Free Omega Days (Book 2): Ship of the Dead by John L. Campbell Page A

who hadn’t been bitten?”
    They nodded, Carney with a startled look on his face. He remembered the overweight corrections officer guarding them who’d gone down with a heart attack, only to rise again minutes later. Xavier remembered the San Francisco cop he’d seen who had been lynched, and probably died from the hanging. Yet there he was, dangling by the neck and jerking about.
    Rosa saw the realization. “It’s death,” she said. “The doctors at the field hospital speculated that OV was already inside all of us, leading some to believe it was in our water supply, or more likely, airborne. Either way, it lies dormant, without symptoms, waiting for a specific trigger, which appears to be death.” She dug a water bottle out of a cargo pocket while the others experienced a brief crawling sensation as they imagined the corruption lying silently within them.
    “Again, I’m not a virologist,” Rosa continued, “but the theory isn’t science fiction. We see all the time where a deadly element sits waiting in a person, harmless until a specific series of events takes place. It could be environmental, pollution, or pesticides.” She shrugged. “Theories.”
    “Where is it hiding?” asked Evan, unaware that he was hugging himself and rubbing his upper arms.
    “I would think the brain,” Rosa said. “The brain must feed it, keep it alive.”
    “That’s why a head shot puts them down and keeps them down,” said Xavier, nodding, “or stops a living person from coming back. We’ve all seen the suicides.”
    They looked at him.
    Carney was shaking his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. They’re dead, rotting, which means the brain is dead and rotting too. How can it support anything?”
    “Plenty of organisms live off dead tissue,” Rosa said. “That’s not what you’re asking, though, is it? You want to know how it’s possible for a corpse to still be mobile. For the dead to be not only walking around, but in possession of senses like sight and hearing and smell, maintaining motor function and rudimentary problem-solving skills like how to turn doorknobs or climb steps? To have hunting instincts?” She gave them a weak smile. “I don’t know, and I’m sorry. Maybe you can tell me why they’re driven to eat, even though they clearly get no nutritional benefit from it, even after they no longer have any sort of gastrointestinal system left. Can you answer that question?”
    “Not my field, Doc,” said Carney.
    “Well it’s not mine either,” Rosa said, louder and sharper than she had intended. “I’m sorry,” she quickly said.
    Carney gave her a nod to let her know it was okay.
    “How long do you think they’ll last?” asked Xavier. “They’re rotting. In fact most of them should have fallen apart by now.”
    “You would think so,” said Rosa. “And they are decaying, which could lead you to believe you could just outlast them. Find a hole and wait it out, right? It makes perfect sense, but beside the fact that
none
of this makes sense, there’s a problem with that thinking.”
    Xavier listened. That was
exactly
what he had been thinking, and still was.
    Rosa explained the process of decay, beginning with autolysis. She told them how the enzymes contained within the cells went into a postdeath meltdown, a process that was sped up by heat and slowed by cold. This caused putrefaction, and thirty-six hours after death the corpse’s neck, head, abdomen, and shoulders turned a discolored green. Bloating followed, the accumulation of gas caused by bacteria, and it was most visible around the face. The eyes and tongue began to protrude as the gas pushed them forward. Fluid-filled blisters appeared on the skin, and hair began to fall out.
    They watched her, listening. All of them had seen what she was describing.
    A process called marbling followed, a description of the skin tone when blood vessels in the face, chest, abdomen, and extremities became visible as the red blood cells broke