A work of sheer immediacy that realizes the zombie fantasy more fully than the fantasy itself.

Imogen starts summer vacation to find her brother watching zombies on the news. Quips fly, but the catastrophe in Indonesia still rips the future from anything she loves. The world ends before undead reach her door, and what Imogen faces is unthinkable: to leave her family in the apocalypse.

Containment slowly fails, and in an emptied out San Francisco, people have left for the hills, for survivorships, anywhere but cities. By the time the East Coast's plunged into extinction, SF's left one of the last places for the undead to touch. But that still doesn't mean its empty streets are safe.

Boba scavenging with a neighboring group of ex-techies makes life almost normal again, but each outing means more than just posturing every time they run into someone else. When the group needs unity, she stands her ground—but she's risking them too.

All her family wants is to keep safe, no matter what. But there's no more being yourself when everything about the world is gone. Whatever used to make sense, being brave or selfish, all that's there is life's end, violence the one thing that it brings.

And the only way forward for Imogen is out there, waiting—they all are.