Jane meets Gideon, a gifted inventor and the son of the mayor of Baltimore, who disagrees with the way Summerland is run. Jane realizes that she will have to escape before the walls of the city fail. White citizens are not expected to contribute to the defense of the town, and as the number of shamblers around the settlement grows, the Black workers find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered. In Summerland, religion and politics have created an unequal system of labor. She and the other Black workers are set up to fail with poorly maintained weapons, and they are treated like animals by the white authorities in town.
Jane, however, is forced to work long hours for little pay and meager food portions. Jane manages to convince the town’s sheriff and preacher that Katherine is a white woman, ensuring that Katherine will be treated well. In Summerland, Jackson is taken away, and Jane and Katherine are tasked with serving the white community and defending the wall around Summerland. The mayor admits that Baltimore isn’t safe, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone in the Eastern cities are killed or forced to flee. Jane and Jackson are caught, and the mayor of Baltimore sends them and Katherine to Summerland, a faraway frontier town in Kansas. His younger sister has gone missing, and as rumors start to spread of entire families disappearing without explanation, Jane agrees to go snooping around the mayor’s estate with Jackson to find out where his sister might have been taken. However, Jane’s ex-lover Jackson needs her help. To thank her for her services, Jane and her classmate Katherine are invited to the mayor of Baltimore’s house. Jane struggles to stay out of trouble, and one night at a lecture, she finds herself in the middle of a shambler attack within the walls of Baltimore County, a place that is supposed to be shambler-free. When Jane is 17, she attends “Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls,” where she is trained to defend white women from the undead, or shamblers.
The focus abruptly shifts to dead soldiers rising and attacking the living after the Battle of Gettysburg.
Those present at her birth assume that Jane is the child of an adulterous affair. Jane McKeene is a Black child who was born to a white woman.
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