Dawn. Amelia wakes to find the power is out, an annoyance more than a concern. Strange, her phone’s dead, too. And her watch. It begins to feel ominous when the car won’t start. Riding out of Sycamore Hollow on a bicycle, her husband, Mike, sees no one. Stalled vehicles litter the road. He comes across bones, piled together and burned black. Terrified, he crests a hill and discovers the city is gone. Torn from the Earth, leaving no trace except for a massive hole, eerily smooth and perfectly circular.

A miracle sees Duggan through that morning. The only one to make it out of the city, he has a fateful encounter with Wendell. A famous preacher’s son and most terrible secret, Wendell recognizes prophecy at work, seeing a divine role for Duggan despite his many moral failings.

Training in a desert, suddenly cutoff, soldiers witness a massacre they can’t begin to understand. They flee through the dunes, unarmed and isolated. Clues begin to emerge from the chaos. Could there be a pattern to it all? A method to the madness?