What I know about zombies.

It's a big world out there, so hopfully there's someone left out there still alive. Someone who could do something to fix this. Christ knows I can't. I'm fucking useless. I Should have died. Martin should have lived. He knew stuff, seemed to at least. Maybe the stuff he knew could help you.

Martin was a doctor when it started.
I can't think of a worse place to be in the world to be than a hospital when the dead start getting up and biting, eating.

He said it took them too long to wake up to what was happening. To the truth of it. If they'd accepted what was happening quicker then maybe they could have controlled things. Controlled those things.

He told me that this little girl came in. That she'd fallen in the river and they couldn't get her warm. She kept saying she was cold. Get that she was actually talking! The nurse, she couldn't find a pulse, but Martin said that that wasn't that weird because when you're really cold the blood goes away from you're extremities. (he was talking about your arms and legs) So he was just going to listen to her heart with one of those doctor things when someone bit someone eles in the cubical next to them.
The little girls only word had been, up to that point, "cold". Then she said "hungry" and bit her mom.

Martin didn't like to talk much about what happened that night. I can't blame him I guess. I think he had a thing for one of the nurses, and I think that it ended badly.
He did talk about them though. What causes it.
Apparantly the cause of all death is a lack of oxygen to the brain.
Death is (or at least used to be) brain death. That was caused by the brain not getting any air. Once that happens (usually but not always due to heart failure) the brain switches off.
But he said that there is no real difference between a living body and a dead one. They weigh the same, there's nothing missing, It's just been turned off.

Martin thought that something had happened to the brain to change it slightly, so that the off switch was broken.
Probably a virus.

The brain can't work properly without oxygen though but it's not a really quick thing. It takes time now for a dead person to start acting like a dead person.

This is what you need to look out for:-
1. A dead person will start to slur their words and act a little drunk.
2. They will react slowly to stimulation. (stuff like pain)
3. They will complian of feeling cold.

Martin said that this lasts for about an hour until the person enters the next stage.
He said people react as if they'd gotten a head injury. He used words like "blunt force trauma" or something. They become confused and may lose some memory, sometimes the last few hours, sometimes weeks. (Back to before all this started.) He said that when memory loss is total the subject (that's what he called them) might go in to a "fugue state" and wander off and perhaps try to do a mundane task like shopping or sorting books. Apparantly if you disturb them during this time by asking them a question an alternate personality maybe formed to fill the void left be the original one.
This new personality has about 5 to 10 minutes before that too is gone. Unless you keep them talking. Keep asking questions forcing them to use their brain. Then you might be able to keep them going for perhaps an hour.
But when the first lull in the conversation occurs that's it. The other thing. The hungry thing wakes up.

Martin didn't have an alternate personality. He didn't wander off. He just bit me. So I guess that it's different for everyone.
I do feel cold though, He was right about that.