Journalist John Pender has returned to his home town of Whiteshead to rekindle his marriage. Ex-British Intelligence Officer Dave Johnson has arrived to isolate himself after his fiancee is murdered during a mission that went terribly wrong. But excavations for the new shopping centre unearth a mysterious contagion that threatens to throw their lives into chaos. Now the residents of Whiteshead are trapped within a quarantine zone with the military on one side and ravenous hordes on the other. Escape is no longer an option. Far out in the mouth of the estuary a small keep sits forlornly surrounded by an apron of jagged rocks. This refuge has always been unassailable, a place of myth and legend that has grown in folklore through the years. Now, it's the survivors' only hope of sanctuary. But there are thousands of flesh-eating infected between them and the keep and time is running out ...