Just outside Raleigh, North Carolina
Officer "Kip" Thurman stifled a yawn. It had been awhile since he'd pulled an overnight shift, and four a.m. was always the witching hour in his book.
He sighed. Might as well get used to it. There would be a lot of long shifts in his future. A fair number of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol were National Guard or reservist, and the civic and county police departments had even higher percentages. Every one of them had been called up. It meant a lot of shortages and a lot of extra shifts. Still, better driving an empty stretch of highway south of Fayetteville in the middle of the night than to get called up to deal with the craziness in Florida. He shuddered at what he'd seen on the news all day yesterday.
With the combined force of every single police officer and a fair number of National Guardsmen, they'd finally brought peace to the city of Miami. They had killed several dozen confirmed zombies, and dozens more were dead from rioting and panic. It was almost impossible to tell which of those dead were infected or simply bystanders. Hundreds more had been injured.
He slowed down as he spied the bus. It was a sleek greyhound, perched precariously, half in and half out of the ditch. The headlights were still on, lighting the darkness and giving it a surreal look. He thought he could see people moving in the bus, but he couldn't be sure.
"Dispatch, I got a bus in the ditch. Can you get me some backup?"
The radio crackled. "Copy that. We'll do our best."
He snorted. They were short everywhere. God only knew when backup would get there.
"Do you need an emergency crew?" the dispatcher asked.
"Yeah, get an ambulance crew on the way, just in case."
He parked and flipped his lights on before stepping out of the police car. He felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise suddenly. He unlatched the safety catch on his holster.
"Thank God, it's a cop," a voice shouted, and several people came bolting out of the woods toward him.
Another figure broke from the shadow of the bus. Its movements were twitchy and erratic. It grabbed a woman and she screamed as it sank its teeth into her shoulder.
"Shoot it! Shoot it!" one of the men was yelling at him. More figures were shuffling around the corner, heading in his direction. He drew his gun, but as he raised it to aim, he felt a hand grabbing him from behind.
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