I'm really not sure how to give a good plot summary, but here goes. Unspecified apocalyptic setting (with no supernatural elements), a young teenager named Soap has to leave their caretaker's home after said caretaker is murdered and the property ransacked. Soap follows the murderers, a group of bandits that seem to be forcibly gathering members by ransacking towns and kidnapping able bodied young people, and lives on whatever is left in the towns after the bandits leave. One day they come to a town that the bandits have lit on fire and rescue a baby holding a strange looking piece of metal. Thusly begins a chase involving 5 kids, a nuclear reactor and a lavender ukelele.