They were alive when the world was still bubbling. They’ve always been with us, at the tips of our senses, and we call them ghosts, vampires, demons, leprechauns, gremlins. But now they refuse to share the earth, and the only one who can hope to reason with them is a young black assassin… At the end of the century, a swell-headed researcher steals the world’s deadliest virus and unleashes it on humanity. It so magnifies our sense of smell that most people are driven mad by odors, become autistic, or kill themselves in horror. Cities are uninhabitable, and the few survivors flee to the country to build new communities. But all human relationships have changed—we have become like animals, tracing, feeding, and knowing each other through our noses. And above all, we can now smell the weird, gaseous, telepathic beings who have always lived in the skies, undetected by men—the Muskies. Inexplicably, Muskies have begun to attack humans, raiding the crumbling cities and new settlements, killing by strangulation. People are being choked off the earth.