Jonah Caine, a lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, struggles to understand the apocalypse in which he lives. Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance. After wandering for months, Jonah's lonely existence dramatically changes when he discovers a group of survivors. Living in a museum-turned-compound, they are led jointly by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man, and Milton, a mysterious, quizzical prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both leaders share Jonah's anguish over the brutality of their world, as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls. But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only—nor the most grotesque—horrors they must face.

At the end of the world a handful of survivors banded together in a museum-turned-compound surrounded by the living dead. The community established rituals and rites of passage, customs to keep themselves sane, to help them integrate into their new existence. In a battle against a kingdom of savage prisoners, the survivors lost loved ones, they lost innocence, but still they coped and grew. They even found a strange peace with the undead. Twelve years later the community has reclaimed more of the city and has settled into a fairly secure life in their compound. Zoey is a girl coming of age in this undead world, learning new roles-new sacrifices. But even bigger surprises lie in wait, for some of the walking dead are beginning to remember who they are, whom they've lost, and, even worse, what they've done. As the dead struggle to reclaim their lives, as the survivors combat an intruding force, the two groups accelerate toward a collision that could drastically alter both of their worlds.

In a world overrun by the living dead, one band of survivors built a community with a strange sort of peace with the undead. The dead were contained, but not exterminated. Now they've exiled four people—two undead, two alive—into the wilderness outside the city walls. Lucy, a beautiful zombie overwhelmed by her desire to kill and feed, keeps herself just barely under control around her living companions. Truman, a gentler and more reasonable zombie, looks at the living with something close to disinterest. Rachel and Will have trouble understanding and trusting one another—let alone their undead companions. When disease threatens one of the outcasts, the four unwisely seek help in a city filled with things they had forgotten in their simple existence together: safety, good food, comfortable lives, cruelty, apathy, and greed. One of them will not survive the encounter, and the rest will be sorely tested in this strange new world of physical depravity and spiritual death. When innocence and corruption meet, the outcome is never what anyone expects.