Prologue
When a cat gets run over on a backwoods road, it doesn't just disappears. It festers, and slowly. For a little while, it's just there, taking up as much space as when it was alive. Small animals come and take little bits from it now and again, drag it off to a hole somewhere to feast. The cat slowly shrinks, sometimes excruciatingly so. Eventually the buzzards rip it apart, drag it off and its just like that cat wasn't ever there. No one ever asks why because, in the end, its just a dead cat. Then, a few weeks later another cat gets smashed on that same stretch of road by an unflinching Ford screeching down the street. The Cycle repeats.
This is life.
Small towns operate in much the same way. Manbach, Florida used to be steadily on the rise from it's humble roots at a little township in the 1800s to capsizing at two-thousand residents early last year. But people have slowly started to drift away. The town is nice enough, but the ever down-turning has forced people to vacate, back to the big cities where the factory work is. This piece of roadkill has almost been picked clean. Surely in a few years another small town will pop up, flourish, and then die out.
Again, this is life.
An unremarkable group of nine -The Staff, The Chef, The Officers, The Pusher, The Runaway, and The Stranger- are inside Little Nicky's Diner. Some to take their last order before Little Nicky's is closed permanently, and some to get their last meal before heading out of Manbach for good. In this little town where it seems nothing ever happens anymore, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect a typical, mundane, Florida night.
But trouble does have a way of showing up where it's least expected.
A/N: I hope that wasn't too bad. I've hardly been able to write fiction due to lack of time, and am trying to get back into it with this. Bear with me. I'm going to be trying to get an update on this every friday at the very least, in addition to working on it whenever the muse speaks.
This is rated M for a reason, there will be blood, guts, swearing, language and maybe some other things before this is over. I know, you're excited.
And, to give credit where credit is due, I own ALL characters in this story, but the plot and setting is inspired by Night of The Living Dead and Stephen King's "The Mist." Please drop me a review or message if you check the story out, I do love feedback.
Thanks for reading, Peace.