Through the compassionate and horrified eyes of protagonist/biologist Larry Farnes, The Last Prisoner dramatizes in graphic terms the widespread panic, fear and flight that attends that breakdown in American society after a clandestine biowar attack. Published in 1992, fully ten years prior to the anthrax attacks, it is the first novel to deal with the potential catastrophe posed by an unstoppable epidemic disease, a terribly realistic scenario still unaddressed by any planning in Homeland Security. When the need for individual survival eclipses all other concerns, The Golden Rule is quickly replaced by its darker antithesis: Do unto Others before they do unto You. Kill, hoard and flee.
