After barely escaping the sinking cruise ship they'd found adrift on in the gulf of Mexico, Steve Wendell and the remnants of his group enter Galveston and Texas City to find them burned and abandoned by the living, but not by the dead. The shores are swarming with them. When their boat is holed by debris, they search for another and come across a group of survivors who've taken refuge on a deactivated battleship. Agreeing to help these people get to safety in exchange for use of their boats, they soon find that except for one of this new group, they are an albatross around their neck. As they make their way through a landscape full of the dead who want to kill and eat them, and the living who want to kill and rob them, they find it's a continual battle of survival. When they discover their way is blocked by a huge mob of the dead, they take refuge in the last place they could have ever imagined.