Wormwood

The blonde anchor glanced nervously off-camera, as if a gun were pointed at his head, then gazed back into the lens.“This footage comes to us from our Chicago affiliate and what you’re about to witness is attributed to the so-called ‘Wormwood’ virus. We present it uncensored and unedited in hopes viewers might prepare themselves for what, by all reliable indicators, may spread our way in coming weeks. This footage is of an extremely graphic nature and viewer discretion is strongly advised.”With that, the cautions ceased and the videotape rolled.“We need to start making plans,” Rudy Cheng told his wife later in bed. “We need to start getting ready for this thing.”Aimee Cheng propped herself up on an elbow. “That news report must have been something to tie you in knots like this.”He nodded, thinking of the pile of bodies and the line of gunners on the roof. “It looked like the apocalypse.”“People have been seeing the apocalypse for two thousand years.”Against his closed eyelids, a dead man came shambling out of a dingy garage and disintegrated in a storm of gunfire, taking a screaming soldier with him.“This looked pretty convincing.” Michael James McFarland draws an unforgettable portrait of Quail Street: a quiet cul-de-sac whose residents have joined together to survive an emerging epidemic. Threatened by widespread panic, their careful plans fall rapidly to pieces, pitting each against the other for survival.

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