Dead of Night

Homer Gibbon, a serial killer, is executed, and his body is taken to a funeral home in Stebbins County, a rural part of Pennsylvania. Death does not hold him. A prison doctor injected him with Lucifer 113, a Cold War experiment brought back into use, and the formula keeps him awake and hungry.

His condition spreads to others. As the infection moves through the county, a hurricane closes in, and a small group of locals is left to survive a night of mass death. Among them are police officers JT Hammond and Dez Fox and a reporter, Billy Trout.

Trout looks into Gibbon's past and traces the formula to the scientist who made it. He also finds the grudge that led to its release, which gives the outbreak a human cause as well as a body count.

This is a zombie novel with graphic violence and a quick pace, written openly as a homage to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It opens the Dead of Night series, and Fall of Night follows it.

The storm leaves no way out of the county, so Hammond, Fox and Trout have to hold on until morning with the dead closing in.