"Disease gets a bad rap, doncha think? For being filthy, chaotic... eehh, but that actually describes people who get sick. Disease itself is very pure. Single-minded. Bacteria have one purpose: Divide and conquer. That's why, in the end, it always wins."
"Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms — those that exist on their own in the natural world — and parasites — organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches... These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis — a name taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass."
— Daniel Suarez, Daemon
Chain letters don't work. It's a known fact. The million dollars or so you are promised if you'll just send one single dollar to the name at the top of the list, add yours to the bottom, and then send the letter on to five friends never arrives. This one, the Captain Trips chain letter, worked very well. The pyramid was indeed being built, not from the bottom up but from the tip down — said tip being a deceased army security guard named Charles Campion. All the chickens were coming home to roost. Only instead of the mailman bringing each participant bale after bale of letters, each containing a single dollar bill, Captain Trips brought bales of bedrooms with a body or two in each one, and trenches, and dead-pits, and finally bodies slung into the oceans on each coast and into quarries and the foundations of unfinished houses. And in the end, of course, the bodies would rot where they fell.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the smallest of microorganisms would bring the end of civilization.
— "Pandemic — Apocalypse," The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse
