David Drayton and his young son Billy are among a large group of terrified townspeople trapped in a local grocery store by a strange, otherworldly mist. David is the first to realize that there are things lurking in the mist--deadly, horrifying things--creatures not of this world. Survival depends on everybody in the store pulling together, but is that possible, given human nature? As reason crumbles in the face of fear and panic, David begins to wonder what terrifies him more: the monsters in the mist--or the ones inside the store, the human kind, the people that until now had been his friends and neighbors?