Inside the main police department of (SC12), the day had started extremely tense. Several officers had not shown up for work due to them or someone in their family being sick, and all the active officers were unable to leave since there were no replacements for their positions. The worst part was that among the many sick police officers was the police captain himself, which made everything even more difficult.
Fabian, who was a Detective and Sergeant, quickly took control of the station and requested support from the other smaller stations to make up for the lack of manpower at the main headquarters, only to be frustrated again.
"DAMN"
Fabian hung up the phone in anger and shouted. The officer with him took a step back in fright, before asking what had happened.
"Two police stations aren't even answering my calls, and the others are having the same problems as us, the lack of men… Call the CDC and find out what's going on. If this is a serious epidemic, we could have great chaos in the city with so few police officers on duty."
"I'll do it right away, Sir!"
As soon as the police officer left, a lady with glasses entered the room. "Sergeant Fabian, we have a serious problem…"
"What happened this time?"
"They called from the hospital, they are full of sick patients and without beds, some fights have already started between the patients there, the two police officers who were supposed to work at the hospital didn't show up this morning… And the two on the night shift are asking for replacements to be sent quickly and even more men if possible."
"Send three of our men, I'll ask for more men from the rocket launch base—"
"That's the problem, they called for support too, at least 1/3 of the soldiers at the base are sick… You know how important the event in two days is, they're afraid someone might cause trouble at the base…"
"We won't be able to answer their call, but we can't receive help either. I know! We'll ask the retired police officers for support—"
"Sergeant, emergency call, there was a bomb threat at the mayor's house!"
"SHIT! WHAT'S GOING ON IN THIS CITY TODAY?"
Being interrupted again, this time by a young police officer, Sergeant Fabian stood up in a hurry with great anger, taking all the remaining police officers from the police station to respond to the bomb threat. As he left the police station, he passed by a young firefighter, who was entering the police station, his detective instincts made him notice all his features automatically; He was 1.87m tall, white, with brown hair and eyes. For a moment, Fabian was curious about his presence there, but decided to ignore it, since he had many other problems to deal with...
***
There was only 1 hour left for the apocalypse to begin, and while Rick was easily entering and leaving the Police Station after making a false report about a threat at the Mayor's house.
Joe, his best friend, was not having an easy day either. On his first day as an Official Firefighter, the Firefighters were asked to respond to several cases of attacks by domestic animals and even a fire, which was something rare in this city, was reported. To make matters worse, many Firefighters did not show up for work today, and now, Joe had gone to answer a call alone with a young woman who was also a rookie.
Arriving at the scene, Joe realized that the situation was much worse than expected. A large dog had attacked at least 6 people before being killed by the victims. The dead dog had red eyes, and its saliva was black. Most of the injured were unconscious, with only two still awake. Joe and the girl named Vanessa quickly gave first aid to the victims, but were surprised to find that 4 of them were already dead. The last two were also showing unstable vital signs.
"Why hasn't the ambulance arrived yet? These two won't last long…" Joe said worriedly.
"How could a domestic dog kill 4 adults? This has never been recorded before!" Vanessa replied, even more incredulous.
Suddenly, both of their cell phones vibrated at the same time, and they both checked the message:
"It's Rick! He told us to find a safe place and not let the sick animals and people bite us, they're all sick and the bite will be lethal!" Vanessa said, moving away from the corpses…
"Yes, he said the same thing to me…" Joe lied as he did the same as Vanessa and slowly moved away from the bodies.
Joe had already received this message about the sick this morning when he went to work, and his friend didn't show up… The message that Rick had sent now was for him to go to his apartment in the next 30 minutes and wait for him safely. he would explain everything that was happening later.
Fifteen minutes later, without the ambulance ever arriving, the last two survivors died. The clear sky began to darken with clouds in all regions as far as he could see, but the darkness of the clouds soon began to change, taking on a frightening red hue… Joe felt a chill down his back at the unusual phenomenon and turned his eyes to the 6 corpses, when he heard one of them groan and start to get up, still with the cloth over it.
Vanessa, who had also received Rick's message, moved even further away, hiding behind her giant colleague. As soon as the corpse stood up completely, the cloth fell away, revealing a men whith disfigured face, with empty, pale white eyes and black saliva similar to the dog that attacked them.
"AAARGH"
After a frightening growl, the undead creature ran towards Joe. The giant acted quickly, giving him a strong kick in the chest, making him fall backwards. He turned around, grabbing Vanessa's hand and running with her to the fire truck. Starting the vehicle, he began to drive at high speed through the city in the direction of Rick's house.
He regretted ignoring his friend's warnings, as he saw the chaos forming everywhere, he swallowed hard when he saw people biting each other and several domestic animals doing the same thing they had done to the last 6 victims he tried to help.
At that moment, the sky that had slowly begun to turn red finally reached a bloody crimson color, bringing terror to all who could observe the strange phenomenon, as if a cataclysmic signal had been given, all the technologies in the city stopped working, including all the electric vehicles. The fire truck that Joe was driving was no exception, completely shutting down and leaving him and Vanessa in the middle of the city, still far from Rick's house and surrounded by infected...