When a man suffering from Prader-Willi syndrome - an actual disease that causes an insatiable appetite in its victim - receives a crushing head wound in a car accident, the radiation from the x-rays and steroids used to treat him mutates his disease. This altered strain then couples itself with the H1N1 flu which changes it again into a highly contagious virus. First killing off its host in order to take total control of its body, the disease then reanimates it into a being that is dead but craves living flesh above all else.
And the most plentiful source is humans.
Passed on by being bitten, scratched, or coming into contact with infected body fluid, the new disease is labeled the HWNW virus and spreads rapidly. Dead Air follows its course as it first races across the United States and then the world.
As the dead rise up to challenge the living for control of the earth, in Clearwater Florida a small group led by Steve Wendell takes shelter in the 15 story building that houses the radio station where they work. While securing their refuge against the hordes of living dead laying siege to them, they continue broadcasting the events that unfold across west central Florida as people are bitten, die, and are reanimated to feed on and infect the living.
Dead Air is book one of The Dead Series, a four book collection following the rise of the dead and its aftermath. Dead Calm is the second in the series and is due out shortly. It follows the survivors after they escape Clearwater by sailboat. Becalmed and almost out of water and supplies, they come across what they think is an abandoned cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico but which turns out to be full of religious nuts and the walking dead. Dead Weight, book three in the series, is being written as you read this.
It goes without saying that the final book in the series will be named Dead End.