Book excerpt: "It was an opportunity that would make my career...it was my luck to be in the 2 percent of the nation immune to a disease that, to date, has wiped out a third of the west coast's population."GOSPEL FOR THE DAMNED follows young journalist Aaron Garrett during three days inside the quarantined city of San Francisco. His assignment: Interview The Elliots, family of the missing minister suspected of releasing the deadly Omega virus.What he finds is a fractured community and a myriad of ways of facing hopelessness: clinging to normalcy in banal routines; thrill seeking in dangerous truth-or-dare games; mercy killing and federally sanctioned euthanasia; embracing sorrow through macabre celebrations; and searching for God where faith has been abandoned.Together with The Elliot Family, Aaron embarks on a mission to save someone, anyone, from a doomed existence.