Luke: "I'm not afraid."

Yoda: "You will be. You will be."

-Empire Strikes Back

GCPD Officer Jacob Owens never thought he'd get used to working the night shift. How did somebody convince themselves that 2am was a decent hour to be awake? Owens quickly found out that it was pretty easy; Gotham was just as busy in the early hours of the morning as it was at high noon. Sometimes they were working late hours like himself. Sometimes they couldn't sleep and were out for a walk. Sometimes they just felt suddenly hungry and needed a bite to eat. Whatever their reasons, they flooded the sidewalks, making sure that they were at least alone or tired with other lonely tired people.

Tonight, it was raining, a steady downpour that hadn't stopped since four that afternoon. Owens hadn't stepped out of his car all night, but the rumbling emptiness in his stomach was getting difficult to ignore. He parked on the curb beside "Puali's Diner," a popular spot for almost every cop in the city. Pauli was a GCPD veteran and offered a 50% discount to any on-duty cops. The red neon light of the sign bounced of the slick asphalt as Owens pulled his jacket over his head and half-skipped, half-jogged through the rotating glass door into the warm glow of the old-style diner. The booths were covered in red leather that hadn't be replaced in thirty years. The counter was lined with shiny stools and the waitresses wore uniforms that looked straight out of "Cheers".

"What'll be your poison today, officer?" Carol, the waitress behind the counter, asked sweetly as Owens took a stool. She was young, but just the right kind of young, Owens thought. The kind of young that's matured enough to be responsible, but not enough to where the refreshing smile was wiped off her face. The image he always got from her was very "Little House on the Prairie" and it always made him happy to think of it.

"I'll have the usual, Carol," he replied, patting his pudgy belly. "I'm gettin' there. Lost three pounds."

Carol smiled. "Alright! Good for you. Chicken salad with no dressing," she wrote down.

"Wait." He caught her just as she was walking away. "Waffles," he amended quietly, almost like he'd get instantly fatter if somebody heard him. "With a side of bacon. Don't tell my wife."

Carol grinned, writing down the new order. "No problem, Officer." She winked at him before turning to yell the order into the kitchen, clipping the meal note to the old-fashioned spinner between the counter and the kitchens. Owens sighed, thinking about his meal. He hadn't had anything so unhealthy in months and it was driving him made how much he missed the taste of fried food.

"Uh, excuse me." Owens spin in his stool and found a civilian behind him.

"Sorry to interrupt your dinner Officer... Owens," he said, looking at Owens name tag. "But there's a guy smokin' over there, in the corner booth." Owens glanced over to where the man had pointed and saw a cloud of smoke drifting up from the corner-most booth, right next to the front windows. He sighed warily; he'd been a smoker himself before all public areas had been rendered non-smoking zones. He missed the days where you could enjoy a coffee and cigarette in a comfy booth, your newspaper spread out on the table while you waited for your eggs.

"Alright," he grunted, getting to his feet. The civilian thanked him and went back to his table, which wasn't anywhere near the corner booth. What a nosey asshole.

Owens dragged himself over to the corner booth. The customer had his back to him, a hood pulled over his head.

"Excuse me, sir." Owens tapped the man on the shoulder. "There's no smoking in here." Owens leaned in to see over the man's shoulder. He held a glass pipe in his hands.

"And you're definitely not supposed to be smoking that." Owens grabbed the man's shoulder, reaching for his handcuffs. The man leapt at him, snarling and screaming. He swung with the pipe and Owens felt a sharp pain on his cheek as the glass broke against his skin. He felt floaty as whatever was in the pipe was sucked into his mouth and nose. It was hot and stung his throat and nostrils. He shook his head, but it did nothing to clear his vision. It was blurry and he felt his heartbeat speed up painfully. He started sweating and his breathing became shallow. What the hell was in that pipe?

He steadied himself against a table, trying desperately to get control of his breathing.

"Officer?" said a voice. "Officer, are you ok?" Owens looked up to see who'd spoken and shrieked. The diner was crawling with zombies. They had bald heads, empty sockets and gnarled, sharp teeth. He backed away, slamming against the wall as he fumbled for the pistol at his hip. The zombies were hovering around him, staring at him without eyes.

Suddenly, one of the zombies started screaming. It was a horrible sound, high and grating. It sounded like a dying cat. The zombie grabbed the one beside it, beating at its face. Owens finally loosed the pistol from its holster, holding it shakily in front of him. He was almost too afraid to fire. Soon, every zombie in the diner was attacking each other, biting, scratching and beating at one another.

How is this possible? Owens thought through the cloud of panic. What are these things? Where did they come from? He had forgotten about the man he was sent to reprimand, the one he had been about to arrest. All he could focus on now were the monsters and the gun in his shaking hands.

The zombie in front of him caught sight of him, screamed, and ran towards him, arms and legs flailing. Owens finally pulled the trigger and the monster fell to the ground, a chunk of its head blown clean off. The others heard the noise and charged him. Owens pulled on the trigger and didn't let go, firing round after round into the mob of monsters running him down. One by one they fell until the gun made a sickening click. Owens refused to believe that he was dead and pulled the trigger again. Click, click, click, said the gun.

The monsters were on him, screaming and frothing at the mouth. One knocked him to the ground and started beating him in the face. One clawed at his legs. Another kicked at his gut. He covered his face, whimpering, willing for himself to be dreaming. He'll wake up at noon, like he always does. He'll say hello to his wife and he'll wait for the kids to come back to school at four.

But he didn't wake up. Instead, the zombie pulled his arms away from his face. It scratched and punched him. It bent down to bit his nose, breaking the skin and sending blood gushing over Owens' mouth. The monster pulled back and slammed its head against Owens' skull. His world went black and he didn't wake up.

Jim Gordon was having such a normal day until he suddenly wasn't. He woke up at 6am to go to the precinct. He kissed his wife goodbye. He listened to the news in the car on the way home. Today, Harvey Dent was being released from Arkham, apparently cured. He'd even repaired his damaged coin as a sign that he'd been reformed. Gordon wanted to believe that, but he wasn't sure. Maybe it was the years spent fighting against him as Two-Face, but Gordon just couldn't believe that somebody like Dent could be fixed. It was a depressing thought, but you needed to think suspiciously when you were a Gotham City cop.

Gordon parked in his same spot at the precinct and said hello to the same people as he walked to his office. Everything was running like clockwork, predictable and smooth. That is, until Aaron Cash came into his office holding a file.

There wasn't anything about the file that should've alarmed Gordon. It was a simple manila file folder, like the millions of others that filled every drawer in the GCPD. He couldn't have known that the contents would've made him nauseous.

"Commissioner," Cash greeted as he walked in. Gordon nodded in return, stuffing tobacco into his favorite pipe.

"We've got a weird one here," Cash continued, offering him the file. Gordon took a few seconds to puff on his pipe before he finally took it.

"It'd better be weird," he said, opening the file. "If you're bringing it straight to my office." The report seemed simple enough; a few eyebrow raises from the witness testimony, but standard case of assault. (Good Lord, he thought. When does a case of assault become standard?) He stopped when he got to the part about Officer Owens. Gordon had met Owens and he couldn't imagine him whipping his gun out on a room full of civilians.

"Where's Owens?" he asked. Cash grimaced.

"Dead. You'd better take a look at the photos, sir."

Gordon flipped the pages until he got to his first photo. His pipe nearly fell out of his mouth. What he saw couldn't have been real. It was Officer Owens, but Gordon could only tell because the deceased was in an officer's uniform. The face was bashed in, bruised and bloody to the point where it wasn't even recognizable. Gordon didn't want to go to the other photos, but he made himself turn the page anyway. Sweet God in heaven...

The bodies had been completely dismantled; bitten, scratched, bashed. It was insanity. He hadn't seen anything like this for...

"I'll keep the file, Cash," he mumbled, transfixed by the brutality in the photographs.

"Actually, sir, I need to take that back to the boys in autopsy so they can-"

"I said I'll hold onto it, Cash," Gordon said more clearly. He looked Cash in the eye, willing for the man to remember the code they hadn't used in almost five years. Cash's eyes widened in recognition.

"Oh, right. Yessir." He left, his face filled with all of the astonishment and apprehension that Gordon felt.

Gordon took all the pictures out of the folder and spread them out on his desk. He had always done this, back in the old days, to remind him on the days he felt like giving up why he was a cop. To prevent these deaths. To lock away the crazies who had done it. Thirteen dead civilians. One dead officer.

Gordon took a long pull on his pipe and opened a cabinet that hadn't been opened in almost five years. In it was a special phone. The phone was covered in dust and some cobwebs. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone.