The world ends, life goes on . . . A sharp-witted novel that asks: After surviving, what do you do next?"This is not an apocalypse, it's an adjustment. There is still electricity. There is still the internet. There is still order. We will adapt and we will survive." —U.S. governmentAfter twenty years of toil, Russian researchers drilled through nearly four kilometers of ice and reached Lake Vostok, a massive body of fresh water. Unfortunately, their efforts released the microorganisms entombed inside, which nature had managed to keep sealed off from the rest of the world for twenty-five million years.Tiny, aggressive, and lethal, the microbes emerged from the ancient lake and wormed their way into the world's water supply. Anyone who washed their hands or took a sip of water absorbed these primal parasites and died in a fraction of a second. How do you live when the very thing you need to exist can kill you?But death was only the...

First came segregation. Then separation. Then extermination . . . The taut, terrifying followup to Notes from a Necrophobe.Swarm intelligence, observed in ant colonies and beehives, was found in its most dangerous form at the microbial level–and it was this collective intelligence that brought on the apocalypse.Only ten people made it out of the Mclean High School Refugee Center alive. They enjoy their celebrity status–until they discover they've been infected with the same parasites that reanimate the dead. Soon they find themselves on the run, hunted by the very institution that saved them from the apocalypse. Now, as they continue to fight external forces, they're struggling against the commands from the parasites in their brains: Scratch. Bite. Kill. Repeat . . .