Search Worlds Without End

It's one month after a global disaster. The most "developed" nations of the world have fallen to the shambling zombie masses. Only a few pockets of humanity survive -- in places rife with high-powered weaponry, such as Somalia. In New York City, the dead walk the streets, driven by an insatiable hunger for all things living. One amongst them is different; though he shares their appetites he has retained his human intelligence. Alone among the mindless zombies, Gary Fleck is an eyewitness to the end of the world -- and perhaps the evil genius behind it all.

From the other side of the planet, a small but heavily-armed group of schoolgirls-turned-soldiers has come in search of desperately needed medicine. Dekalb, a former United Nations weapons inspector, leads them as their local guide. Ayaan, a crack shot at the age of sixteen, will stop at nothing to complete her mission. They think they are prepared for anything. On Monster Island they will find that there is something worse even than being undead, as Gary learns the true price of survival.

In the heart of America, in the world's most secure prison, something horrible is growing in the dark. A wave of cannibalism and fear is sweeping across the heartland, spreading carnage and infection in its wake. Captain Bannerman Clark of the National Guard has been tasked with an impossible mission: discover what is happening -- and then stop it before it annihilates Los Angeles. In California, he discovers a woman trapped in a hospital overrun with violent madmen. She may hold the secret to the Epidemic but she has lost everything -- even her name.

Monster Island explored a world overcome by horror and the few people strong enough to survive. Now David Wellington takes us back in time to where it all began -- to the day the dead began to rise.

Surviving the end of the world was the easy part. It's twelve years since the dead came back. Ravening, mindless zombies have devoured almost every living thing on the planet. The few, scattered survivors are surviving on canned goods and a refusal to give in and die. They are lead by Ayaan, a former child soldier turned brilliant strategist. She's twenty-eight years old, in a world where the average life expectancy is twenty-five. Together with her adopted ward Sarah, who has the psychic ability to see the life-force of the undead, she's gathered a few hundred survivors in Africa and given them safety, something to eat, and the possibility of a future. It would be a lot easier if the zombies weren't so well organized.

Out of the east a dead prince has risen. The Tsarevich, the most powerful lich the world has yet seen, is able to command his fellow zombies and has crafted them into an unstoppable army. He has swept across Russia and eastern Europe, hunting down every survivor he can find. He's about to come down on Ayaan and her desert oasis like a tidal wave of death and horror. Yet quickly enough Ayaan realizes he's not just out for her destruction. He has something else in mind, a goal that will take him--and her--across oceans, all the way back to Colorado where the first zombies rose from the grave. He's going back to the Source and when he reaches it, no one will ever be safe again.

The fate of all life on the planet is up for grabs, and if Ayaan and Sarah can't stop him there will be no more second chances.