This starts with a Fast Zombie apocalypse scene, then flashes back to Day One of the outbreak.
A lady doctor ( Elyse Levesque ) has come down with Ebola-type symptoms after treating a Syrian teenager. The local police chief, a studly young black man, sends his best man out to round up the usual suspects. Unfortunately the virus has had a couple of days to spread.
Luckily, this is all happening in Atlanta, Georgia - home of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). It is also home for The Walking Dead , but this is not a prequel. One of the characters even compares the situation to a Zombie Apocalypse, thus clearly proving that this is NOT an actual Zombie story. Instead it is a disaster movie that may cross over as a techno-thriller, with the plague caused by bio-terrorism.
CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) puts the hospital into lockdown, so the best man cop is trapped inside. So is a beautiful young lady schoolteacher, so he has a love interest. Soon the entire city centre is cordoned off.
The quarantine continues. The square-jawed top cop is inside the hot zone, although he is extremely unhappy about it. The chance to be a hero and save thousands of people is an unwelcome burden to him.
The pregnant Hanna Mangan Lawrence is trapped inside the zone too. She crashes at her grandmother's house. This is not a Little Red Riding Hood reference.
The journalist discovers a potential weakness in the quarantine zone's perimeter. He broadcasts video footage of this on the internet. Can the cops seal this in time before potentially infected people start to escape?
The pregnant Hanna Mangan Lawrence is working in her mother's convenience store when some rednecks try to rob it.
After the events of the previous episode, CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) cuts all civilian communication with the quarantined zone. The journalist tries to find a way around this.
The young black guy is still trying to break into the quarantine zone. After all, his pregnant wife ( Hanna Mangan Lawrence ) is working in her mother's convenience store when the rednecks try to rob it again.
CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) sends the cops in to distribute fifty thousand military rations packs. The police chief complains that he does not have enough manpower to get the job done. He also claims that it would be better to wait. However, since he knows that people are starving to death he should know better than to increase the death toll unnecessarily.
The school-teacher starts to piece things together. The lady doctor ( Elyse Levesque ) died before the so-called patient zero, so the obvious assumption is that she was infected before he was.
The pregnant Hanna Mangan Lawrence gets a break because her husband is in town. He gets conscripted into helping the local gang-bangers.
The police chief wants to investigate the conspiracy theory. He recruits the journalist to help him. They must locate the backup of the hospital's CCTV.
It turns out that the CCTV backup system has lax security, and the data is easily downloadable into a USB stick. The bad news is, the data has been corrupted. The good news is, the chief's girlfriend is an expert in digital data recovery. The bad news is, she is still trapped in the quarantine zone.
The cop takes the USB stick with CCTV data to the digital data recovery centre. The pregnant girl ( Hanna Mangan Lawrence ) and her boyfriend have also taken shelter there. The bad news is, the centre is besieged by drug addicts.
Meanwhile, on the outside, the National Guard have taken over responsibility for security. The top cop is not happy about that, but there is nothing he can do.
There is a boy inside the quarantine zone who has no ill effects from the disease, despite being exposed to infection several times. The doctor tests him, and thinks he has immunity.
The top cop is in trouble for his personal actions. However, he gets reinstated by CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) because he is the best person to be trusted with a secret mission. Of course, she does not know that he is feeding info to the obsessive journalist.
The top cop's wife and her cow-orkers try to escape from the quarantine zone. They know about a tunnel that starts under the local church. Of course, they leave the white cop, the pregnant girl ( Hanna Mangan Lawrence ) and her boyfriend.
The top cop and CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) are quarantined. This is ironic, because she is the one who enforced the strict containment rules in the first place. Unfortunately the cordon's inmates have decided to riot and break through the security wall. This is dangerous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when they gather together in large groups they will spread the virus. Secondly, if they breach the cordon then the whole world is at risk.
The National Guard Captain is now in charge of security. He was always gung-ho and over-stepping his jurisdiction - he is answerable to the State Governor, but she outranks him because the CDC is Federal. However, the Captain is strangely unprepared for the riotous breakout attempt. He does not have less-lethal weapons like tear-gas or water-cannon, and refuses to put snipers in position. Instead he sends a squad of armed men into the compound.
The journalist contacts a friend at the NSA. She tries to track the number that Patient Zero called. However, this just asks more questions than it answers.
The top cop and CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) are out of quarantine. Now they have to clean up the mess. The good news is, the Journalist has tracked the suspicious phone number to Nantucket. The bad news is, Lommers is now Suspect Number One because she has a holiday home there.
The top cop sends his inside man to look for evidence. It turns out there was a clean-up job, which explains why the Police Chief sent in an undercover man with a satellite phone.
The pregnant girl ( Hanna Mangan Lawrence ) and her boyfriend are back at the lab. She is giving birth, and he is quarantined because of potential exposure during the riot. The teacher woman is also quarantined, within the hospital. Lots of soap opera drama ensues.
CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) gives her press conference and reveals the true origins of the virus. Well, sort of. She manages to deflect all the blame onto another doctor, thus covering her ass like a good politician. The next stage of her coverup is to target her accusers, the cop and the journalist. Of course, all this blame-mongering is really a distraction. The main issue should be to fix the problem (i.e. cure the virus), instead of worrying about a conspiracy to make untruthful statements.
Back in the zone, the schoolteacher is still quarantined. Her symptoms are getting worse, and seem more reminiscent of Ebola than Influenza. As she starts to bleed from every orifice fit for mainstream television, she is offered an experimental cure.
The top cop's wife goes shopping at the store the gangsters are camped out in. The corrupt cop offers her a way out of the zone, at five thousand dollars a head. This is obviously cheap at the price. However, it is neither moral nor safe. If the offer is genuine, it means breaching the safety cordon and potentially spreading the disease to the entire world. Of course, if the offer is fake then the gangsters will just take the cash and kill everyone.
The cop's wife and her friends decide to take advantage of the chance to escape. The renegade cop claims to have found a tunnel. Most of the main characters meet up to get out. But is it safe? It could be a double-cross, and the cops guarding the cordon will not be happy.
The doctor inside the cordon has a plan for a cure. However, he needs the blood of a carrier like Thomas - but Thomas does not have enough blood to cure everyone in the cordon. Can they test enough blood to find another blood donor?
The remain survivors try to escape via the hidden tunnel. However, the top cop discovers that CDC Dr. Sabine Lommers ( Claudia Black ) has ordered the National Guard to blow the tunnels up. Can he save them in time?
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