Searching for a happy ending to a tale of unimaginable disaster and horror, nine strangers find themselves holed up together in a farmhouse cellar in rural Texas. The United States has hastily become embroiled in World War 3. A young doctor named Hunter survives the nuclear attack and is thrown together by happenstance with a group of wounded and frightened victims, including Elizabeth, a strong-willed confidant to Hunter, Brad - an antagonistic redneck jackass, and Jennifer, a barely coherent young woman suffering from severe post-traumatic stress. Together, they attempt to endure the devastating holocaust as they struggle with claustrophobia and conflicting personalities. In a makeshift shelter, Hunter and his dying companions wait for news from the government while fending off hunger, radiation sickness, and a horde of frightened and dying refugees.

In Point Pleasant, land of the legend The Mothman, a group of seven teenage friends accidentally kills the boy Jamie (Alex Hardee) in a prank by the river and they decide to cover up the incident. Ten years later, the journalist of the Washington Weekly Katharine Grant, who was one of the seven teenagers, is assigned by her editor to return to her hometown to prepare a matter about the 10th Mothman Festival. She meets with the other six friends that have stayed in the town and sooner they are murdered one by one by The Mothman. Katherine and her former boyfriend Derek seek help with old blind man Frank Waverly that has been luring The Mothman for many years trying to save their lives from the punishment of the entity.

Summer in a small southern town: Grace wants to go to college, but her feckless mom has poisoned that well (no student loans because mom has welshed on credit cards in Grace's name). Dorian wants to escape from his snobbish adoptive parents. They team up to sell marijuana - she hopes for enough to go to college. Both investigate family secretes, and things get complicated when Dorian falls for her, Grace falls for someone else, and Grace's 15-year-old sister behaves badly. Can Dorian find independence and Grace get to college. And what constitutes a family, anyway?