Keene, Brian

Tommy O'Brien learns he has only a few months to live and sets out to find a way to provide for his family even after he is gone.

The dead are returning to life as intelligent zombies. Trapped by the undead, escape seems impossible for Jim Thurmond. But Jim's young son is alive and in dire peril hundreds of miles away. Despite overwhelming odds, Jim vows to find him, or die trying. Joined by an elderly preacher, a guilt-ridden scientist, and a determined ex-prostitute, Jim embarks on a cross-country rescue mission. They must battle both the living and the living dead. And for Jim and his companions, an even greater evil awaits them at the end of their journey.

June 1984. Timmy Graco is looking forward to summer vacation, taking it easy and hanging out with his buddies. Instead, his summer will be filled with terror in a life and death battle against a nightmarish creature that few believe even exists. Timmy has learned that the person who's been unearthing graves in the cemetery isn't a person at all. It's a thing. And it's hungry. And now it's after Timmy and his friends.

Octogenarian Teddy Garnett tells this story of a global flood that has left humanity in tatters. Holed up in his mountain home, Teddy and his buddy Carl Seaton struggle through daily life, puzzling over things even stranger than a 40-day rainstorm, including the giant slime-coated holes that keep showing up in Teddy's yard. Before long, Teddy and Carl are fending off man-eating earthworms the size of buses. A helicopter crash nearby brings Kevin and Sarah, the last two survivors of an outpost in Baltimore, into Teddy's story.

A father and his small son, an ex-prostitute, and a few more survivors band together in a fortified Manhattan skyscraper to battle the zombie humans and animals who are brutally destroying every living thing on Earth, possessed by demons who have escaped the void and want revenge on God.