At a remote site in Minnesota, filmmaker Kurt Carpenter has built a secure compound and invited a select group of people to bunker down until the worst is over. The world into which they re-emerge is like nothing they've ever seen. At first they think they're the only ones left. But they soon find out how wrong they are. In the wasteland of what used to be America, their battle to survive is only just beginning.

Blade.... Named for the razor-sharp bowies that never left his side, he was unmatched in size and strength. In post-nuclear America, he was the last hope of what was left of the civilized world. The freedom force... Six men trained in the art of killing; each was a perfect instrument of death. In a ravaged world crawling with mutants and savages, their talents were much in demand.

EMP blasts started the apocalypse during Tom and his family's return flight to San Francisco from Hawaii. Surviving the crash only caused them to confront the chaos of the apocalypse head-on. Their fellow survivors were helpless and lacked the skills to survive. Tom, his sister, and their grandma survive the perilous trip from San Francisco to their ranch in Southern Oregon using their prepper skills to keep them alive during the anarchy around them. They continue to lead a small band of friends through the chaos and anarchy that has shattered their world.

Mercy Thompson is a shapeshifter, and while she was raised by werewolves, she can never be one of them, especially after the pack ran her off for having a forbidden love affair. So she’s turned her talent for fixing cars into a business and now runs a one-woman mechanic shop in the Tri-Cities area of Washington State.

It was just a random mutation - one of a billion that happen in viruses every day. But this one was different. It exploded out of Somalia and spread across the oceans before anybody thought to look up from their cell phones to see what was going on. The infected breathed the virus into the air around them, spreading it through the cities faster than anyone thought possible. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Police lines crumbled. Quarantine sites disintegrated. Cities started to collapse.