Paula and Robert Sims are desperate: their 12 days old baby has been kidnapped! Since there's no trace of the kidnappers, they address the public for help. Shortly after their daughter is found dead. When the same happens three years later to their second daughter, Sheriff Yocom becomes suspicious.
A Florida real estate developer and her captain lure investors to a property in the Everglades called Dreamland Shores, under false pretenses that the swampland will soon be developed. After the group arrives on a small island, they find it has been overrun by giant mutated ants, brought on by the dumping of toxic waste in the area.
Delta County is a staid Southern community caught between the old traditions and a rapidly changing way of life. For teenagers Terry Nicholas, his sister McCain, and Joe Ed, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks that she's attracted to, the old traditions have little meaning in their lives. Their elders, struggling to preserve values of an older day, have personal problems that are sometimes overwhelming, such as the one facing John McCain Jr., an alcoholic whose wife Kate is having a hidden and torrid romance that sets her husband off on a vengeance-seeking spree.
