Chapter One
Prologue

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize your neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell

Vincent Price from Michael Jackson's "Thriller"

When Perlmutter stuck the needle into Kyle Jannings arm to get a fluid sample, and he promptly sat up and leaped to his feet everybody, Beckett included, freaked out.

"He's undead!" Castle shrieked.

"Whoa!" Kate muttered, trying not to lose focus. At a loss for what else to do, she drew her gun and chased after Jannings as he found his footing and ran for the door, Kate trailing right behind, gun in hand.

"Castle, call for backup!" she yelled as she rounded the corner.

Rick turned to the phone on the wall, still intrigued by what just happened, and freaked out all the same as he looked back at Perlmutter, still staring blankly at the scratches on his arm and the broken syringe in his hand.

"How – how do I -?" he said to the man.

"Nine...Castle...dial nine." he said, rooting through drawers to find something to clean and dress his wound.

Rick dialed the number for the outside line, but couldn't help but look back to quip. "Is there a police code for a zombie on the loose?"

Perlmutter rolled his eyes sarcastically and ignored him. Kate came back in a few minutes later, holstering her gun - still visibly creeped out - as she approached Rick.

"He was too far ahead, and too fast. He got away from me." she stated.

In the days and weeks that followed, while Beckett ran afoul of Cole Maddox, was suspended and her relationship with Castle grew closer, Charlie Coleman was transferred to New York Presbyterian to be treated for his bite wound from Kyle Jannings. Shortly after his arrival, he began to turn... just like he'd feared. He bit another patient and that person turned, who in turn bit an orderly who then went home, turned and infected first his wife and then their children. Sydney Perlmutter succumbed as well, infecting half of the staff at OCME.

The disease worked its way through Washington Heights and then all of Manhattan like wildfire. The CDC and FEMA stepped in and placed full quarantine procedures into effect, securing the tunnels and closing the bridges and eventually demolishing them, but it did little to stem the tide of the disease. Soon the infected outnumbered then overwhelmed every attempt at containment.

Daylight was the only time that seemed to bring a halt to the spread of the infection. The disease seemed to have left its victims with an extreme sensitivity to light, who subsequently took to prowling the sewers and subway tunnels during the daylight hours. Within months, the pandemic had spread worldwide.

Everyone except for Ryan had secretly, and not-so-secretly scoffed at Rick for being prepared for a zombie apocalypse during the Jannings case. Only Alexis had been privy to the extent of his preparations...dating back to when he'd all but bought the building they lived in on Broome Street. (And even she thought he had just been role-playing with her during her zombie movie phase at age twelve for most of it)

The loft was far enough away from any adjacent buildings that jumping from one rooftop to another was virtually impossible. Underground parking with a full gate instead of just a drop bar. Only one set of fire escape ladders...all in the back of the building, the bottom two were easily cut away. Only two, easily barricaded entry points but several means of clandestine egress.

Nobody was laughing now.

Rick's relationship with Kate had grown over the months since the outbreak, the fortification of the building and moving their families into the upper three floors. There had been plenty of room for everyone since the rest of the building's occupants had either evacuated during the mass panic early in the epidemic, were dead or among the infected.

Ryan and Jenny, Lanie and Esposito. Even Martha and Jim had spaces to call their own. The first floor had been cleared and fortified, the front door and every window barricaded solidly. Lanie had set up a lab to study the disease in the now empty doorman's office with isolation labs in the first floor apartments. They had raided two abandoned hospitals and OCME to cobble together what she'd needed.

Her research had received a major boost when one day, Kyle Jannings showed up at their door. He was somehow immune, though a carrier of the disease. They had made him as comfortable as they could in one of the three isolation rooms they'd set up. He understood why he had to be kept isolated, but that didn't make it any easier on him.

Kate did her best to keep Rick occupied, both in their day-to-day and in the bedroom, but Rick had found little to be happy about since Alexis had been bitten.

Watching his only child turn in the isolation cell next to Jannings' had twisted him up in ways that Kate could not possibly imagine. Alexis had beaten her hands and face bloody trying to get out, then suddenly...all of the fight went out of her.

The mindless, zombie-walking phase lasted only a few days, but not her increasing urge to escape confinement. It had taken all of Kate's powers of persuasion to convince Rick that the creature now in that cell was not his little girl anymore and not to release her. That she still posed a danger. They kept her secured to her bed so she could not injure herself again, but as comfortable as circumstances permitted.

Before she had turned, Alexis had insisted upon it... she had asked to speak to Kate alone and made the detective swear on her mother's grave to keep Castle from letting her out. It was her last wish before she turned, so that Lanie could observe her and track the progression of the disease as it ravaged her. To take blood and tissue samples at each stage in the hopes that a cure could be found. Lanie swore to Rick that if a cure could be synthesized, Alexis would be the first to get it.

Rick was never quite the same after that though, trapped between pride in his daughter for having been so brave, horrified at what she'd become, and guilt ridden that he hadn't been able to protect her in the first place.

It was one of a select number of things that he and Kate never spoke about.

Instead, they threw themselves into the safety of their small band. Summer was half over, even if it was possible to leave the city, there was nowhere they could go that was as well fortified as the loft now was that could be provisioned fully before winter hit and it would be dark for longer and longer, leaving them vulnerable to the infected.

They would have to hold out...and hope they could make contact with someone on the outside who could offer safe refuge. Lanie's research might just be their only bargaining chip when that day came.

It was also Alexis' only hope.

**Author's note** Worry not faithful readers, this story is merely a brief bit of fun for CFPromoter's Castle Halloween Bash and will likely only be a couple chapters, but no more than five if I'm on a roll. I have a new chapter of "Richard Rodgers, Cyborg" in the works as well and should have it up in the next day or so.

Enjoy.