The Chewing

Three patients arrive at a rural Tennessee hospital in forty-eight hours, jaws working like machinery, pupils swollen to black glass, teeth cracking against leather restraints. Field epidemiologist Cal Denning is sent to find a pathogen and instead finds a parasite—one that hollows out a human being and turns the mouth into a weapon. The contaminated feed shipped to forty-one countries. Cal has seven days per patient to work with, and the countryside is already listening for the humming.