Weeks after watching her principal try to chew up her teacher, and minutes after she'd just lost her family, 12-year-old Aurora Bonsall begins her escape. Alongside Max Random in his hand-built go-kart, they set off across a ruined landscape of studio backlots, wrecked shopping malls, and not-so-abandoned hospitals. At every step, they'll find the not-quite-dead waiting for them.

As they head for a rendezvous point where Max insists they'll be safe, it becomes clear that surviving humans can be far more dangerous than the Nano-Zs taking over the world. But as Aurora discovers Max has secrets of his own, she wonders if there can ever be any escape at all.