The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now by Bob Howard

They also stood between us and knowing for sure if the Chief and Allison were still alive.  
    As the afternoon passed, it became more and more obvious that the only answer was to find a way to kill all of them. We decided to take a break from watching their moronic behavior and find something to eat. We also still needed to find the hidden entrance to the shelter that would allow access to the surface.
    The food was easy enough to take care of. There was a tremendous supply of flash frozen foods and MRE’s. Over our meal we talked about how we could take the fort, and I suggested it would be great if we could just ask them to leave. Of course all three of them voted that I could be the one to go ask them, but Kathy stopped in mid-sentence.  
    “Wait a minute, Eddie. I think you might be onto something. What if we can find a way to make them want to leave?”
    Tom and Bus looked at each other to see if either had understood what I had said that made Kathy think there was a way to make them want to leave. The blank looks told them they were both clueless so they looked at me for an answer. I was just as clueless.
    I said, “Kathy, I was just kidding. I didn’t seriously think we could ask them to leave.”  
    “I know,” she said, “and I wasn’t planning on asking them. I said we could make them want to leave. What makes anyone want to leave somewhere these days?”
    The three men were being dense, because the only thing I could think of was why we left Mud Island so often, and from the looks on their faces, Tom and Bus weren’t doing any better.
    Kathy shook her head and asked, “What’s that thing you said once about being dropped on your head when you were a baby, Eddie?”
    The light suddenly went on over my head and I asked, “What would they do if there were infected dead wandering around in the fort? Especially in the middle of the night?”
    “They might want to leave,” said Kathy. “It might take a few days, but once we get the ball rolling, we can let them kill each other or leave.”
    One thing we had discussed plenty of times was how this whole thing got started in the first place. We knew from my experience that there was a wild attack at a fast food restaurant, but I never assumed it started there. We all had similar experiences in the first few days, and almost every time it was because someone had been bitten by someone who was infected. We all agreed that a bite was the means of transmission, but where did they all come from in the first place.
    It was Bus who had the answer for us because his communications network at the beginning had been much better than what the rest of us had. He told us he had received reports from friends who had first hand information about unbitten people coming back from the dead. As crazy as it sounded to us at first, we had to admit, that wasn’t really crazier than coming back from the dead after being bitten. Both were crazy, but we had only seen it happen when people were bitten.
    Bus said there was plenty of speculation about how it could happen, but the part that made the most sense was the virus that was causing people to come back from the dead could be transmitted in more than one way. Viruses often mutated to find other methods of transmission. The bite was just proving to be the most lethal way that it was transmitted, and it caused such a destructive infection that it sped up the death of the person who was bitten. Bus pointed out that Jean’s illness after being scratched was a clue that the bite is fatal because the virus is carried by bodily fluids. There were no bodily fluids under the fingernails of the infected dead that scratched Jean, so she just got sick. Since Bus was a doctor, he could explain it in a way that really made sense.  
    “Do people still salivate after they’re dead, Bus?” asked Kathy.
    “The glands that produce saliva stop making it, but there’s going to be saliva in the ducts for a long time after you die,” he