In his latest horror novel, Suffer the Children, Craig DiLouie’s apocalyptic vision is an interesting departure from the typical end-of-the world scenario. Although DiLouie has become known for his zombie apocalypse fiction, a sub-genre of horror that he excels at, in this chilling narrative he shines a light on some of our most common fears with a different kind of monster. Like Richard Matheson in his classic science fiction horror novel, I Am Legend, DiLouie depicts an alternative to the tropes of vampirism and provides new nightmarish what-if questions that ask the reader to contemplate just how far they would go to save their loved ones.

Herod Syndrome is a quick-spreading illness that appears without warning and wipes out the entire population of pre-teen children around the globe in roughly 48-hours. Scary, right? But wait. It gets better. Not only do all the children in world die, which…