Clay's Ark

The title of the book is the name of a spaceship (which itself is the name of the spaceship’s inventor) meant to be an ark carrying mankind to a new earth. The Eli Doyle is an astronaut who is the only survivor of the Clay’s Ark expedition that has returned to earth. Eli is infected with a virus(?) that has transformed him to be inhumanly strong and have inhumanly powerful perception (smell, night vision, touch, hearing). This is all because the virus is selfish and wills its survival through infected individuals. Eli has built a “family” of those he has infected and they live in an isolated compound in the mojave desert. The infected clan, per the virus’ prerogative exists to grow by infecting others, who if they survive, will be similarly transformed; and of course, the ultimate goal of the virus is to create a new race to supercede normal humans (Where have we heard that before?). This book establishes this new black-superhuman phenomena seemingly unrelated to the original Doro-spawned superhumans. Anyway the plot is around Eli’s group’s attempt to kidnap, infect a father with his two daughters then the complications that unfold when the kidnapped attempt, semi-successfully, to escape.