For Cade Grayson, father, husband, and former Delta Force operator, life has changed drastically over the course of 48 hours. He's watched the dead inexplicably return to life before his very eyes. He's lost many people near and dear to him, most dying unfathomably horrible deaths at the hands of the dead who have seemingly overnight taken over the big metropolis - their numbers and hunger for human flesh growing exponentially with each passing hour.

After having been forced to kill his reanimated neighbors in self-defense and then surviving the perilous overland journey from his home in Portland, Oregon, Cade finds temporary refuge inside the wire of a Special Forces garrison on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah.

But his stay is short and he decides to strike out alone, resuming the search for his missing wife, Brook, and 11-year-old daughter, Raven, the only way he knows how - with a laser-like focus and full speed ahead.

So in the early morning hours on day four of what might be the United States and perhaps the entire globe's extinction-level event, he slips out Camp Williams' back gate riding a specially modified off-road motorcycle.

Armed and resupplied and with only a satellite phone connecting him to the crumbling world, Cade soldiers on eastbound - locked and loaded - with Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, his small family's last known whereabouts, dead set in his sights.

Meanwhile, 400 miles away in Colorado Springs, Colorado - the new capital of the United States, President-by-succession Valerie Clay works round the clock with what's left of the military to gather together the resources and scientific know-how necessary to stop the Omega Virus' rapid spread and, starting with Colorado Springs, rid the country of the multitudes of walking dead.

Will the 1900 miles and the millions of dead in Cade's path succeed in keeping him separated from his family?

Will mankind find a foothold against the dead and turn the tide of war?

Cade Grayson, locked and loaded, is determined to find out.