We join a group of eight survivors in the middle of a six-day march across the bad-lands, moving from one of the smaller stockades to the central most-populous hub. A party of people all dealing with the end of the world in their own way – the weekend soldier; the skittish prisoner; the unnecessarily violent veteran; the middle-class parent and his bizarrely well-adjusted daughter; the foul-mouthed chav; the idealistic zombie-rights campaigner; the pregnant religious zealot.

En route, the party leader has a freakishly unlucky encounter with a zombie, and loses a leg. With night-time quick approaching and the nearby horde lured by the smell of blood, the party are forced to seek refuge inside an abandoned school. There they encounter the first ripe zombie that they’ve seen in months; less than 24 hours since infection, the zombie is fast, powerful and absolutely terrifying.

Convinced that there must be other survivors in the building, a faction splits away from the group to investigate, and discovers a gathering of zombies involved in a bizarre resurrection ceremony. A mysterious serene zombie lays his hands upon one of the horde, who violently returns to life. Petrified, the man struggles to escape but is immediately re-devoured; a continual recycling of the horde that keeps them fresh and extraordinarily dangerous.

As the party fight to understand the mysteries of the school, they are confronted with their first real test of survival since the beginning of the outbreak. They rescue another survivor, a psychotic denizen whose only memories are of being brutally devoured a hundred times over, and attempt to kidnap the mysterious zombie from the midst of his horrifying congregation. Is he the answer to the zombie plague? How much faith can you have in something that science can’t explain?