Surviving the Evacuation

As anarchy and civil war took grip across the globe, Britain was quarantined. The press was nationalized, and martial law, curfews, and rationing were implemented. It wasn't enough. An evacuation was planned. The inland towns and cities of the United Kingdom were to be evacuated to defensive enclaves being built around the coast and the Scottish Highlands and in the Irish Republic. For George Tull and the other residents of the Waverly-Price Retirement Home, walking to the coast is not an option.

The outbreak began in New York. Soon it had spread to the rest of the world. People were attacked and infected, and they died. Then they came back. Nowhere is safe from the undead. As anarchy and civil war took grip across the globe, Britain was quarantined. The press was nationalized. Martial law, curfews, and rationing were implemented. It wasn't enough. An evacuation was planned.

Billions died during the global civil war that followed the outbreak. Anarchy took grip. Chaos ruled. The world collapsed. In Britain, the evacuation failed. Nowhere was safe from the undead. Four months after the outbreak Bill Wright has found safety in a ruined abbey in southern England, but he is still alone. All he has for company are the files sent to him by his shadowy contact, Sholto. On those, he believes he has found the origins of the undead.

Three months after escaping from London, Bill discovers the true extent of the global war that followed the outbreak. Most of the world has been destroyed, but though ruined farmland and abandoned cities are filled with zombies, there are other survivors and there is a safe haven - so he is told - in a small village on the Irish coast.

There are no reported outbreaks in the UK or Ireland. That's what the government broadcasted. Nilda didn't believe it. Not trusting the authorities, she, and her son, Jay, stay behind when Penrith is evacuated. After weeks of rationing, there is little food left in the small town and many other survivors competing for it. Choosing diplomacy over violence, she attempts to forge a community out of a disparate group. As zombies gather outside their walls, she realizes that they will have to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

Zombies. It is seven months since the outbreak. The world is in ruins. Britain is a radioactive wasteland peopled by the undead. The few survivors cling to the hope that they might wake up tomorrow. For most, that is all they have left. But Nilda has something more, the chance that her son is alive.

A castle can be made safe from the undead, but not from the people inside the walls. It is seven months since the outbreak. In the anarchy and chaos that came with the undead, civilization was destroyed. In the wars that followed, the planet was nearly ruined. Billions died. Only a few thousand survived.

The outbreak began in February. Nations went to war. Governments collapsed. Billions died in the chaos and anarchy that followed. Billions more were infected. They died. They came back. It is now October. Out of the tens of millions who lived in southern England, only 90 people remain. They sought sanctuary behind the ancient walls of the Tower of London, but it was only a temporary refuge. There is no more food to be scavenged from the ruins of the old world. Their water supply is polluted.

Eight months after the outbreak, Bill Wright is trapped in Ireland. Surrounded by the undead, low on food and lower on water, he's been in this situation before. Unlike before, help is only a rifle-shot away. While waiting for the rescue he is sure will come, he records the turbulent events since his last entry.

Within hours of the first outbreak, Manhattan was overrun by the living dead. Within a few days, the undead had reached every corner of the globe. There was no evacuation of Northern Ireland, and no quarantine in the Republic. A naval blockade prevented ships from docking, but they didn't prevent those who could reach the coast from fleeing by sea. Those who were left behind took refuge in castles, police stations, churches, military bases, and any other buildings with strong walls.

Nine months after the outbreak, 10,000 survivors from across the globe have found a refuge on the Welsh island of Anglesey. Hordes of the undead ravage the wastelands of Britain and Ireland. Satellite images show that the rest of the world is no better. Food, fuel, and ammunition are running low and there are no more old-world supplies with which to replace them. Intended as an alternative to a slide into despotism, an election is called. It is hoped the contest will bring forth solutions to the myriad crises facing this last bastion of humanity.

Anglesey has become home to nearly ten thousand survivors from across the Atlantic. While there is still danger from the undead on the mainland, there is hope. Hope that the zombies might die, hope that the electricity supply might be restored, and hope that more survivors will be found. Hope is not enough. Sergeant Branofski and Chester Carson venture into northern Wales to set up a network of safe houses that will provide a route to Anglesey for those still trapped in the wasteland. Though they find survivors, they discover something far worse.

Anglesey became a refuge for survivors from across the world, but living in the shadow of a decrepit nuclear power station was always a precarious existence. There is only one destination for their final exodus from Britain, but Belfast won't become their new home. There are fewer undead on the island of Ireland, but they still number in the millions. With farming impossible, with the weather worsening, with ammunition exhausted, desperation turns to despair. All seems bleak, but the survivors are unaware how desperate their situation truly is. 

After the outbreak came the nuclear war. The blasts killed millions. Chaos followed. Most of those unlucky enough not to succumb to starvation and disease joined the ranks of the living dead. Fleeing the impossible nightmare, 10,000 from nations across the Atlantic seaboard found refuge on the Welsh island of Anglesey. There, they should have been safe. There, they should have been able to rebuild. There, they were betrayed.

The outbreak was in February. By the end of November, Earth has become a hellish wasteland ravaged by the undead. Survivors from across the Atlantic seaboard took refuge on the Welsh island of Anglesey. Beset by dangers from within, they departed to establish a new refuge in Belfast. Not all of them arrived. Six took the last plane on its last flight but crashed in France. Expecting a sprinting battle through the ruins of Belfast, they packed light. Their chances of survival are slim. There was no evacuation in France. No quarantine. No rationing. But there are zombies.

Northern France is a frozen morass of mud and snow across which rampages a horde of the undead, a hundred million strong. That won’t stop Chester Carson and his comrades. Seeking a way across the Channel, they make for the coast, unaware that Britain has been abandoned, Belfast is a ruin, and that radiation is seeping into the Irish Sea. If they knew, that wouldn’t stop them either. They’re on a quest to save their family, their friends, and humanity itself; failure is not an option.  

Once, it was home to half a billion people. A year after the nuclear war, Europe is a radioactive, storm-ravaged wasteland through which a hundred million undead inexorably march. In their wake, they leave nothing but ruins. Ahead of them flee those few who managed to survive this long. Chasing them are the dregs of humanity. Once known as the Rosewood Cartel, they kill, loot, and destroy as indiscriminately as the living dead.

On a frozen archipelago, where it is too cold to farm, a few thousand survivors from across the Atlantic have found a refuge. The arduous process of turning a sanctuary into a home begins once more for these weary travelers, who’ve been chased from Britain, Ireland, France, and Denmark. But their work is not yet done. The missing Marines cannot be left behind. The French and Ukrainians cannot be abandoned. The cartel can never be forgotten.

It took three weeks to destroy civilisation. It won’t be rebuilt in a day. A year after the outbreak, a sharp winter is followed by a sudden thaw. Spring has come early to Nova Scotia, bringing new hope. For the 13,000 survivors who’ve found sanctuary in northern Canada, and for the first time since the apocalypse, extinction isn’t imminent. But it looms large in the near future, a legacy of the nuclear war that destroyed civilisation.

Fourteen months after the outbreak, 13 months after the nuclear war, the old world is gone, but a new world is emerging. The evacuation of Britain failed, but other evacuations were a success. In Canberra, a new civilization is being born, but in Canada, the search for lost communities begins. The journey takes Bill and Kim to the very end of the Earth, and to a meeting with familiar strangers. Crossing the border, Sholto endures a bittersweet return to the country he’d embraced so many decades ago.