Hellbend was once a vibrant town of nearly 3,500 souls, back when Hunt Electrodynamics ran the show. It was in the middle of nowhere, out past Beatty Junction near Death Valley, and no one knew why it was built there. In fact, no one cared. In the late 1940’s, Hellbend produced a third of the electronics found in fighter aircraft around the world. Hunt Electrodynamics ran everything from the schools, the town general store all the way down to the funeral parlor. The company provided everything; and the people liked it that way. Then the explosion of 1952 happened and everything changed.

"Clifford Potter: What makes you say that Monty?
Montgomery Greene: What's that?
CP: That you think something was wrong with him — Hunt. That something was wrong with Hunt.
MG: I dunno, you'd have to be there. He just...he never seemed to...blink. Y'know?"
—Excerpts from the audio tapes of Clifford Potter (Deceased), Hellbend, California

Hellbend was once a vibrant town of nearly 3,500 souls, back when Hunt Electrodynamics ran the show. It was in the middle of nowhere, out past Beatty Junction near Death Valley, and no one knew why it was built there. In fact, no one cared. In the late 1940’s, Hellbend produced a third of the electronics found in fighter aircraft around the world. Hunt Electrodynamics ran everything from the schools, the town general store all the way down to the funeral parlor. The company provided everything; and the people liked it that way. Then the explosion of 1952 happened and everything changed.

When the plant went up one August night, it took twenty-six locals with it, as well as the founder of Hunt Electrodynamics — the elusive Arthur Hunt. In the midst of the destruction, Hunt Electrodynamics fell under new ownership and changed. Hellbend was left behind, crippled. The firm changed its name (Hunt Electronics) and prepared for the space-race and the growing cold war, shifting its attentions to the east coast — specifically NASA and the Pentagon. Without the leadership of Hunt, who lived and worked in Hellbend, the town dried up like the earth in Death Valley. People left, schools closed, things fell apart.

Fifty-three years later the town is nearly dead. Only eighty-two people call the crumbling remains of Hellbend home anymore, and those few don’t look to the future. They get by on what they can, selling gas and goods to those on the way to the Death Valley National Park and biding their time. In another fifteen years, Hellbend will die a natural death, shriveling up in the 110ľ summer heat, leaving behind a skeleton of ruined buildings as a monument of some better time.

But in the last month, something else has been wearing away at the town, something decidedly unnatural. If the murder rate in Hellbend continues it’ll die a lot faster than fifteen years, and a lot more violently than just another victim of some dead industry.

Someone or something is killing the residents of Hellbend, California. No one knows who or what it is.