In the space of a week, Howie loses nearly everything and everyone he knows and is left to navigate his adolescence virtually unsupervised.

A disease carried by common cockroaches is killing Manhattan children. In an effort to stop the epidemic an entomologist, Susan Tyler, creates a mutant breed of insect that secretes a fluid to kill the roaches. This mutant breed was engineered to die after one generation, but three years later Susan finds out that the species has survived and evolved into ...