Using Dante’s Inferno to draw out the reality behind the fantasy, author Kim Paffenroth tells the true events... During his lost wanderings, Dante came upon an infestation of the living dead. The unspeakable acts he witnessed —cannibalism, live burnings, evisceration, crucifixion, and dozens more—became the basis of all the horrors described in Inferno. At last, the real story can be told.

In a world overrun by the living dead, one band of survivors built a community with a strange sort of peace with the undead. Now they’ve exiled two undead and two living people into the wilderness outside the city walls. The four unwisely seek help in a city filled with things they had forgotten in their simple existence together: safety, good food, comfortable lives, cruelty, apathy, and greed.