In an Alaskan war camp during the apocalypse, a former microbiologist butchers the only form of meat left for consumption: the corpses of her deceased neighbors.

A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.