Disclaimer: I own none of the Walking Dead characters.

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A groggy fog greeted Scarlett when she woke. Momentarily disoriented, she blinked a few times and tried to remember what had happened. She didn't even dream. Slowly it all came back, and her heart sunk with each memory.

Rubbing puffy blue eyes, the nurse fought back swirling currents of memories, both of last night's events and events prior. Scarlett could thank her lucky stars for a dreamless night, but her waking hours were haunted by memories all the time. Being at Shane's was no consolation. Comfortable as his apartment was, it came with memories of incapacitating grief and nights spent crying herself to sleep.

Images of her son and husband hit Scarlett's consciousness like a brick, followed by recollections of funeral processions, gravestones, and days spent contemplating suicide. To throw in the incomprehensible catastrophe that was last night almost sent Scarlett over the edge. Her eyes automatically found the small picture hanging on Shane's living room wall. She always studied it when she was here.

In it there stood two men, proud and young, holding their "diplomas" as they graduated from the police academy. Rick and Shane, she thought, tasting the names together for the first time in a while. At one point, those names were practically one word, symbolizing an inseparable friendship born in high school. She came into the picture soon into college, falling in love with Rick as quickly as she decided she disliked Shane, the arrogant ladies man and Rick's roommate. Regardless, the three of them spent the rest of college exploring the country, making stupid decisions, and growing into adults. What Scarlett didn't know, was that as soon as Rick asked her to marry him, Shane decided that he loved Scarlett too. Honorable as he was, he never mentioned it, even after Rick's death.

Death. The word was all around her lately. Scarlett felt like the black angel of death. Just one and a half years ago, she had watched Shane burst into the hospital conference room, apologetically whispering to the team leader that he needed to see Scarlett immediately. All of Scarlett's friends and coworkers knew Shane, knew Rick, knew their son Carl, and all of them knew that seeing Shane on the clock was never a good sign.

Scarlett cautiously remembered the walk out the door to Shane, likely pale as a ghost. She remembered logging his every feature, noting the tears on his cheeks, how he fidgeted with his radio. She had rehearsed this moment. "Is he alive?"

She was impressed with how calm she kept her voice, how collected she was as Shane informed her that the car crash had killed her husband instantly. Granted, she never thought she'd lose her love to an accident, but she had always prepared for the worst being married to a police officer. What she hadn't prepared for, was what Shane said next.

"Carl was in the car. Rick was picking him up from school for a stomach ache." Scarlett remembered how her son's name caught in Shane's voice, how hopeless he sounded saying it. Blankly, Scarlett had repeated him. "Carl was in the car…"

Carl was in the car. At that, Scarlett was sucked back to the present, back to the couch on which she'd woken up, back to the recent horror of her night at the ICU, and back to the wary look Shane was giving her as he stared down at her.

"How you feelin', ma'am?"

She blinked. Shane always had a knack for making himself exceptionally comfortable around her. His briefs sat loosely on his hips, with nothing else adorning him save for a raised eyebrow. "Hungover", she admitted, eyeing the ironically still-full beer on the coffee table.

"When we gon' talk about this, Sky?" Scarlett wrenched herself into a sitting position, noting that the clock read 3:15pm. He handed her a cup of coffee. Scarlett held it in her hands, shuddering against the warmth of the mug.

Shane sat down with his own cup, fumbling for the remote. "I don't mean to get all detective on you, but I got an interesting e-mail 'couple hours ago." Scarlett looked at him over her cup. Of course he did. Atlanta cops got e-mails about everything abnormal that happened in this city. "Also, this." He jutted his remote toward the TV. Morning news anchors were discussing last night's events, flashing photos of police cars and coroners parked in front of Atlanta Regional Medical Center

"So you know what happened, then."

"I know that some guy went ape shit crazy and bit two people, and I know that he was pronounced dead about three hours earlier." He considered his next comment for a moment. "Do you know that your friend, Chad, died last night?"

Scarlett was stunned. She immediately grabbed her purse, pulling out her phone. Sure enough, just about every nurse on her shift had texted, most wondering if she was okay. The most significant was an e-mail from Dr. Shaw, written at 8am. She read it intently, her stomach dropping with every word:

Scarlett,

You've likely heard that Chad died last night, and you know that we lost Ray. Chad developed a fever and went into cardiac arrest early this morning, shortly after his fever hit 107. The CDC has taken blood samples from all three of them. I hate to tell you this, but the same thing happened with Ray. He "woke up", if you can call it that, and fought with us for a good 4 hours before a police officer arrived and put him down with a shot to the head. As of right now, Chad is deceased; nothing remarkable has happened with him. I will let you know if that changes.

I'm going to be frank with you. This isn't psychological. This is medical, infectious even. I will update you with the blood analysis results. Stay safe, and contact me if you contract even the slightest fever.

Brandon Shaw, M.D.

Another, shorter e-mail from the hospitalist was sent at 1pm.

Chad woke up. He bit the mortician. We are currently fighting a fever on the mortician. Will update with CDC results.

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Shane Walsh squinted into the sun, pulling his hat low over his eyes as he always did. His left knee bounced up and down restlessly in the driver's side of his squad car. He sunk down into the chair, attempting to get comfortable for the next hour of traffic patrol.

"I tell you man, them strippers downtown want to call us. It's like we're fuckin' Chip 'n Dale to those bitches." Shane closed his eyes in controlled annoyance. He looked sideways at the passenger, a scrawny little trainee named Tim Mackie, with his bushy brown hair and acne pocked face. He doubted the kid had even been laid, and he was sure the trainee would use his shiny new cop badge to try and remedy that. "That one chick, Celeste? Destiny? The blonde one. I'd buy a dance or two from her."

He couldn't do it. There was no way Shane could sit and listen to Mackie for an hour. He threw his squad car into drive with a little more force than necessary, and crept out of the parking lot. Days like this made Shane miss Rick, terribly. The two of them rarely had a dull moment on duty, whether it was dicking around on patrol or actually pursuing the assholes of Atlanta. Now he either flew solo or had little punks like this dumped on him for a few weeks.

"Anyway..." Mackie faltered. The kid was running out of conversation. "You read that goddamn e-mail they sent out? Shit man, I wonder what kind of drugs are floating around to cause that shit."

Shane bristled a little. He'd forgotten about last night momentarily. "Ain't no sense speculatin', Mackie." He chewed on the toothpick that was always jutting out of his mouth. Trying to quit chewing tobacco was making his fuse dangerously short.

The sun was just about below the skyline now, and the two maneuvered their way through a middle class neighborhood right outside downtown Atlanta. Shane mulled over last night, thinking about Scarlett. He hadn't seen her in weeks before last night. She looked good last he saw her, getting some color back in those cheeks. She'd put a pound or two back on her impossibly small frame, resembling the little fitness queen that she used to be. He was starting to see smiles and jokes out of her again. But last night, Sky looked as ghostly and frail as the day she found out her boys were dead, except more terrified.

"Ay, Walsh." Shane snapped out of his thoughts and looked toward Mackie. "Look down that alley." He followed his gaze where the kid was pointing, and noticed a dark figure hunched over in the shadows of a fence. He couldn't make out what he was seeing.

They turned into the alley, creeping along slowly. The sky was a royal blue now, just a shade or two lighter than night. They were having a hard time seeing, so Shane flipped on his spotlight.

He stopped the car. "What the fuck…" The spotlight revealed two people. One, a man, was lying motionless on the ground. Hovering above him was another man, covered in what looked like blood. Shane sighed, hoping this went smoothly. "Here ya go, boy. Your first experience with this fucked up town." He clapped Mackie on the back with force. The young officer was staring at the scene in disbelief.

Shane called for back-up and opened his door, settling behind it with his pistol aimed at the man. "Sir!" he bellowed. "Put your hands in the air, do it now! Anything sudden and I will shoot you!" Shane gestured at Mackie to assume the same position, and the kid tentatively crouched beneath his own door. The bloodied man had been too preoccupied with what he was doing to notice the spotlight on him, but now he realized that he wasn't alone.

With jerky, awkward movements, the suspect turned toward Shane's voice. He had milky white eyes and peered into the spotlight without expression. Something red and slippery hung from his mouth. Shane thought his neck was bleeding, but he couldn't tell the difference from the other man's blood that covered this freak.

"Oh my fuck, he's eating that dude's organs!" Mackie heaved and vomited on the other side of the car. Shane now realized that intestines were what hung out of the man's mouth, which he chewed lazily. He could see that there wasn't much left of the victim's abdominal cavity, and decided that was all the evidence he needed to take his shot.

He took his aim and pulled the trigger, hitting the man in the heart. Sirens were howling in the distance, indicating to Shane that his back-up was on its way. Thank god for that. Shane could still hear Mackie vomiting on the other side of the squad car. Fucking useless, he thought.

Turning his attention back to the cannibal man, he realized that he hadn't killed the guy. Now he was standing, gazing at Mackie- who was making all sorts of noise- in a very disturbing way. "Mackie, get your fucking shit together!" He trained his gun on the man and took a second shot. Another bullet to the heart. The man barely noticed he'd been hit.

Briefly, Shane wondered if someone had replaced his magazine with goddamn blanks, and then an unsettling thought occurred to him. He read that e-mail. He'd listened to Sky recount her horrifying evening. They both sounded eerily similar to what was happening here. The man stumbled closer to Mackie, who was whimpering. "MACKIE!"

"You shot him twice! Why isn't he down? Why is he eating that guy?" The kid was terrified, and Shane saw that his gun was trembling in his hands as he backed into a fence, away from the protection of his door. So Shane repositioned his gun, and just before the monstrous man ambled out of the spotlight, Shane took a third shot, straight to the head. The man dropped to the ground.

Two cop cars screamed around the corner and down the alley, screeching to a halt near Shane. He stood with his gun still trained, staring at the dead man with fear that he'd start moving again. Mackie was a ball of anxiety. "Is this the shit you deal with? Is this what I gotta do? Nah man, fuck that. I don't even know what the fuck just happened. I just wanted to write tickets, this is fucked up…" He spewed on and on, nervously chattering about nothing.

Sergeant Herring came to stand beside Shane. His weathered eyes flipped between the gutted man and the body at Shane's feet. "Was that asshole eating the other man?" Shane finally relaxed his grip, lowering his weapon. He took his hat off and ran a calloused hand across his head. Herring spit on the ground, a large wad of tobacco in his lip.

"Tha's about right," he drawled tiredly, stepping over to the man he'd shot. He gave the suspect a once-over and noticed the bite on his neck. Fuck. "I think we're gonna have to get the CDC in on this one, Serg." He pointed to the bite mark. "The three who died in the hospital last night were all bitten."

Herring crossed his arms over his chest, clearly not following Shane. "Why CDC?"

Shane cleared his throat, lowering his voice. "Sky was there last night. She said-" He was interrupted by a loud scream from Mackie. The men went into attack mode, low to the ground with their guns out. "Mackie what the fuck?!" Shane was so tired of this asshole. He was answered by more screams from the recently-arrived coroners.

They spun around, spotting the reason for so many screams. The man – the gutted man – was trying to stand up. He rolled to his side, intestines spilling out to the ground. A low moan escaped his blue lips, and those characteristic white eyes searched for a victim. Slowly he stood amidst shouting and threatening by various cops surrounding him. Herring and Shane were closest, and so that's who the corpse went for. He leaned into a walk, stumbling toward them with a quickening gait, dragging ragged intestines behind him.

Herring swore and shot at the man's heart. As Shane expected, nothing happened. Without bothering to explain, he raised his gun and planted a bullet into the man's brain, dropping him as he'd dropped the other one.

A heavy thud behind him indicated that Mackie had fainted.

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missCanary