Bobby Adair

Alienated in a world where he doesn’t fit in, Christian Black survives because he’s different. Then the virus came, and made the world turn different, too. Now people are dying by the million. Food supplies are short. Riots are blazing through the streets, and Christian’s only goal is to keep his family alive. But safety lies far from the city, and just getting out will be tougher than anyone knows.

Witness eliminated. Evidence erased. Is it still murder? Two decades ago the Brisbane strain ravaged the global population. Countries collapsed. Institutions fell. The world progressed in some ways, devolved in others, but struggled forward under a different, more brutal set of rules, where not everyone had the right to freedom or life. Christian Black makes his living exterminating those who've lost their to right live. But on a foggy night in the piney woods, he's made a mistake and killed nearly two dozen of the wrong kind of people. Societies, even when they change, take a dim view of murder. And now Christian Black might have to alter evidence, get rid of a witness, and kill a few more people if he doesn't want to pay a debt to society he can't afford.

A new flu strain has been spreading across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Disturbing news footage is flooding the cable news channels. People are worried. People are frightened. But Zed Zane is oblivious. Zed needs to borrow rent money from his parents. He gets up Sunday morning, drinks enough tequila to stifle his pride and heads to his mom’s house for a lunch of begging, again. But something is wrong. There's blood in the foyer. His mother's corpse is on the living room floor. Zed's stepdad, Dan is wild with crazy-eyed violence and attacks Zed when he comes into the house. They struggle into the kitchen. Dan's yellow teeth tear at Zed's arm but Zed grabs a knife and stabs Dan, thirty-seven times, or so the police later say. With infection burning in his blood, Zed is arrested for murder but the world is falling apart and he soon finds himself back on the street, fighting for his life among the infected who would kill him and the normal people, who fear him.