fisherman Gisigu Stonehorse Lone Goeman uncovers a striking anomaly on the surface of the Red Crow Reservation in 1981: salmon refuse to die after being gutted, continuing to move as if haunted. Across town, indigenous sheriff Traylor Michael Greyeyes responds to a dying dog belonging to his ex-wife, nurse Joss Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, and ends the animal’s suffering with a gunshot. He then visits Joss and learns their son Joseph Forrest Goodluck has been arrested for vandalism and is jailed with his half-brother Lysol Kiowa Gordon. The two tensions collide when Traylor visits Gisigu, who shows him the gutted yet moving salmon. In a grim turn, Joss’s dead dog reanimates in the trunk of Traylor’s police car, and Traylor shoots it. Gisigu and Traylor respond by burning both the dog and the fish, a ritual of cleansing that hints at a clash between Indigenous resilience and a threat that defies natural law.
Traylor and Joss head into town to secure Joseph’s release from jail. They confront an ill, violent man in the jail who bites Joseph on the arm, forcing him to seek hospital care. There, Joseph’s white, pregnant girlfriend Charlie Olivia Scriven waits, and the stage is set for a broader catastrophe. That night, Traylor answers a call from Shooker William Belleau, an indigenous man in distress. Traylor enters Shooker’s house and is attacked and bitten by Shooker’s white girlfriend, a brutal assault that leaves him furious and wary. A bridge becomes a crossroads as Joss, Joseph, and Charlie flee the hospital in an ambulance, while Traylor, Shooker, and Gisigu coordinate a plan to protect the vulnerable.
Six months pass, and the violence has grown into a full-blown outbreak of flesh-eating “zeds.” The Red Crow Reservation morphs into a fortified compound, where residents discover a dark rule: Indigenous people cannot be infected, but white survivors can. Lysol grows increasingly aggressive toward the outsiders he fears will threaten the community’s fragile safety, especially as outsiders arrive—one man with his young daughter who is bitten, and a girl named Lilith Natalie Liconti who hides her own infection.
That night, a chilling scene inside Lysol’s shelter reveals Lilith in a brutal fate: she is now a zombie, and she attacks Lysol as Joseph, Lysol, and Moon Gary Farmer confront the chaos. They drive Lilith back to the compound with Lilith restrained. The cruelty of survival fractures Lysol further: he stabs Joseph and lets Lilith loose, driven by a grudge that he believes is justified by the outsiders who brought the plague. Traylor and Gisigu return from a mission to purge zombies at a gas station, accompanied by fellow tribesmen Bumper Brandon Oakes and Shooker, only to find the compound overrun. They rescue Joss, Joseph, Charlie, and eight others who have taken shelter in the basement, but the brutal cost of saving them becomes clear when Traylor is eaten alive by zombies so his family can escape.
The survivors push forward: Joss, Joseph, and Charlie escape with Gisigu and Bumper, while a tense struggle unfolds at a church where Gisigu and Joseph attempt to stop Lysol’s associates from murdering other survivors. Lysol locates Joss, Charlie, and Bumper and delivers a brutal betrayal—backstabbing Bumper and unleashing a zombie from a car trunk. Joss shoots Lysol, but not before the zombie bites Charlie; Joseph arrives to kill the reanimated threat and, with Gisigu, leads a wounded Lysol away. Joseph stabs Lysol, and Gisigu fires a shot into the air to lure the remaining zombies toward Lysol’s location, where the infected overwhelm him.
With the last escape boat burning, hope appears to fade. Shooker and another ally return in two boats to pull survivors to safety. They take Bumper, while Joseph, Charlie, and Joss take the other boat. Gisigu, armed with a sword, stays behind on land to fend off the encroaching dead and, defiant to the end, seems to endure, holding the severed head of a final zombie as a grim trophy of survival.
On the boat, Charlie gives birth to a baby girl, a fragile beacon of life amid ruin. In a final, haunting moment, Charlie, fearing what the bite will do, asks Joseph to end her life before she becomes one of the undead, and he reluctantly shoots her in the head. The boat drifts away, the horizon quiet, and the fate of the remaining survivors left unanswered, suspended in the murky, uncertain future. The film closes on a note of unresolved endurance, a testament to the cost of staying alive when the world itself has turned against you.
