Partials

Partials is yet another YA post apocalyptic novel. Humans created "partials" to help fight wars. These part-human/part robot creatures eventually turned on their human overlords. They unleashed a virus that wiped out much of the population. The novel centers on a society based in Long Island that thinks of itself as the last remnant of human civilization. They require every woman over the age of 18 to be perpetually pregnant in hopes of birthing a baby immune to the virus. Alas, the babies rarely live more than a few days. We follow the trail of a young medic and her friends who seek to find a partial in order to discover a cure. They eventually get the partial. She studies it and she (of course) becomes friends with him. However, they discover that they were pawns in a power grab by the controlling Senate. They see this as a great opportunity to declare martial law. Our heroes then escape and team with the partial to cure the virus. Only they discover a few more things in the process. The novel ties things up with peace, but leaves a large number of open threads for the sequel.

Here it is a virus connected to androids that were released for a war. In Maze Runner, it was a virus unleashed by the government after a climate catastrophe. It looks like there is a lot of concern with man manipulating viruses. This novel does seem to have a somewhat more idealistic version of the "last man standing". People just occupy whatever building they find convenient, and scavenge from the resources available. They seem to have some bits of technology remaining, and have coerced into a civilization. Though, alas, it is one that veered into totalitarianism and spawned a resistance. The resistance, however, ends up being much different than expected.