protect the others."