Blaze Forrester is a high school junior in a near-distant post-apocalyptic future where the gene that turns people into zombies has infiltrated the human race. She carries this gene, as does her 12 year old brother Dax. They must conceal this fact for fear of being exiled outside of their sector (the city of Los Angeles) walls. Unfortunately, this is not possible as Dax confides in Blaze one evening and their father overhears, turning them in the very next morning. Naomi, Blaze's beautifully spirited, completely human girlfriend, gets exiled with them as well (guilty by association). They must fend for themselves in a desert full of loose zombies and questionably abandoned government experimentation labs, for if Blaze and Dax do not find some raw meat to consume quickly, their urges to devour Naomi may cause them to lose control of their mutation.

The story of Pentecostal minister Glenn Summerford — a man accused of attempting to murder his wife with a rattlesnake in the sleepy town of Scottsboro, Alabama — and the investigation and trial that haunted Southern Appalachia for decades.

A teenager from an abusive household falls in love with a free-spirited runaway that leads him into the fast-lane lifestyle of drugs and addiction which threatens to destroy him.