A group of Californians experience loss, despair and desperation over the course of seven days before Christmas. A boxing underdog must face the truth about his uncertain future, a blocked novelist struggles to create a new work admist a suspicious movie proposal, and an engineer with a secret must sell his business plans before it puts his marriage and career in serious jeopardy. With a self-imposed, mounting pressure, their actions and decisions push them deeper into a void of self-doubt and misery leading to one last hope to start fresh again.

When a series of haunting murders plagues a small Texas town, law officers Tex Holland and Pike McGraw lead the investigation. The murders turn out to be the most shocking and vile acts of sadism to ever hit the once peaceful community. With a dangerous killer on the loose re-enacting slave punishment on his victims, the cops must face their own personal demons as the murder spree throws them into a dangerous world of mercenary hillbillies and inbred cannibals.

After the fifth war, the crime rate rises over five hundred percent. Law enforcement is replaced by xenobites: psychotic demons that execute justice in deadly ways. Icarus Van Clader, a private investigator and former criminal in the underworld, is hired to retrieve a mysterious tape that puts him at war with xenobites and the Yakuza.

Released from prison, Jimmy Tucker returns to the streets of Oakland to get back his money.