Hudson is a nation under martial law, built from the collapse of the USA and the culling of New York City. Special agent Ava hoped for newlywed nesting this winter. Instead Hudson grumbles with famine. In Virginia, weaponized Ebola returns. And her husband is colder than the Upstate winter. Citizens grow ornery with fear. Will life ever be good again? Politics thrusts Ava back into the city. Her assignment: to investigate a string of suspicious deaths. Where they lead could break her heart. Old demons rise up from the Starve, when she too was quarantined in this damned city to die. Can she find answers in time, before the streets explode into riots? Ava must confront her gang-rat past, in this noir turn in a desperate city.