A tough, unsentimental novel of war and survival, for older readers. Following the outbreak of war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, Western Europe has been overrun by the Red Army, and the south-eastern corner of England occupied. Renewed hostilities five years later result in a biological weapon being dropped on Leicester. Told largely in flashback twelve years after the attack, the story follows Darren, an ordinary boy who gets caught up in the renewed conflict, and becomes one of the few survivors of the 'germ bomb'. His struggle for survival amidst the anarchy and devastation of the contaminated Midlands, now cordoned off from the rest of the country, is related with honesty and a direct, matter-of-fact realism.