Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel by Mark Rivett Read Free Book Online Page A

firefight, both the military convoy and civilian group failed to notice the swarm of hungry snarling dead closing in on them from all sides. They were drawn to the commotion and the promise of flesh. From between buildings, around trees, over highway barriers, and through ditches, the living dead began to trickle, and then pour into the fight. Slow and stupid as they were, they were limitless in number and ruthlessly persistent. Where a living opponent was out of the fight as soon as they took a wound, the living dead were implacable – shoot them in the chest, they barely staggered, blow their legs off, they would just crawl. Only headshots would keep a ghoul down for good, and a head shot was no simple task in the chaos of battle. The firefight between the military and civilians was now a fight for survival against the living dead.

 
    Chapter 5
     
    Dr. Henry Damico took an extra second to think before scrawling the letter B on the forehead of a little blonde girl. She was no more than six years old. The strong young naval medic who had carried her into triage looked crushed when he saw the mark. His eyes welled up with tears, and he braced himself against the wall on shaky knees.
    “She’s not bitten. She’s just a W. Look again!” He pleaded. Two triage security guards stepped forward and lifted her dying body off the gurney without saying a word.
    “She’s a B, son. She’s a B,” Henry urged. A human bite was just about the easiest thing in the world to diagnose from a clinical perspective. The radius, the marks left by the incisors and canines…a child could identify a human bite. Emotionally, it was nearly impossible to diagnose someone with the death sentence of having been bitten by the living dead. If the bite itself wasn’t enough, signs of infection became apparent within minutes – blood darkened and became more viscous, flesh grayed, and the veins around the injury would blacken and spider web outward from the wound. If the injury was not severe enough to kill immediately, a person might live for hours or days as mental and physical fatigue took their toll. All the while, the wound would not heal. Eventually, the infection would overcome the victim’s immune system, their vital functions would stop, and they would rise as flesh-craving monsters.
    Studies existed but were incomplete. Worldwide health organizations attempts to understand the infection had barely scratched the surface before practical and immediate survival concerns became priority. Infections had been reported simultaneously in dense population centers, as well as remote wilderness and even isolated tribal regions. Some theories suggested that the virus itself was tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old, and transmitted vertically from parent to child from primitive ancestry. Most, if not every person on earth, was already infected with a dormant virus that had been lurking beneath the human immune system for countless generations.
    Dr. Damico had read early reports assigning responsibility for the virus “awakening” to everything from government biological warfare, pharmaceutical companies, and even God. Who or what was actually responsible was completely unknown, and it would likely remain so. What was known was that something somewhere changed. Now, if you died—even of natural causes—you would reanimate as a near-mindless, flesh-craving monster. The world was not fighting an epidemic or a virus; it was fighting for survival against the rise of the living dead. Thus far, it had been a losing battle.
    The big picture was impossible to put into perspective in these life and death moments. Henry couldn’t imagine what the army medic had gone through to bring this little girl to him. His fatigues were bloody and he had a bandage on his own arm. He had completely invested himself into saving this little girl, and now the cold reality was that she was doomed. She had been doomed before he had ever taken her in