It begins with a bad headache, a sore throat, and a terrible thirst. Then comes a state of frenzy. Victims attack others, tearing at their flesh with bared teeth. Finally, within a few days, an agonizing death. Rabies expert Dr. Martin Farrow recognized the sudden outbreak as a mutant rabies strain. The Pentagon recognized it as a classified weapon potentially more powerful than the nuclear bomb. Dispatched to isolated Blue Harbor, Maine, Farrow was forced by the government to develop ever more contagious and vicious strains of the deadly virus through top-secret experiments on mice, on monkeys, on dogs. Until the night two animal-rights activists broke into the lab to "liberate" the animals. What they liberated instead was a disease that turned men, women, and children into crazed beasts. And turned serene Blue Harbor into a war zone.