Kellis-Amberlee

Kellis-Amberlee is the name of a fictional virus in Mira Grant's Newsflesh zombie apocalypse series of books. It is first mentioned in Feed, the first of the trilogy.

Origins

Kellis-Amberlee originated at some point in the Summer of 2014, simply referred to as the Rising throughout the rest of the book. The mutated forms of two cures, Dr Alexander Kellis's cure for the Common Cold and Marburg EX-19 (or Marburg Amberlee), named for the first successful infection, Amanda Amberlee, which was intended as a cure for cancer. These cures, while dormant on their own, mutate when bought into contact with each other to form a verulent strain of this article. Like most common zombification illnesses, Kellis-Amberlee is transposed from Host to Host via saliva or bodily fluids. As such, like the Rage illness seen in the 28 days/weeks series of films, contact with infected blood via wounds or via Zombie Bite is fatal and results in what is refered to as Viral Amplification, or zombification.

Effects on the Human Body

Kellis-Amberlee causes the body to mutate once dead, essentially killing the host and then reanimating them again as a Zombie. Due to a rumor Dr Kellis had never intended the virus to go on sale to the general public, and instead planned to sell his cure to the highest bidder for their private usage, it is likely he did not fully test the cure for airborne strains or against any other drugs on the market for side effects. In Feed, Georgia mentions Dr Kellis and his team "Rush[ing] through testing at a pace that seems almost criminal in retrospect" suggesting that the cure was not fully ready to be released. During the Rising, it was proven that you needed contact with the virus itself to become reanimated. Those who died before receiving a dosage stayed dead, those on the medication were reanimated. It also mutated again to become airborne, which allowed it to spread based on the virulence built into the Kellis cure.

The best theory available for reanimation in the book is that "its an advanced version of normal filovirus behavior, the urge to replicate taken to a new and unnatural level, one that taps into the nervous system of the host and keeps it moving until it falls apart."

Release in 2014

Georgia also tells us about an act of bio-terrorism inspired by the New York Times's coverage of the cure's discovery, in which allegations were made the cure would not be released to the general public. According to Georgia's account, the cure was released by a group of bio-terrorists who sprayed the cure from a crop-dusting aircraft into the atmosphere. Although those responsible were first hailed as heroes for sharing the benefits of a common-cold cure with the world, this changed with the first Kellis-Amberlee mutation.