 Following the devastating impact of a global catastrophe the streets and fields of rural England lie littered with the dead and decaying - corpses strewn on every corner - motionless and cold like statues - frozen on the roads, in their cars, in their homes. Wandering through this chilling baron post-apocalyptic landscape a pitiful handful of survivors emerge from the arid emptiness and group together, still shattered by the hellacious aftermath of the catastrophe, they race to find shelter from the storm of searing fallout, pausing only to scoop up the near lifeless body of a younger man, Alex Cahill, pulling him from the wreckage of a crashed car and carrying him with them to the apparent safety of a nearby manor house. Once inside their port of relative shelter, the group begins the sticky process of acclimatizing to the madness of the situation they have been so abruptly thrust into and tiptoe around each other like heartbreaking new friends, slowly getting the measure of the random strangers who could prove their constant companions for the rest of their natural days. The awkward process continues and soon life within the baleful and brooding manor evolves into a routine; grief and disbelief are transformed into a mere numbing nagging sense of sadness and loss, desperation is replaced by an acceptance and eventually a form of normalcy and control prevails. However, life for the newly formed microcosm is set to take another more subtle and less catastrophic turn, and yet, despite its delicate tone, it is an invasion that will once again shake the foundation of the community they inhabit and threaten the world as they now know it. For when the still unconscious Alex finally comes to, jolted awake into the bowels of a claustrophobic hell, he is less than sensitively treated to the news that his family are dead, his whole life gone and his only world now consists of the less than appealing group of characters encircling him. He is, at first, befuddled and disbelieving, but ultimately, after accepting the horrors that have transpired, he vehemently refuses to comply to interminable and endless days in the suffocating confines of the manor and the life of mordacity and discord on offer therein. Infused by hope and a desperate yearning need to make some sense of the chaos, he begins a quest to leave the house and its cold insipid inhabitants far behind. Unfortunately for Alex, certain members within the newly formed family are only too content to continue their newfound roles as dictators, controllers and borderline tyrants, and, sensing his departure would evoke a quiet rebellion and destroy their coveted positions within the tiny empire, they begin a pattern of systematic mental, emotional and physical abuse in a cold-blooded attempt to break his spirit and rob him of his soul until he falls utterly under their control. From here on in life within the manor only gets more brutal and unforgiving. With even the shadows seeming afraid of the light, everything within the house is at odds, a dominant/submissive power struggle ensues, argumentative war zones and emotional battlefields erupt and the survivors all regress to one extent or another, some becoming astonishingly invisible, some shockingly victimized, others aloof observers. For some it is no longer blood running through their veins, but poison, cruelty, fear, self-loathing and spite. The pressures within are matched by a sense of external threat, as it transpires that something or someone else has also survived and, for reasons of their own, fanatically and frantically wants to find a way inside. Fear and paranoia at a searing crescendo, the leaders within the house are all too quick to border up the windows and doors to keep the thing out - or themselves in. Only Alex, still determined to be the voice of humanness and reason, implores his co-inhabitants, come captors, to go to the other survivor s aide. However, barricaded in, with the danger outside encroaching, tensions mount leading to ever more violent and merciless skirmishes and betrayals and the days when the controlling parties listened to reason are long gone. Not only will they refuse to hear Alex s pleas for a fellow man s salvation they also remain resolved to either permanently containing or completely destroying him. And as their whole world is now a lawless one, save any laws they create, and man s more primal and animalistic nature is so deeply seeped within them, Alex has no choice but to quietly resign himself to his fate or summon together his last reserves of strength and put up whatever resistance he can against his omnipotent tormentors. And so begins a battle of brute force, lust and desire, manipulative control and insanity pitted against the quiet resolve of intellect, dignity and the defiant hope of a decent young man, refusing to give up belief in the ultimate goodness of things. Ultimately as Alex, imprisoned in a cage of darkness, silence and doom, hangs over a precipice, almost corrupted and destroyed by the brutality and abuse he has endured, it remains a testament to the courage and triumph of the human spirit that, in the these last possible days of humanity, it is the unending love of another human being that will finally allow him to break through his emotional shackles, coming to his rescue and giving him the courage to rescue himself. In the end, even the more brutal of the monsters among the group, crumble and decay and beneath their wounds lurks a surprising depth of tenderness and longing, festered by the pain of desire, shame and the futility of aching for an impossible love. Evoking the all too obvious parallel that mankind will not finally be wiped out by fire, brimstone or nuclear invasion but by themselves.