Stage One: Hope in Darkness

Lara wakes to the world going up in flames around her. A virus is sweeping the world, turning people into flesh eating monsters. The walking dead. People gather, trying to flea the city. Lara and her friend, the only person she can call family, Annabelle among them. During the chaos the two are separated, believing the other to be dead. Years pass. Both finding their own ways to survive in their new reality. Lara finds her place with another group of survivors, Annabelle makes her place in the woods with nothing but willpower and a friendly wolf. When rippers and their pet walkers come to the city looking for Annabelle, Lara finds out that her family is not dead. And that she is in grave danger. The cannibalistic rippers are not acting alone either. They under the order of a mysterious figure known only as 'The Master' and even the rippers, who keep the undead as pets, are afraid of him.

Annabelle escaped from the master before, and not unscathed. The scars of her neck are the proof of that. She is no longer able to speak. With the rippers coming to town she knows it is time to move on. That camp just on the other side of the city is attacked by them. Annabelle's last act before hitting the road is to take out some of the rippers with her rifle. Memories from her past are coming back to haunt her. The Master is coming for her and she is determined not to let him catch her. She will not be one of his experiments ever again.