In the sleepy town of Centerville, the lives of a number of interconnected characters are disrupted by the undead.

After 40 years of running their community arts space The Bread Factory, Dorothea and Greta are suddenly fighting for survival when a pair of celebrity performance artists from China come to Checkford and build an enormous complex down the street, catapulting big changes in their small town.

Darren Prager is an aspiring writer who finds himself completely unable to comprehend the intricacies of human behavior. Obsessed with finding the key to understanding the nature of character, he turns a co-worker's family into the unwitting subjects of his new project. Darren's own humanity is soon put to the test when he goes beyond observational research to the realm of gross violation.