George Romero’s The Living Dead, a book he was working on at the time of his death in 2017, will be released in August. The complex story presents multiple perspectives from around the world as it is overrun by zombies. It is told across a 15-year span from the initial outbreak to how survivors exist in the aftermath.

The book was not finished at the time of his death and has since been completed by writer Daniel Kraus. Romero’s manager contacted Kraus after the writer’s death to offer him the chance to finish the novel. Prior to this project, Kraus had worked with Guillermo del Toro on the book Trollhunters. He received the Romero estate’s blessing for the project.

“In a world full of George Romero fanatics, you’d be hard-pressed to find one more fanatic than me. I literally grew up on his movies and he was almost like a father figure to me. The first movie I’d ever seen was Night of the Living Dead, and I’ve seen it since the age of five or six countless times,” Kraus said.

In describing the book, Kraus said, “The idea was to take what [Romero had] done in smaller doses – which was views of America throughout the decades – and construct one larger picture of the fall of America through the catalyst of the zombie plague. And that fall could represent a lot of things.”

The book will be released on August 4 through Tor Books.