When police main Nathan Slaughter settles in the tiny hill community of Potter’s Field, Wyoming, his most fervent prayer is that he has left out him forever the headache he barely survived on a blizzardy evening in Detroit. But nothing prepares him for the greater sanity-threatening nightmare he is about to confront. Beginning with the finding of mutilated cattle on outlying ranches, Slaughter is drawn deeper and deeper into a vortex of terror as animals become savage and kids go insane, trapping the entire town in a frenzy of violence. As Slaughter races against time to expose the horrifying magic formula behind the increasingly savage attacks, he also problems to overcome his deepest anxieties.