"In The Passage and The Twelve, Justin Cronin brilliantly imagined the fall of civilization and humanity's desperate fight to survive. Now all is quiet on the horizon--but does silence promise the nightmare's end or the second coming of unspeakable darkness? At last, this bestselling epic races to its breathtaking finale. The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place? The Twelve have been destroyed and the hundred-year reign of darkness...

Survivors of a government-induced apocalypse endure their violent and disease-stricken world while protecting their loved ones; while a century into the future, members of a transformed society determinedly search for the original twelve virals.