The Infection

Infection
 * Begins with a Lyssa virus that is piggie-backed by a prion that alters the brain to trigger only basic functions such as feeding (raw meat) and possibly reproduction and the spread of itself.
 * After infected with Lyssa virus developed by Doctor Henry Diamond on US soil as a possible bio-weapon, the patient bleeds, vomits, has loose stools, runs a high fever, and has a headache. This finishes with the patient going into a coma.
 * Upon awakening from a coma, a patient is hungry for human flesh and shows not signs of the former personality.
 * If saliva or blood contact is made, the infection is spread 99.99 % of the time.
 * Humans either contract the infection or are totally immune at beginning stage.
 * Humans who die of the infection will return at a basic level to continue spreading it. The person is not alive but not technically dead as some basic functions remain as controlled by the brain.
 * One who is infected may only be killed by severe damage to the brain. removing the head will not always kill a carrier.
 * Animals are immune.
 * Once bitten, time before change may depend on the person's health and severity of damage. A bite to a finger will not cause change as fast as will a bite to a major artery,
 * The bite becomes infected with a stinky, yellow pus within minutes and bruising occurs around the area.
 * The infected find food via hearing and eyesight.
 * Dr. Henry Diamond developed an innoculation. Each subject was numbered with a tattoo on the back of the neck. He was #0. Hendricks was # 2. Hannah was #22 against her will. These are called hybrids. His plan was for these Angels, as he calls them, to take over and kill all the zombies and become a new species. He noted that some were bad people are named them demons (small d as opposed to capital A). Frank, head of the Reconstruction Army, is a hybrid as are John Ponce and Colonel Davis of the US Army.
 * A failed protocol to heal those infected (as shown at National Guard Armory) is supposedly not one of Diamond's experiments but this is unknown.
 * A hybrid craves raw meat and may eat beef or such for this. Their saliva and blood are contagious (and so are sexual excretements) and lead to infection. They are immune to zombie bites but can be eaten. One known side effect is that they have less pain receptors. They are able to reproduce and their offspring will be immune as well.
 * Diamond claimed zombies could reproduce but that is unproven,
 * The infection is called Diamond flux (after the designer and the flux of body fluids) and Red (after the blood that victims expell)
 * A man and woman both immune to Red will have immune children. If one parent in not immune, the child is born infected with Red and will go into a coma and awake as a zombie.
 * The infected are known as :Infected, Zeds, Red Zeds, monsters, ghoul, shamblers, moaners. In some cases, at the beginning a Red zed was one who had become ill and changed while a zed was one who had been bitten and infected.
 * In the series, only one character is bitten and uninfected. That was Big Bill who was bitten on his finger and chopped it off with seconds.