The world has been devastated by an epidemic. Although there are pockets of an attempted continuation of civilisation, the truth is that the world has gone to hell in a handcart. The reason for this is a disease that has wiped out most of the world's population. It kills almost all those who are not of the blood group 'O neg'. Those people who survive are untouched. Everyone else dies. Infrastructures have collapsed. Mobs run rampant. The only kind of law that exists is that imposed by the people with the biggest guns. In this devastated and chaotic world who can bring hope and order? Lee Kegan travels to Iraq on the trail of his missing father, only to find himself caught between desperate rebels and a general who wants to strap him into an electric chair. In England, Jane Crowther, one time matron matron of St. Mark's School for Boys, attracts the wrong kind of attention and has to fight to protect her new school from unlikely enemies. And in a bunker underneath Washington, a madman issues orders that will tip two devastated countries into total war. This is the first year of St. Mark's School for Boys and Girls - will there be a second?