With all the continents overrun by the living dead, the hubs of commerce and civilization are no longer New York or London or Beijing: they’re Nantucket, Havana, and Reykjavik. The sea is not the deadly, foreboding barrier it once was to human life: now it’s their source of safety, transportation, and sustenance. But the mainland beckons reckless, restless men, just as the sea did hundreds of years before, luring them with the promise of riches and danger.

Sailing from Nantucket, the Hyperion takes six foragers on such a quest: Jacob, the scarred captain who lost half his right hand to the dead; Ridley, a young man full of curiosity and naiveté; King, a devout Christian who tries to keep the captain’s madness in check; Sink, who seems to thrive on the casual brutality of their trade; Phil, for whom this is just the best job to support his family in this strange, violent world; and Spider, a boy raised in the post-apocalyptic world, barely aware any other kind of life ever existed.

Their journey takes them back to the land from which they’ve been banished, to steal back from the hungry dead all the things people once took for granted, the remnants of human art and ingenuity, before these are completely lost in the decaying ruins. But this time, they will find not just fuel and tools and weapons, but cities full of dead who are smarter, better prepared, and with their own mysterious agenda.