Hoping for a better life, five war veterans colonise an abandoned island. They take with them everything they could possibly need - food, clothes, fools, weapons, even wives.

The colonists feel sure that their friendship will keep them together. But an unanticipated discovery shatters their dream and replaces it with a very different one. Only then do they begin to realise that they've brought with them rather more than they bargained for.

For one of them, it seems, has been hiding a terrible secret from the rest of the company. And when the truth begins to emerge, it soon becomes clear that the war is far from over.