No one knows exactly when or where it began. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one . . . Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that tattoos its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks before causing them to burst into flames. Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse treated hundreds of infected patients before contracting the deadly virus herself. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob s dismay, Harper now wants to live at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their once-placid New England community collapses in terror. But Harper isn t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger, a man wearing a dirty yellow firefighter s jacket and carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known simply as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.