Scott Sigler - Contagious

Across America. a mysterious pathogen transforms ordinary people into raging killers, psychopaths driven by a terrifying, alien agenda. The human race fights back, yet after every battle the disease responds, adapts, using sophisticated strategies and brilliant ruses to fool its pursuers. The only possible explanation: the epidemic is driven not by evolution but some malevolent intelligence.
Standing against this unimaginable threat is a small group, assembled under the strictest secrecy. Their best weapon is hulking former football star Perry Dawsey, left psychologically shattered by is own struggles with this terrible enemy, who possesses an unexplainable ability to locate the disease's hosts. Violent and unpredictable, Perry is both the nation's best hope and a terrifying liability.
Hardened CIA veteran Dew Phillips must somehow forge a connection with him if they're going to stand a chance against this maddeningly adaptable opponent. Alongside them is Margaret Montoya, a brilliant epidemiologist who fights for a cure even as she reels under the weight of endless horrors.
These three and their team have kept humanity in the game, but that's not good enough anymore, not even when the disease turns contagious, triggering a fast countdown to Armageddon. Meanwhile other enemies join the battle, and a new threat - one that comes from a most unexpected source - may ultimately prove the most dangerous of all.

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4 months have passed since the triangle virus was first detected. Since then the life of Margaret Montoya, who became the leading epidemiologist, has changed. She travels in a mobile, following the CIA agents Dew Phillips who desperately tries to keep Perry Dawsey from killing triangle host. Physically recovered from his injuries the former football star's infection and bravery to fight it by all means, has left him with the ability to track the living hosts and kill them. Out of control Perry Dawsey needs Dew to help him understand how important it is to capture a living host to study the virus and develop a cure and also to locate the gates the hosts brood is trying to build.
Meanwhile the vector, an orbital hoovering undetected in the air releases a second kind of seed that infects humans, turning them into something else, even worse: protectors.
Under them is little Chelsea, a small child who adapts to the virus in the most promising ways. Chelsea is powerful and her goal clear: protect the hosts so that their brood hatches and can build the gate undisturbed by humans. When the orbital fails it is up to Chelsea to keep blocking out Perry from receiving any information about their whereabouts.

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If asked if the book is good I'd say yes and no. I've had major troubles to get into the plot and it dragged quite a few times but when it peeked I was floored by the writers imagination.
I didn't like the role of the little angel like girl with gold locks thinking she'd communicate with God a bit too cliché-ish. If it was supposed to be frightening I pretty much failed for me. I couldn't imagine that girl being the pure infected evil it was supposed to be. Also very much cliché is Montoya's struggle to understand that sometimes people have to die for the greater good, especially when humanities survival is in the loop. It was very much annoying to me.
The ending unfortunately utterly predictable.

Last but not least the editor should be fired. It is one thing to oversee a spelling mistake, which certainly are quite a lot in the book, but missing whole letters is a bad thing for the readers eye.

Rating:
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Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Crown (December 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307406318
ISBN-13: 978-0307406316