New Yorkers race against time to save the city from a genetically engineered virus. What is this disease? Who made it? Can it be stopped? Inside the city, its sky blackened by the fires of its funeral pyres, men and women fight to find the answers, while selfless volunteers flood in from all over the world to join New Yorkers in their fight for survival. Once in, you cannot leave. With a quarantine of the city enforced by the Army, doctors in the ParkLab set up in Central Park try everything they can think of to cure people, and the U.S. President makes the most agonizing decision any president has ever made. This book is dedicated to all who have visited or lived in the wonderfully vibrant city of New York, the premier city of our world. During one of my visits to the city I was walking in Central Park when the thought struck me: What if something happened and this huge, bustling, energetic city was forced to shut its borders, to keep people inside and stop people entering? That thought stayed with me for several visits until one day I sat down, pen in hand, and sketched out the story of Silent Lips. It is the story of New York struck by a mysterious disease which forces the President to blockade the city. Nothing can leave; nothing can enter. I thought of men and women inside the quarantined city, fighting to find the answer to the mysterious sickness that rages in the city, while still more men and women from all over the world volunteer to come to the city on one-way tickets to help it fight for its survival. This is the story of a young man with a mission, a battered old VW Rabbit, and of scribblings in his tattered blue notebooks. It is the story of the Prime Minister of Israel, smuggled into the city to share its suffering. It is the story of President Charles Stanton, faced with the most anguishing decision a U.S. President has ever had to make. It is the story of a young reporter, Naomi Jacobs, who is asked by the Governor to tell the world of New York's desperate fight and who ends up having to fight for her life. Above all, this is the story of the people inside and outside the city who watch with anguish the mounting crisis. I hope you enjoy Silent Lips.