The year is 2008, and a pandemic threatens to wipe out the whole of the human race. For many in the United Kingdom--the epicenter of the outbreak--the end is nigh, so why bother to keep count? Within days of detection of the Reaper virus millions are infected in Scotland, the killer disease's home turf. Government has no choice but to declare the country a 'hot zone' and quarantine the populace in hopes of containing the Reaper's spread. What was once Scotland is now a forgotten No Man's Land, with the Reaper given free reign to annihilate the population sealed inside. A quarter of a century later, with a new outbreak of the Reaper resurfacing in London, it becomes apparent that the government's best laid plans have gone completely, bloody awry. Department of Domestic Security (DDS) Chief Bill Nelson is summoned to meet with the prime minister and the true power behind his office, Michael Canaris, who reveal satellite photos of Reaper survivors in the hot zone. And survivors must mean there's a cure. Nelson quickly assembles a crack team of specialists to venture into the forsaken land and retrieve the counteragent to the virus. For the tough and efficient commanding officer, Major Eden Sinclair, the assignment represents a disquieting homecoming. Twenty-five years earlier, she had been shoved into one of the last evacuating military choppers and flown to safety--forced to leave her mother behind. Once on the other side of the immediately re-secured border, the squadron is on its own, venturing into a ghoulish terrain of corpse-strewn, forlorn cities. All too soon, however, the crew meets up with a pack of feral survivors, and finds itself unwittingly standing in for the callous government that turned its back years before.