Summary:
Our first scene is Officer Rick Grimes and his partner, Shane Walsh, in a standoff with a man who has escaped from prison. Rick tells Shane to cover him while he flanks the fugitive. The escaped con, however, manages to shoot Shane’s gun out of his hand, and then he shoots Rick.
We then see Rick in a hospital bed waking up. He tries to get up but falls on the floor. He yells for a nurse, no response. After waiting for several minutes, he gets up on his own and gets dressed. He explores the hospital, but finds it deserted. After riding in an elevator to another floor, he is shocked when the door opens and a corpse falls into the elevator. Once again, he yells for help, but gets no response. He discovers the cafeteria door blocked with a board and investigates. When he opens it, he finds the room is full of zombies. He is attacked, but is able to get away unscratched after falling down the stairs. He tries to find some means of transportation but only finds a bicycle which has a half-eaten zombie stuck to it.. After stumbling back in disgust Rick grabs the bicycle and pushes it down the road. Distraught from the situation, he falls to his knees and briefly cries before getting up and riding the rest of the way. When he gets to his house he finds it ransacked and deserted. When he leaves, he is hit over the head with a shovel by Duane Jones, and knocked out. Duane’s father, Morgan, comes running up and scolds the young boy, telling him that Rick is alive and not a zombie.
Rick wakes up in the Jones’ residence and, and is invited to have dinner with Morgan and his son. Rick is confused and starts to panic. Morgan manages to calm him down and is surprised when he learns that Rick knows nothing about the apocalypse. Rick tells him how he was shot, and put into a coma, and has no idea what is going on. Morgan tells Rick that not much is known about what caused the outbreak, but that the media told everyone to move to large cities so that everyone could be protected. Morgan chose to take his chances in a small town, and says that since the power has gone out he knows nothing else. Rick mentions that his wife, Lori, hadsfamily in Atlanta and that she may have gone there with their son, Carl.
After talking, Rick, Morgan, and Duane go to the police station where Rick works. Morgan cautiously asks Rick if he minds him and his son taking residence at his neighbor’s house, but Rick tells him not to worry about it. Rick thanks Morgan for driving him to the station, and takes him to the armory. He leaves him to choose weapons while Rick goes to change into a police uniform. Rick stocks himself with guns and a car. He also gives Morgan a car. Morgan thanks Rick before they are interrupted by a zombie pushing up against a chain-link fence. Rick wants to shoot it, but Morgan stops him, since the zombie can’t get them and tells him he might want to save that bullet for later. Morgan and Duane plan to stay in the small town, so two men wish each other well and Rick tells him he will come back later for the two. Before Rick leaves for Atlanta, he walks over to the bicycle zombie and tearfully shoots her in the head.
Discussion / Thoughts:
The book starts out with something so normal and boring as a police standoff. We see them on the news all the time nowadays. Rick gets shot and while he is in a coma for I’ll guess a few weeks to a month, a zombie apocalypse takes place. No one knows what has caused it or how to cure it. Rick wakes up alone in the hospital. Except for the zombies. He’s the only one alive, the only one still human. Finding his first zombie when he exits the elevator is quite the shock to him, understandably. He manages to make his way out of the hospital and still finds no one. The whole area is abandoned and desolate. He could be the last living person in the area. Outside he finds a zombie in bad shape and takes the bike next to it. He goes to his house to find his wife and child, the instinct of a father and husband. They are not there though. The whole town is abandoned. He almost winds up in another coma after getting hit in the head with a shovel. After waking up again, he meets Morgan and his son. Morgan explains what the current situation is with the zombie apocalypse. Rick is completely floored, I would be too. It’s not every day you survive a horrific shooting to wake up to the world as you knew it being gone forever. It’s now a world of zombies, people that used to be human, died and reanimated again but as mindless zombies. Rick trusts his instincts and takes them all to the police station. He arms himself and Morgan before he heads off on his quest to find his wife and child.
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