Apparently, some crew members enter but never come out. His investigation takes him to the site of the former World Trade Center, where construction crews are wary about entering the tunnels. He realizes that something must have displaced the rat population, something large. He tries to warn Eph and Nora, but no one believes him until it’s too late, until the eclipse starts and the bodies from the plane start to disappear and there are increasing reports of people attacking each other.Ī couple hours later in Manhattan, rat exterminator Vasiliy Fet notices something odd about the city’s rat population - they are seen more frequently in the open during daylight. Only one man in New York City truly knows what is about to happen because he has experienced it before - Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian. This occurs at the cusp of a total solar eclipse with the city on edge waiting for something to happen. However, there is a sinister feeling in the air, a tingle of fear, and as they unload the plane, they find a huge, ornately carved coffin in the cargo hold. When personnel from the CDC rapid-response team, doctors Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather and Nora Martinez, enter the plane, they find everyone dead, but no sign of how they died.

On September 24, 2010, a flight from Berlin lands at New York’s JFK Airport, but no one disembarks and the pilots do not contact the control tower. It’s a science fiction novel, both a novel steeped in science and fairytale. It’s a story about individuals driven by greed, anger, love. It’s a story about revenge, loss, the strive to survive, chaos and the destruction of society, fighting against evil. The Strain, the first book in its trilogy, is so many things.

Guillermo del toro the strain book