Little town, big villain. Little people, big attitudes.
Wyatt Brody is deputy sheriff of a dusty, forgotten town on a seldom-used highway in the smallest county in New Mexico. With the sheriff's guidance as his training wheels, he keeps an eye on the citizens of Burnell, facing small-town politics, drunken violence, and religious bigotry. But he is blindsided when the sheriff murders his own niece and locks himself in the only holding cell in town. The training wheels are off and Deputy Brody has to learn quick - or be swallowed in a tidal wave of fanatic insanity that threatens to consume his hometown.
In the next 24 hours Wyatt and Claire Hensley, daycare manager and psychic, follow a trail of child murders within Burnell that happen right beneath their noses, each time perpetrated by someone whom they've known for years. When the tide turns against them, determination becomes desperation, and the two of them find themselves on the run, protecting a single child from a malevolent force both of them are loath to understand but destined to confront.