Deborah Adrienne Diebert

Host Manipulation Deborah Adrienne Diebert

Rabies, from the Latin word rabere, "to rave" is the deadliest virus known in the world and the truest form of host manipulation. Once infected, the virus controls the hosts. They develop a fear of water and moving air and become sensitive to bright light. The virus lives in the salivary glands, and in order to spread to another host, it manipulates the host into becoming an aggressive creature. Left untreated, rabies is almost universally fatal...until it isn't. In a world where few uninfected humans are still alive, survival is about who can stay hidden, who can remain quiet, and who is prepared. In their basement hideout, Shelby wakes to discover that her husband John, the man she slept next to for nineteen years, has died. Alone with her seventeen-year-old daughter Megan and her fourteen-year-old son Liam, Shelby must learn to survive and trust again in a world plagued by brain-manipulated Hosts and Military predators.