Two survivors-the sick, Sterno-addicted, geriatric Peter Jackson and the constantly bawling infant Jamie Ritter-are biological opposites who somehow survived the organism. Upon investigating Piedmont, the team discovers the townspeople either died in mid-stride or went 'quietly nuts' and committed bizarre suicides. Jeremy Stone, believes the satellite-intentionally designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation-returned with a deadly microorganism that kills through nearly instantaneous blood clotting. The duty officer of the base tasked with retrieving the satellite suspects it returned with an extraterrestrial contaminant and recommends activating 'Wildfire', a protocol for a government-sponsored team of scientists intended to contain threats of this nature. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead.
A team from an Air Force base is deployed to recover a military satellite that has returned to Earth, but contact is lost abruptly.
