The after-dead scavengers haunting the derelict starship are not your grandma's old-fashioned zombies. They are cleaners, mudmen, zombie killers who wander dark, dripping corridors and rusting halls looking for their next meal. The six crew members on board have no idea what they are about to walk out into after a night's rest in their cozy sleeping area. The six engineers are clueless about the enormous hulk drifting among the stars... or about the cargo; worst of all, they can't even guess about their own tragic identities.The six-person engineering crew aboard a cargo ship awaken to a normal morning in the crew quarters aboard a solar system cargo ship they think is named Neptune Express, on a two-year mission to the blue gas giant Neptune in the home system. For a last golden hour, they enjoy breakfast, banter, and z-mail home across the vast emptiness of space. But Earth isn't answering. And the captain is nowhere to be found. They open the bays to start work, and the nightmare begins. Ridge and Brenna run for their lives and love on a ship of horrors - scariest being truth that lurks in oneself. Beyond those mud-faced, howling zombie ciphers lurks the greatest melancholy and terror of all. The horror lives inside the heroes themselves, on a long-lost, desperate journey to escape the dead solar system of Earth. They discover that truth, aching bit by sad bit in a tragic discovering process that leaves little room (or time) for hope.But--here lies the heroism of Ridge and Brenna, two human beings who challenge eternity and defy cosmic odds--there would be no story without hope. Stubbornly, in the face of their melancholy fate, these two race against time to find the sanctuary on board, a mysterious section called Largo.Never before has a ship so far from home been in so much trouble. Hurtling through space and time like a blur, the dead starship recalls a darkly bright motto out of a nightmare: "Nothing seems right...near the speed of light..." Not the ship, not the mission, nor its people--especially not Ridge and Brenna, who are drawn to each other in a deep passion that defies the deadly madness all around--yet their love, too, is a symptom of all that's wrong aboard the ship. Bodies begin turning up, along with zombie-like Mudmen or Cleaners who hunt both the living and the dead, seeking body parts and food. But that's the least of the crew's problems. The dying begins. One by one, the engineers fall prey to a strange illness. One by one, each realizes the most horrific truth of all about him or herself.Pursued by the zombie Cleaners, Ridge and Brenna desperately search for truth, for help, for survival, for hope where none should be. Somewhere in the rusting, dripping, hollow, ghost-ridden bowels of this enormous city flying through the distant galaxy is a magical place called Largo, where answers and help can be found.Ridge and Brenna must find Largo before it's too late, as the clock ticks...Largo itself is only a keyhole leading to either human extinction...or a New Earth that is humankind's only shred of hope. If the two lovers cannot defeat the ship and its monsters (both external and internal to themselves) they will never know as a ghastly array of long-dead, mummified officers on the bridge sails the dead ship to her ultimate destiny amid distant stars.