Patrick Shep Shepherd was a promising major league rookie baseball pitcher when September 11th, 2001, hit. Shaken by the attacks, Shep left behind his soul mate and newborn daughter to enlist in the Armed Forces. Eleven years and four deployments later, Shep finds himself in Manhattan's VA hospital. His left arm is gone, his wife and daughter are gone, and he is haunted by the nightmares of war. December 21st.: While world leaders meet at the U.N., Mary Klipot, a bio-hazard level-4 scientist working at---the CIA labs in Fort Detrick, enters the Big Apple with Scythe, a swift-acting version of the Black Death designed to wipe out Americas enemies abroad. Believing she is carrying out God's wishes, Mary infects herself, then unleashes Scythe upon Manhattan. The threat of a worldwide pandemic forces officials to seal off the island . . . the president among those trapped. Determined to rescue his wife and child, Shep follows his guide, Virgil Shechinah, through the plague-infected neighborhoods of Manhattan, revisiting the Nine Circles of Hell as portrayed in Dante's Inferno. And the Grim Reaper, loosed upon the land by a humanity who has once again tipped the scales in favor of evil over good, is stalking Patrick Shepherd.