Thank you for taking the time to read and reply, Ray. I'll do my best to address your comments.
Would be interesting to see if you could keep it up through the 'rebirth' of humanity, if indeed it does, without hitting Aldis like pontification. Though the Amazon list shows it is less than 300 pages.
The books published by PublishAmerica are not the same size as most of those you find in bookstores. The word count in my book is just over 118,000. I've been told that the average number of words per page in typical paperbacks is about 250. If this is correct, my book would run to about 470 pages in a standard size book.
I'm not really up to the science, but could a virus tie itself to the free nitrogen in the air?
See below.
I know the rabies virus, which you linked your disease to, is quite small as viruses go, but it is still large in comparison to a Nitrogen molecule.
The pathogen in the story has four long cilia-like appendages. These appendages have thousands of valence holes which are perfectly matched to the free valence electrons in the outermost electron shell of nitrogen atoms. The organism isn't trying to tie itself to nitrogen, the two just fit together whenever they come in contact with each other. The electromagnetic force is many orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, so once this EM bond is established gravity becomes irrelevant. The book contains a few paragraphs describing the quantum interaction between the virus and the atmosphere, but not too much, because this is a work of fiction.
Thanks again for your comments!