[2] When the cult's leader, Reverend Beelson, proclaims that the world will end on July 27, 2000 and only 144 of the faithful can go to the top of Mount Weeupcut in Massachusetts and be safe from the fiery wrath of God that will rain on all nonbelievers below, Marina is taken by her mother with her six siblings (with her father left to be "fried") and Jed comes with his father (with his sister Alice refusing to come with) to the mountaintop compound.

With both parents distant and distracted, and the rest of the cultists preparing for Armageddon, Marina and Jed meet and fall in love.

The entire compound gathers in the main hall, with Beelson preaching to the crowd, as armed men guard the doors.

After discovering the murdered police and their shot-out radios outside the broken-down compound gates, Jed uses his laptop (snuck in under a technology ban in the camp).

[3] At the end of the story, it is revealed that 20 people out of 144 were killed (including Reverend Beelson and Jed's father), along with numerous LMCs and police officers.