
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
The novel “Wanderers” by Chuck Wendig was published for the first time in 2019. It’s the first book in the Wanderers series.
When Shana can’t find her sister Nessie at home, she fears that she has run away as she did in the past and as their mother had done some time before. She goes out looking for her and finds her looking like she’s sleepwalking, showing no signs of noticing Shana’s presence. Other people in the same state start arriving and walking side by side with Nessie and when someone physically tries to stop them, they react by flailing violently and in extreme cases literally explode.
Benjamin Ray is a doctor who fell out of favor at the CDC after falsifying data to try to avoid the risk of an epidemic. However, an artificial intelligence called Black Swan picked his name while it was being used to gain useful intelligence in the new crisis. While medical authorities try to understand the origin of the strange new form of sleepwalking, extremist fringes linked to the American religious right and white supremacism start mounting a campaign against “the Flock” accused of being linked to evil forces.