Jonah Ludovic is a custodian at a small municipal zoo. After a night of heavy shelling Ludovic arrives at his job to find the staff abandoning the zoo. He joins a skeleton crew that includes an elderly guard and a veterinarian. Their purpose: to keep the animals alive until help arrives from an international zoological mission.

Set in World War 2 as the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia, teenage Emilka's father is murdered by the Nazis, but she is selected for special treatment by virtue of being blonde. She is billeted with the commandant of a concentration camp near the Baltic coast, where his kindness towards her provokes his wife's jealousy, but is compromised when Emilka witnesses his brutality towards the prisoners.

In an apocalyptical future, the world is completely destroyed and ruled by the tyrannical Stryker. He controls the unique source of food and uses young women as slaves to explore the mines in the Hell Mountain. When he abducts Shira, her lover Kal meets with the last professor on earth, Garrett, who helps him to rescue Shira.