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Prologue
By the time the sun set on the first full day of the crisis, Sheriff Tommy Jennings was no longer convinced that
it was mass hysteria. He was convinced that he had done what politicians rarely did in the face of a crisis: He
had under-reacted. He pictured George W. Bush reading to kindergarteners while the World Trade Centers were being
attacked. When this was all over, he hoped he would not be seen as the man who had missed the opportunity to stop
the crisis and missed it.
The only such event anyone could remember was the tornado that destroyed the Dixie Textiles Number One mill back
in 1953. That tornado had happened the year Tommy Jennings was born. Tales of it haunted his childhood. People
had been trapped inside the windowless mill as it collapsed upon them. The boiler room had cooked three men alive,
the flesh falling from their bones as they were removed afterwards.
Weather continued to provide the rare emergencies that Larcom County faced even into the twenty-first century.
This past February, an ice storm had pulled down trees and power lines all over the county. He had handled that
successfully. He had been praised in the local paper for it. They had even run a front-page photo of him carrying
a small black child to safety after a tree had fallen on the home she shared with fourteen other family members.
When the sun had risen the morning that followed what some were calling "the Resurrection Plague," Jennings
was still convinced it was mass hysteria. Just another case of the media blowing something out of proportion to
the point that nobody knew what to believe anymore. He was supposed to be leaving for Panama City next week, a
trip his wife had brink of canceling already. Shark attacks were being reported all over Florida, she said. Actually,
there had only been two reported attacks. And she wanted an excuse to visit her sister in the mountains. His first
vacation since the election was in jeopardy because of the media hype.
He had been at home, packing for Panama City, when the television folks interrupted regular programming for reports
from Pittsburg, the first place that the shit hit the fan. An hour later Jennings was getting calls himself. By
dawn, the stories were crazier: the dead were rising and murdering and eating the living.
He wasn't able to believe the stories. As an agent of the law, he had to keep himself grounded in the truth. Truth
was the immutable constant. Dead people (other than Jesus and Lazarus) stayed dead and living people killed people.
The Larcom County Sheriff's Department had gotten few calls through the first night. Most of those were from people
watching television and frightened by the reports they were hearing and wanting reassurance that all was well here
in the town of Spangler. When the sun rose on the first day, the number of genuine reports increased.
Larcom County's population of sixty thousand was spread out, but the twenty thousand who lived in the county seat
of Spangler were in a fairly small area. That dynamic slowed the spread of the plague. In the early hours of that
first day, the few dead in the community multiplied their number gradually.
Patton-Williams Funeral Home's secretary Carolyn DeAngelis unlocked the door to the business, walked to the office
and was attacked by the resurrected body of Tommy Loefer. Larry Williams was the second to arrive and the second
to be attacked. He was attacked by both the embalmed body of Tommy and the bloodied body of Carolyn.
When three other employees trailed in one by one just before nine o'clock that morning, they fell victim to the
growing crowd of zombies within the facility. The Loefer family-there were only a dozen of them-began arriving
at 10:30 for the 11:00 funeral.
They, too, joined the ranks of the undead.
And the last of them, Franklin Loefer, left the front door open. The reanimated corpse of Anita Johnston walked
out and into the street in front of Patton-Williams. Carlos (Hispanic surname) swerved to miss her and struck a
telephone pole. The front of his Ford van crumpled, pinning him inside and popping the driver's side door open.
And so, Carlos was eaten alive on Taylor Street.
The things wandered the area, drifting toward the more populated area to the west. There was an auto repair shop
nearby. When Larry Williams' bloody body walked in, Hank Dillard thought he had been in an accident and ran to
him. And Larry bit Hank in the neck.
The other two mechanics were likewise caught off guard.
By noon, the Sheriff's department was inundated with calls. At first, deputies attempted to physically subdue the
dead. This did not work, of course, and more than half the deputies on duty were dead by two o'clock.
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