Five years after the worldwide roll-out of Dr. Fassbach’s “camouflage” vaccine, humanity believes it has the undead pandemic contained. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), now a U.N. special envoy, travels the post-war reconstruction zones documenting pockets of recovery. But when an aid convoy disappears in the frozen wastes of northern Siberia, satellite footage shows something impossible: hordes moving with coordinated intent, shrugging off the vaccine’s masking effect.
Gerry assembles a new strike team—British ex-MI6 tracker Isla Renwick, South Korean virologist Dr. Han Soo-jin, and Ukrainian drone pilot Nikita Kovalenko—to investigate. At a half-buried Russian research outpost they find grisly evidence of experiments on “Phase II” variants: zombies that have begun to re-myelinate neural pathways, restoring pack intelligence and a primal hive consciousness.
The team learns that a clandestine bio-weapons division attempted to weaponize these smarter infecteds as a deterrent, but the creatures out-evolved their cages. Worse, the hive is migrating south, tunneling through abandoned missile silos toward China’s Heilongjiang Province—home to 300 million unvaccinated refugees who refused the original serum.
With global communications spotty, Gerry must convince fractious governments to act. He proposes re-activating “Red Right Hand,” a plan to detonate decommissioned nuclear ice-breakers and flood the tunnel network. Isla argues that detonations could aerosolize the mutated pathogen worldwide. Time dwindles: satellite heat signatures show the hive breaching Chinese borders within 72 hours.
Sneaking into the tunnel labyrinth, the squad plants seismic charges but discovers an embryonic “Alpha” zombie—larger, armored with bone plates, and capable of emitting infrasound commands. During the escape Nikita is bitten yet doesn’t turn; Soo-jin realizes her recent booster may slow Phase II conversion to six hours. Gerry records a desperate message: sacrifice the team to lure the horde into the blast radius.
As detonations collapse the ice, Gerry’s last transmission fades amid static. Months later, Isla—now in quarantine—reviews Nikita’s bloodwork: antibodies are adapting, hinting at a true cure. Outside, London’s sirens wail: Phase II outbreaks have begun across Europe. As tactical bombers scramble overhead, crowds gasp at streaking fireballs—the undead, now airborne via parasitic spores. Humanity’s reprieve is over—and the real war is about to start.
