In a world overrun by the living dead, one band of survivors built a community with a strange sort of peace with the undead. The dead were contained, but not exterminated.

Now they've exiled four people—two undead, two alive—into the wilderness outside the city walls. Lucy, a beautiful zombie overwhelmed by her desire to kill and feed, keeps herself just barely under control around her living companions. Truman, a gentler and more reasonable zombie, looks at the living with something close to disinterest. Rachel and Will have trouble understanding and trusting one another—let alone their undead companions.

When disease threatens one of the outcasts, the four unwisely seek help in a city filled with things they had forgotten in their simple existence together: safety, good food, comfortable lives, cruelty, apathy, and greed. One of them will not survive the encounter, and the rest will be sorely tested in this strange new world of physical depravity and spiritual death. When innocence and corruption meet, the outcome is never what anyone expects.