Patient Zero

Joe Ledger is a Baltimore police detective and a former soldier. He comes through a bloody raid on a terrorist cell alive, then watches one of the men he killed get up and attack him.

Mr. Church runs the Department of Military Sciences. The unit is secret, belongs to the US government and reports only to the President. Church recruits Joe to command its Echo Team.

The threat is a bioweapon, a prion disease that kills its victims and brings them back as violent, infectious dead. A terrorist leader engineered it. A pharmaceutical billionaire with motives of his own pays for the work.

Joe works alongside his friend Rudy Sanchez, a police psychiatrist, and the rest of the team. They have to trace the weapon back to where it began and stop a much larger attack before it reaches an American city.

The book is the first Joe Ledger novel and opens a long-running series. It mixes military thriller, bioterror techno-thriller and zombie horror, and it was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.