Prologue

OUTSIDE A COOL evening awaited. The perspiration on his back and neck turned icy. He staggered through the darkness, his breathing heavy. It had seized him, like a beast, a monkey sinking fangs into him, clinging to him and weighing him down, waiting for him to tire; a predator making a kill.

Get as far from people as you can.

He climbed the stairs. When he reached the top, he stumbled forward. He pulled up a trouser leg and found his calves and ankles had swollen: taut, puffy; dragging beneath him like bags of fluid.

What was happening to him?

He was enduring the journey from life to death. The force he was confronting was taking its revenge on him. He was experiencing in the space of an hour what might otherwise be a slow, consuming decline.

He reached up and touched his face; felt the ridge of his own cheekbone, traced it with his fingertip. The fat had melted away. The sores grew in his mouth. The fever burned his cheeks. He was plummeting quickly through the expected symptoms. He realized he had very little time left.

It was going to kill him.

It was going to kill all of them.