In this terrifying fable of a world without faith, first there were the changes in weather. Lack of rain was turning the plains of Iowa, Kansas, and Idaho into arid blocks of parched earth. In the North, it was already January, and no sign of snow. All over the world, the seas were shrinking, and creeks and rivers looked like dried scars. But for Pete, the terrified son of a midwestern farming family, the first great omen came one unseasonably warm winter night when the moon simply vanished from a cloudless sky, and the clocks stopped.
Soon, Pete's family farm becomes a prison as a strange sulfurous fog rolls across the land. In its wake, poisonous weeds grow wild, choking to death anything – and anyone – within reach. On the streets is a relentless army of scorpions with a sting that kills. Yet, when the government finally moves in, it's not to protect; it's for a reason far more deadly and absolute than anyone can imagine. Now Earth's survivors face something even more frightful than nature: the evil of men. One man fights to uncover a secret that will save the world in this story of courage, passion, and the will to believe.