A plague was erupted. The victim suffers a two-month latent period during which he is infectious but shows no symptoms. The virus is spread by aerosol, so that millions of people are soon infected and infectious, but without knowing it. At the climax of he disease, there is what a character calls a rite of distribution. At the climax the victim does what he or she most wanted or feared doing, the idea being that this kind of fear is laced with fascination. As America (like the rest of the world) sinks into chaos, as the Red Deaths kills forty percent of the population, two fiercely antagonistic groups emerge. Theres the apocalyptic religious group called Swimmers, because their charismatic leader was first seen swimming out of the Hudson River. The other group jokingly calls itself Our Gang, a very mixed group that has become immune to the plague as a by-product of an experimental treatment of herpes. What they see and do as they hike north from New York City to a farm upstate forms the substance of the novel.
