Aaron Doyle is an American teacher living and working at a university in Dongying, China. When the first strange cases appear, nobody wants another lockdown. The students have already spent enough time being told where they can go, when they can leave, and what they are supposed to do.

Then people start dying.

And getting back up.

By the time Aaron and the others understand what is happening, the university has become a refuge. The gates are barricaded. Food is counted. Water is rationed. The dead gather outside the fences while the living try to pretend that tomorrow will still look something like yesterday.

It doesn't.

With winter coming and the city beyond the campus collapsing, survival becomes a matter of ordinary things: rice, fuel, medicine, batteries, warm clothes, working locks, and knowing which roads are still safe.

And then there is everything else.

Loneliness doesn't disappear during an apocalypse. Neither does attraction. Neither does jealousy, guilt, curiosity, or the need to feel another person close when the world outside has become unbearable.

Aaron finds himself caught between people he cares about and desires he never expected to act on. The relationships inside the university become just as complicated as the fight to keep the dead outside.

Because when the rules disappear, people still have to decide what kind of people they want to be.

Set in northern China and grounded in the ordinary details of life on a Chinese university campus, this is not a story about superheroes or soldiers saving the world.

It is about teachers, students, nurses, cooks, administrators, and ordinary people trying to keep one small piece of their world alive.

An adult zombie apocalypse novel combining survival horror, steamy fiction, romance, dark humor, and a realistic China setting.