An African woman who works for a wealthy movie director must survive his questionable whims when a deadly pandemic forces them to quarantine in his mansion.

In a segregated America at the onset of World War II, strange, explosive “stumps”—formed out of spores and resembling wooden statues of the recently deceased—have begun to appear all over cities. To neutralize and remove these stumps, a new government agency has employed a group of singers whose unique vocal resonance can turn the stumps to dust. But when the only two Black female “exterminators” in Chicago—a God-fearing goody two-shoes and a brash blues singer—uncover the agency's corrupt secrets, they decide to stage a rebellion.

Tiny Pelican Island is one of the few parts of the world still free from the deadly gray pox in 2080 - save for their own patient zero, the plague doctor's six-year-old niece. In order to save her family and her island, the doctor must join the cutthroat race to find a cure.