A terrifying new plague called Draco Incendia Trychophyton, but to everyone else it is Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. Cremation Squads roam the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. Harper Grayson is a pregnant nurse who reneges on her death pact with her husband when they become infected, and he abandons her. Harper isn't as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter's jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.