STARS WERE ETERNAL, no matter the state of the world beneath, they twinkled in the night sky and offered a moment of tranquillity to all those willing to admire them.

When her father was shot in the line of duty, Freya Grimes spent a good portion of the night standing in the hospital parking lot, wishing — despite her doubt in its effectiveness — that her father would defy the odds and live. And he did — for a while — but then the dead began to rise and all those sworn to protect civilisation had pulled up stakes and abandoned them.

Rick Grimes was left on his lonesome in a no longer functioning hospital, and his wife and children were uprooted from everything they'd ever known and rushed to the outskirts of the city in the hope that it would increase their chances of surviving this . . . plague.

"You see that big one?" Freya asked her little brother, using her pointer finger to navigate her favourite star of all amongst the midnight canvas above. "That's the North Star."