A young American backpacker enlists a French couple to help him find a fabled Thailand beach where other backpackers have formed a tropical utopia.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old...

Bob Lee Swagger is a master marksman who has retreated from his duty as an off-the-books hired gun for the military. He has become disillusioned with his government, but finds that the government needs Swagger to scope out the location of a rumored attempt on the life of the president. A shadowy government operative begs Swagger to use his sniper's skills to out-fox the assassin. Ultimately he is double-crosses and framed for the attempted assassination....