This is book 3 of 4. It focuses on a small number of the group looking for Angie’s husband and daughter. They head back to Chico, CA in the helicopter with Vlad at the wheel. Do helicopters have wheels? I don’t think so. Anyway, they go back to Angie’s parent’s ranch, and find it ransacked. Everyone except her dad is gone, and her dad is upside down crucified, and a zombie. Not a great start to their adventure.
At this point, it’s just Vlad, Angie, Carney, and Skye from the first two books. We don’t hear about the people on the Nimitz at all. I assume everything’s fine there? Angie, Carney and Skye leave Vlad and the helicopter safely at a family friend’s ranch. They then set off to find Angie’s husband Dean, and their daughter Leah. They eventually find a group of people that met them, and Angie regains hope that they’re alive. They tell her that Dean got bit, and he told them it was a dog bite, but they weren’t sure. Again, she thinks they’re dead.
There’s a group of VERY BAD bikers (the ones who ransacked Angie’s family’s ranch and basically murdered everyone), and they’re hunting Dean and Leah, and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in their way. They’re torturing people and making them “guard zombies”.
Ooh, there’s also a new type of zombie (or Drifter, like the book’s title). Their skin is cherry red, and they’re halfway between a zombie and a human. They’re all bad though. They can think and evade the humans, but also run after them. The group (actually Skye’s the only one who saw one so far) starts calling them Hobgoblins. I think they feature heavily in the next book. I can’t wait to see where they go with this story next, and how everyone back at the ship is doing!