Eight desperate people are stranded at a snowbound diner. Their phones can only pick up brief and perplexing bits of conversation. The radio is filled with static, although occasional, broken-up bits of news are heard - reports of some sort of global catastrophe. A ninth person arrives, hiking to the diner from his stranded car, where he had been listening to his car radio. A global catastrophe has happened - and an inmate has escaped from a nearby hospital for the criminally insane and police have warned that he is very, very dangerous.