In a small New Mexico town called Piedmont, 66 of its 68 residents lay dead, their bodies seeming to fall right where they stood or sat — in their homes, at the store, in the street. Only two inhabitants survive: the town drunk and a bawling newborn baby. What kept them alive? And what killed the rest of the town in the first place, so swiftly and unexpectedly that they barely had time to realize what was happening?
That is the riddle facing scientists Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), Mark Hall (James Olson), Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid), and Charles Dutton (David Wayne), all of whom are pulled from their own homes or jobs and transported to an underground facility in Nevada, codenamed Wildfire. It is there that their worst nightmare is confirmed: a small satellite that landed in the town has brought back with it an alien microbe so virulent that it is capable of wiping out all life on Earth.
