It is the year 2158.
V, the outcast vampire, and queen of the alien-human hybrids, sets off on a perilous voyage into the Great Central Desert - the desolate wasteland that was once the Heartland of America.
She wants to discover if any of her fellow alien-human hybrids have survived the Culling of all non-pure humans by the Cosmos Government.
Everywhere, the elite Cosmos - rich, militarized, highly cultured - the privileged 0.000001 % - rule the world.
The Cosmos live in domed cities, protected from the torrid climate and its superstorms, and served by robots and the lower-class Subs.
The rest of the world and the continents and oceans are an arid, storm-wracked, desolate wasteland inhabited by Burbites, Mutants, and Outlanders.
As V heads into the desert, several hundred miles away, two elite Cosmos, 14-year-old Miranda, and her mother, Niki, survivors of a plane crash, have been captured by mutants - they are about to be sacrificed, burned alive, on a flaming cross, to the Mutant Goddess, Dolly.