Rick Grimes, Sheriff of a small town in Kentucky awakes in a hospital. Comatose after being shot while on duty, Rick finds the world abandoned of all things living and is faced with walking undead, who attack him on sight. He returns home to find his family, son Carl and wife Lori, gone. He meets his new neighbor, who points him towards Atlanta. After retrieving supplies from the abandoned Police Station, Rick sets off to Atlanta to search for his family.

Five years after a devastating solar storm wipes out civilization and spawns a strange race of mutants, Rachel Wheeler and her misfit family must choose whether to hide away or fight to join other survivors.  As their food supply dwindles inside their bunker, radiation from abandoned nuclear plants is altering the world around them. Not only are the mutants building their own cities and weapons, the remaining dregs of the US military are massing for an attack. In this decaying environment, hostile new creatures crawl out from the crevices and up from the waterways to threaten them all.  But as a half-mutant, Rachel’s choice isn’t as simple as mere survival – the mutant way of life might be more promising than anything humans could hope to restore. And Rachel’s next decision could tear apart her family and the entire world.