In the near future, terrorist saboteurs blow up oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. The scope of the disaster overwhelms the oil industries' capacity to stop the hemorrhaging, and after decades of effort oil still flows into the oceans, and cataclysmic sea fires burn around the globe. Social, political, and economic institutions collapse. A despotic Stadium culture rises in the power vacuum left by ruined governments. Based in abandoned sports arenas, the Stadiums use the medieval practice of impaling to subdue and control local populations. Subservience to the the Stadium state is the principal feature of existence. Two survivors, Bird and The Woman, meet by accident in the ravaged landscape remaining after years of fire and smoked filled skies. The sun rarely shines. They, and all other living beings suffer from chronic lung disease. In a strange anomaly of rebirth, mastodons once more roam the earth, to what end no one knows, but their existence stands as an accomplishment of modern science. Once more, man and beast clash, and it could be the mastodons' second time around will fare no better than the first. Are all species doomed? No one knows. One evening a Wilson's snipe whistles its wing song over a pond. The couple bonds for a brief time when they take in an infant in swaddling clothes. Blue Cavalry Hat, the demonic despot, reminds us once more humans will be dealing with psychopathic leaders until the end of the earth. It is he, with his long black whip, who personifies evil, takes on the mastodons, and any other living thing that tweaks his ire. Who perseveres? Under the cover of the story the old question of good and evil comes along for the ride. It's a pretty good bet that as long as humans survive, so do good and evil both.