Humanity's fate rests in the palm of his very hand. He has to be hard. He has to take what a Commander is owed.

Jasper Montrois is a gentle giant. Oh, how many times the gorilla-shaped man has heard that moniker? Beyond count for sure. Even now, after all the blood his axe has reaped, he still thinks of himself as that same gentle man. Abandoning his wife and daughter to the cannibal hordes of his employer AOA has been a hard pill to swallow, and if he is being honest, it may be changing him some; but he is still in control. The man he presents to his people is a deliberate act.

Maisie Sagal didn't ask to be one of the last five-hundred people left alive or uninfected, but she is. She’s endured enough trauma to choke a horse, but she isn't about to let that be an excuse. The old-world may well be dead and gone, but she will never give in to the madness. Right is right. She can never give up the fight. Her father certainly hadn't. Now she watches as AOA sends team after team back to earth to obtain specimens to possibly synthesize an antidote to the hordes of zombies that now claim the faces of those she once knew.

But not everything is safe as the growing obsession with death-matches unfolds among the officers; all eager to see who will be the leader of them all.