Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of gore, violence, anti-trans bias, gender dysphoria, religious trauma, escape from a cult, and death.

Benjamin (Benji) runs from the religious cult that he was raised in, desperately trying to escape a group known as the Angels. Hired by the cult to kill nonbelievers, the “death squad” chases Benji as he tries to flee Acheson and New Nazareth, the name given to the cult’s home. Benji’s father was coming with him, and they planned to leave the county in hopes of finding something better, but a man named Brother Hutch shot Benji’s father and killed him. Covered in his father’s blood, Benji has no time to grieve, nor is grieving allowed in the religion because it implies a defiance of God’s plan.

Benji makes it to the only bridge out of town, which is covered in the remains of corpses infected by a virus called the Flood (created by the cult). Benji comes across a beast made of a human corpse called a Grace, and although he is capable of taming and using these creatures for his own ends, Benji remembers his father’s advice to “be good. Make them suffer” and not meet violence with more violence (7).