In the near future, a desperate and ever-more controlling UK government attempts to restore a sense of national pride with a New Festival of Britain. But construction work on the site of an old church in South London releases a centuries-old plague that turns its victims into flesh-hungry ghouls.

This supernatural virus has the power to revive the dead, and its contagion spreads through bites or scratches. 'The Death' soon sweeps across London, plunging the whole country into chaos. When a drastic attempt to eradicate the outbreak fails, the plague spreads quickly to mainland Europe and then across the rest of the world.

Told through a series of interconnected eyewitness narratives — text messages, e-mails, blogs, letters, diaries, and transcripts — this is an epic story of a world plunged into chaos as the dead battle the living for total domination.