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Jennings was still attempting to find a logical explanation.
His theory at two o'clock was that it was all mass hysteria. Although it didn't explain everything that he was
seeing, Jennings realized that he himself could be a victim and that would explain the whole thing.
The county jail was collocated with the sheriff's office. Jennings attempted to turn his office into an emergency
center. In the few cases in which a deputy had been able to subdue and muzzle one of the living dead things, the
thing was locked in a cell there. The situation was worsening tremendously and quickly. Someone suggested using
the old jail for non-violent arrests till things calmed down.
The old jail, a two-story red brick building on the wrong side of town, had been built in the 1880's after the
original county courthouse burned down. Its history saw it move in and out of use every few decades. It had housed
prisoners upstairs as late as the 1970's. Since then it had been almost exclusively a storage unit for the county.
The upper floor of the county office building reeked of its previous residents: jailors, convicts, and -most recently-
rats and roaches. The government green paint had broken ranks with the government cement block wall, chipping in
a dozen different rebellions against order.
Windows high in the room showed the last remnants of daylight. Night was coming again, the second night.
In the dying light, the old bars shone a ghoulish gray-green. The place had not been used in twenty-plus years,
but it had never been totally abandoned either. Now, with the insanity going on, the old county jail was being
pressed back into service. Six separate cells stood in the center of the upper floor. Each cell contained its own
metal toilet and small sink. A four-foot high privacy wall surrounded the toilet. There were metal bunks with thin
pallets that served as mattresses.
Sheriff Tommy Jennings had directed the Correctional Institute warden to take a group of trustees to the old building
and to empty the cells of the cases of records stored there, relocating them-temporarily it was hoped-to the dingy
basement. Humidity was bad there, but the move was only temporary. If the records mildewed and cases were lost
because of it, Jennings knew he would have to answer to the county commissioners in the short term and the voters
later. Once this bizarre situation ended, the records would be returned to the second floor and the world would
be returned to normal.
As the day's last light moved from white to yellow to pink, that return to normal came no nearer.
The crisis was almost twenty-four hours old and showed no signs of ending. It was the worst case of mass hysteria
Jennings had ever seen. It was actually the only case of mass hysteria he had ever seen. It was the worst of which
he had ever heard. It was genuine mass hysteria. Not only did people convince themselves of the horrible stories
they told, many of them were acting out the stories. No wonder even veteran officers were starting to believe there
really were zombies in the streets of Spangler.
And so the cells on the second floor of the old courthouse were emptied and prepared to hold occupants as needed.
The county's huge new jail on the west side of town was serving as both jail and emergency center. Jennings wanted
to use this as overflow space for the few prisoners coming in who were not somehow involved in the mass hysteria.
Jennings put Deputy Fred Gerard in charge of this temporary jail in the old county office building near the railroad
tracks. It was a reliable situation, all things considered. Gerard was a man who did everything exactly by the
book without regard to outbursts from prisoner or politicians. He was famous for going entire shifts without speaking.
"No need to," he would say when pressed about it. The strange behavior had earned him the nickname Gerard
the Retard.
ONE
Gerard had just arrived at the main county jail when a patrolman brought in a young man, one Randy Harwell, on
theft charges.
"I didn't do anything," Randy was saying.
The patrolman was not responding. He was completing paperwork at the counter. The clerk looked at the incident
report. "Theft? Trooper Beam, we've got a lot more to worry about than theft right now."
"Still against the law, ain't it?"
"Yeah," said Sheriff Tommy Jennings as he stepped around the corner. "But right now, we've got more
than the usual amount of shit hitting the fan."
"So I let him go?"
"No," said Jennings as he thumbed through a stack of files at the desk. "Have Gerard take him over
to the annex."
"The annex?"
"The old courthouse. We're using it for extra space."
"Right, right," said the clerk. The sheriff found the file and left the area.
"I didn't do anything."
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