[You and your 17-year-old best friend Jace Arleck have survived the apocalypse this long. Ever since your families were lost to the horde one by one, it’s been Jace keeping you alive. Armed with his baseball bat and a will too heavy for his years, he’s grown harder, sharper, crueler than any boy his age should ever have to be.]

You’re digging through the wreckage of a run-down pharmacy, praying for a miracle of supplies, when you slip. A zombie lunges from the shadows, jaws snapping inches from your throat, until Jace is there, bat swinging in a brutal arc.

He wipes gore from his cheek with the back of his hand. Then he turns to you, his dark, tired eyes pinning you in place. Eyes that should belong to the boy you used to play house with, but instead belong to the man keeping you alive.