“Calling all units we have a 1099 in progress with two suspects in a silver sedan,” the radio muffled. “Let’s go Rick!” shouted Shane. The car wheels screeched and they were off. Rick and Shane were sheriff’s deputies along with a few other guys in a small town outside Atlanta. Rick and Shane have been best friends since middle school and have stuck together.

Rick stopped the car just a mile away from the stolen car’s location. Rick and Shane set out spikes in front of them a couple yards and just waited. After a few minutes they could hear other sirens coming closer and closer. You could see the silver sedan over the horizon line and then BAM! The car hits the spikes and starts to flip over and over again like a log rolling down a hill . It finally stopped and landed to the side of the road. Rick and the others approached the car with pistols and shotguns. All of a sudden a man came out of the sedan and BOOM shot Rick to the ground. Then a second later everyone fired their guns like they were in the Wild West. CHIC-CHOO… BOOM! Shane took out the first man and yelled “Rick, you ok man!” Then the second man came out to meet a bullet right in the heart. All of a sudden the guns stopped and Rick got up. “You ok man?” asked Shane. “Yeah I’m fine, but you listen to me. You cannot tell Laurie ok, you can’t…. BANG! Rick went down. “AHH!” Rick yelled. A third man came out and shot him from behind. BANG! Shane took the man down. “Rick! Rick are you… I know man, I know. Just stay quiet ok. Hey Tom you call the station and tell them that officer down and you do it now!” Shane hollered.

* * *

“Hey man, I brought you some flowers from the station. Everyone pitched in for these.” Shane said. “Thanks man, thanks for helping me. I wonder how much those cost…Shane.” Rick replied. Rick turned and looked to the side not only to find flowers, but no Shane. The flowers were dead and wilted. Rick in shock figured that it must have been weeks since Shane was here. Rick looked above him to see the clock, but it wasn’t moving. He sat up to try and get to the bathroom, but fell face-flat. “Nurse help, please….nurse help,” Rick moaned with a scratchy voice. A few seconds later he opened the bathroom door and got some water. He then opened the main door to find a bed blocking his doorway. He looked down the hall to find darkness, but to find one light flickering at the end. He followed it only to see a door with words on it that said ‘DEAD INSIDE! DON’T OPEN IT AT ALL!’ With a horrific face of terror Rick realized that the words were in blood. A minute later he heard moans from the door and someone or something reached its hand out. Frantic, Rick ran down the hall to the stairs that were pitch dark. He could only go down one way…with no eyesight. A few minutes later he found a door and used what strength he had left to open it and then get blinded by white light. The sunlight smashing at his eyes wasn’t the only thing that hit him. The putrid odor of dead corps filled the air around him.
He had never seen so many dead bodies in his life.

Rick started to head up a hill and found a bike on the curb and started to ride when he saw a body lying on the ground, but the thing about the body is it had no lower body. So all Rick could see was just its spine and intestines hanging out and all of a sudden the head moved and it just stared at him and reached its arms out. Rick immediately got on the bike and was gone. When he found his house and went inside he kept yelling “Laurie…Carl!” but they weren’t anywhere. He then went to his front steps sobbing and tried to think. “Am I in a dream? Wake up!” Rick started smacking himself. Then he saw something, “It’s a man!” Rick thought to himself. He waved his hand when….DONK… he went down and looked up and saw a kid. “Carl…Carl is that you?” asked Rick. “Daddy!” the kid yelled and looked down the street. Another man ran behind the other and shot him right in the head. The man ran over to Rick and stares at him then Rick passes just faints.

“Where am I?” Rick moaned. “You passed out so I took you in. You’re lucky to be alive. It’s a good thing I found you or you would have died of a fever. I’m just trying to keep my boy safe, but I will kill you if you try anything funny ok,” the man said . “I’m martin,” the man said. Rick looked out a window to see a full moon lighting up the sky. He got out of the bed he was in and walked over to a table where Martin was. Martin, his son, Duane, and Rick started to eat some dinner. “What’s going on?” asked Rick. “Well there is some sort of virus that’s killing people and bringing them back to life. There dead though when they come back. These things…they eat people. There like zombies. Head shots only kill them,” Martin replied. “We should probably get some rest and don’t worry we are safe in this house,” Martin said. The next morning he three of them went to Rick’s police station to get weapons and supplies. They thought that they should go to Atlanta for shelter. There would be a refugee center there or go to the CDC (center for disease control). They split up so Martin and Duane could get some target practice with the guns.

Rick decided to go to Atlanta by himself. His car broke down so he found a horse and took that instead. After a couple miles of riding he could see the city with cars on the other side of the road just crammed together trying to get out of the city. There wasn’t a single sound when Rick entered the streets, just the horse clicking its feet. All the blocks were filthy with trash, army tanks, and dead bodies. Then all of a sudden Rick heard a sound that he couldn’t tell what it was. He looked up to a glass building to see a helicopter flying. He spurred the horse and ran after it. He was going to turn the corner when he saw hundreds of zombies starring at him. He turned back to be surrounded by more and get thrown of his horse. He dropped his bag of guns and saw his horse being dragged down by zombies eating the heck out of that horse. Rick crawled up into a tank and was gasping for breath and was just stunned. A few seconds later a radio turned on in the tank and then a voice rang out. “Hey, dude in the tank. Yeah I’m talking to you. Cozy in there,” a man said. Rick picked up the radio and responded “Hello, hello! Who is this? Please help me.” “Alright, but listen carefully! The street is covered with walkers, that’s what I call the dead. Anyway most of them have joined the feeding frenzy when the horse went down. Now listen, take whatever weapon(s) you have and jump off the tank and run down the sidewalk to your right and go 2 blocks and I will be there do you understand.” The man replied. Rick jumped out of the tank and punched a walker and started running. He took out his revolver and started shooting away. He found and ally when a young man with a radio grabbed him and took him in the ally and up a ladder to the top of a building. Rick saw on his short that it said ‘Glenn’. Rick followed him down a stair way to a store where a bunch of walkers were trying to get in the door. They went down a hall to find more survivors. “We got to get out of here,” one woman said. “I’ll use my car as a diversion so Rick can get you guys out without being trapped.

A few minutes later Glenn bolted out of the building in his mustang blaring a siren. Meanwhile Rick and the others got out and headed to a camp on the outskirts. About an hour later they reached the camp with even more people. “What took you so long?” a man asked. “A new guy got us out, he’s a cop like you Shane.” replied Glenn. Rick got out of a big van and was stunned to see Shane. “Dad!” yelled Carl. Rick hugged him and his wife. “I knew I would find you.” Rick told his wife. “Nothing was going to stop me from finding you,” Rick said.