An African woman named Miriam works for an American movie star named Victor, who bought and freed her from slavery and now employs her as a photographer of his daily life. When they travel to Cannes for the film festival, she thinks of the journey back to Africa, but since her departure the continent has been devastated by an epidemic of a deadly disease called the Red Sweat. At the festival, Victor’s film is snubbed, but his anger is quickly overshadowed by an outbreak of the Red Sweat on the shores of Europe. Within a day, Victor packs up his crew and quarantines them in his high-security mansion, where he has enough supplies to supposedly outlast the pandemic. Miriam and Krista, another of Victor’s employees, spend their days with the rest of the crew enjoying their solitude with only intermittent reminders of the devastation outside. One of them sings a song about a boy who is sent to destroy an enemy ship but his captain refuses to let him back on once the job is done, and instead of sabotaging him for his betrayal the boy choses instead to drown. Victor’s wife attempts to enter the gates, but he turns her away for fear of the disease. One of Victor’s sons catches a fever, and in her terror that Victor will throw him out, Krista jumps from the wall with the child and kills them both. Meanwhile, even without electricity the crew is throwing parties, singing, and performing, although Miriam is constantly on edge waiting for the moment when supplies begin to run out. Her fears are not unfounded. A little while after Krista’s death, Victor asks her to leave the mansion and search for news of the outside world. Miriam is hesitant, but agrees with the hope that his kind security guard will let her back in.  Outside, she takes photos of the devastation of the plague, of the abandoned towns and bodies. No one is left alive. She scavenges a chocolate bar from one of the stores and returns to the mansion, but Victor won’t let her back inside. In her fury, she throws her camera so that they can’t have the pictures she took. The next day, she’s horrified to find that she is actually showing signs of the disease. She scavenges a key from Krista’s body and lets herself into the mansion, thinking of the song about the boy and listening to the crew partying upstairs. She weighs her bag down with stones and climbs into the mansion’s well, letting her body poison the water with disease as she drowns.