Book excerpt: Is Anyone Safe In This New World of Consumerism? The group, including the cop, Talaski, and the firefighter, Mills, is stranded on the old fishing pier that once was the Skyway Bridge. To the northeast, Bronte’s followers fight to the death for Tanglewood Island. Further inland the soldier, Jacobs, befriends a group of kids and finds them a haven at a small walled house they aptly dub the Alamo. Meanwhile, President Foster’s wife, Julie, convinces a group of soldiers to take her back to her husband. Find out, too, what trouble Dead-Eye Johnny jumped into when he leapt off the Skyway and fell onto a cruise ship! Others like Trish and Natalie face terrible odds on their own. Behind all of it is a shadowy corporation, a runaway scientist and a cut-throat mobster, all determined to secure what is best for themselves! Humanity is in its death throes and still the survivors of the apocalypse struggle with and embrace friendship, love, lust, envy, hate, rage and cruelty beyond measure. The grueling task of finding a safe haven and securing supplies is far more difficult than it should be simply due to human nature. For the privileged, protected elite, that task has been a burden shouldered by others as they wait in bunkers, or take the sun on the decks of yachts. The average survivor does what he or she has to, or what they can live with to survive. Until now. Witness the best and the worst that humanity has to offer as the dead tide surges, and what is left of civilization sinks into a morass of madness.