Cade Grayson, father, husband, and former Delta Force operator collected his fair share of ghosts as the Omega virus ravaged the United States, turning the majority of her population into mindless automatons hungering for human flesh.

Wearing incredulous stares, the faces of those ghosts - dozens of men, women, and children he was unable to save during his many forays into the Z-infested wasteland - visit him nightly during the early morning hours when defenses are dulled and REM sleep has him in its firm grip.

For others who lost contact with loved ones during the frantic first hours and days of the Omega outbreak, their ghosts manifest in the nagging possibility that a wife or child or mother or sibling may still be alive out there, somewhere, struggling to survive amongst the multitudes of walking corpses and roving bands of murderous breathers.

So as the Eden survivors prepare their rural Utah compound for the coming fall and winter they find that the herds of dead patrolling the nearby State Route aren't their only enemy.

Idle time seems to be giving power to their ghosts. And with each perceived whiff of familiar perfume, or flash in the side vision of a familiar form that proves to be nonexistent, the lure of wanting to know their fate begins to affect some of the group adversely.

Even after attaining a modicum of closure in the high country of central Idaho, Duncan Winters continues to seek solace for his loss at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.