Excerpt from Inferno by Steven Hatch, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Even before Ebola roared back, the villagers of Meliandou had realized that their neighboring communities looked at them, however unjustly, as the source of this scourge. The same effect that had been seen two generations ago in Lassa was again playing out in West Africa, as the farmers of Meliandou were unable to sell their produce on account of hailing from the outbreak's Ground Zero. In an attempt to exorcise the evil they believed was in their midst, and perhaps to make some kind of a symbolic atonement for a wrong they didn't commit, on March 24, 2014, they took torches to the tree in and around which Emile Ouamouno had joyfully played only a few months before. The tree, a living, being creature that would also become collateral damage just the same as Etienne Ouamouno and his fellow villagers, finally caught fire.

According to Michelle Roberts, a reporter working for the BBC, the villagers said that a "rain of bats" then issued from the tree.

And the screaming flew back across the sky. But by then, the epidemic was raging on the ground.

Excerpted from Inferno by Steven Hatch. Copyright © 2017 by Steven Hatch. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.