Oryx and Crake (3)

I really, really am into this book now. It is already becoming one of my favorite books ever to read. I am losing count of how much I read since I try to do it when I get little breaks, but I assume I read somewhere between 3 and a half to 4 hours this week. The story has become increasingly "twisted" and completely spins you off track the more you find out. Snowman is slowly dying - to put it bluntly - from starvation and lack of essential nutrients. He has decided to leave his safe shelter in the tree where the wolvogs, pigoons, snats, and all the other animal splices cannot reach him; he does this since he has already eaten all the nearby food within reach. He decides to tell the Crakers (the newly created species) that he has decided to visit Crake on a voyage, but they should not follow him. He tells them this lie since he does not want them to come looking for him while he is searching for food near the Compounds, which is where he used to live (the enclosed perfect community). On his way to the Compounds, he hears what he believes is the typical mating ritual of some of the Crakers. Crake had developed a new way for these species to procreate. He was always telling Jimmy (Snowman) that you could find everything you needed in nature and just adapt it. This is exactly what Crake did for these species as he used the same genes from the chimpanzees. The chimpanzees only mate when the female's bottom brightens to a red (I think the same goes for the males as well). Therefore, the Craker female is in "heat" only when her girl parts become blue, thus signaling to the Craker males that it is time for mating. Crake has also adapted from the penguins that during this "blue" time that the males would present her with flowers (penguins present the females with rocks) and the female would choose four different flowers. The four selected flowers would end up being her four chosen mates. The five of them are supposed to do their mating somewhere private and secluded from the rest of the Crakers, though. This is where Snowman believes he hears one of these rituals going on. Once Snowman makes it to the Compounds he finds the whole place completely desolate except for all the dead bodies around. I could not figure out at first why everyone was dead, but I know for sure that whatever it was they (the real human species) acquired was contagious, spread rapidly, and fatal - much like an epidemic or plague. Snowman searched in one house to find food and found a man in the bathroom. He finds everything in place except for the broken mirror, which he assumes that the deceased man smashed in a fit of rage as he watched himself agonizingly die of the "outbreak" that makes people bleed from their eyes, gurgle up their own blood, and even excrete their internal organs and everything inside of them. This part was very extreme to read about, but it has also helped me to find out more about what has happened to the human species. I still have not figured out HOW this outbreak became, so I need to keep on reading to find out more about this dilemma.