Excerpt from Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Biggs believed that Carolyn, and perhaps millions of others, were responding to the epidemic psychosomatically. He held a desperate hope to cure her with a good story and nothing more than some aspirin, or maybe even some kind of generic-looking vitamin. Whatever. As long as Carolyn couldn't identify it. The pill had to be an empty vessel that she could fill with the medicine of her mind.

He was banking on the climate of heightened susceptibility. The sleepless, in their total exhaustion, quickly lost their ability to distinguish fact from fiction. The unguarded gate in their heads was now propped wide open to suggestion and persuasion. It was a great time for storytellers, he thought, for magicians and, of course, advertisers—his abandoned trade. It was the ideal era for placebos: well-intended, white lies that produce truth in spite of themselves.

He made his way into the pharmacy. Only ten days earlier, a mob had formed in front of it demanding sleeping pills. They broke in, heaving a motorcycle through the window, and over- powered the few unfortunate employees that had reported for duty. They looted until the police arrived, some naked and others bristling with guns and knives. They chased off the mob. Then it was this tribe of cops themselves who shot out the surveillance cameras and aisle mirrors before snorting crushed pills off the floor and chugging cough syrups.

Biggs stepped through the jagged window frame into the dim cavern of ransacked space. The hall, stripped of its commercial order, was chilling in its silence and disarray. Pills and glass crunched underfoot. There were others there in the poor lighting, picking through the shelves, throwing unwanted items on the floor. He could hear them mumbling, an occasional cough. He avoided them, negotiating the aisles like a maze. In the darkness, he almost tripped over an elderly woman crawling on the cluttered tiles. She grabbed at his pants suddenly, startling him. He swore and jerked himself free.

"I'm looking and needing for tea," she said from the floor. "Can you point me to the tea in the packets?"

"It's all gone," Biggs said, annoyed.

"They threw it in the harbor is that what they did to gone it?" "Yeah, that's what they did to gone it," Biggs said, stepping around her like a snake in the path.

He continued toward the back of the store. He had been here many times before, for the usual items and, at least five times, for pregnancy tests. The shelves were empty but the floor was littered with capsules and tablets. He picked through the empty plastic jars and smashed boxes. The ground was fluffy with the cotton stuffing, remnants of snowfall in the dimness. He knelt and picked out a handful of pills. They sat in his palm like baby teeth. He carried them outside and quickly crossed to the sunny side of the street, like a kid who just made a grab in a candy store. Opening his fist, he saw that the pills were a variety of shapes and colors. Some say this is what started it, he noted. All these drugs we take. These could be the seeds to our apocalypse. In his agency days, he had worked on a few pharmaceutical accounts, where the notions of truth and fact were never more elastic. Studies show. Ha.

God only knows what's in this stuff.

He picked out five simple white pills—generic aspirin with no discernible branding—and put them in his left pocket. He shoved the rest into his right, thinking they could come in handy. You never know.

Coming home with five magic beans.

He started for the loft, but circled back to the drugstore. He went inside and was able to find two bags of tea, which he gave to the old woman on the floor.

Biggs took the stairs up to the sixth floor. The elevator still worked, but he was wary of being trapped, knowing that no one would come to his rescue. Because he didn't want to encounter any of his afflicted neighbors, he took off his shoes and silently passed down the hall. He listened at his door before putting the key to the lock. Inside, the loft was dim, with the exception of a soft square of light on the floor cast from the open skylight. It was a tiny, book-filled space: table and chairs, a stylish leather sofa. The windows on the far wall hung over a narrow alley and opened to a building identical to theirs, a converted wool ware- house now crammed with dimly lit, book-filled lofts. There was no sign of Carolyn in the main room.

Excerpted from Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun. Copyright © 2014 by Kenneth Calhoun. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.