Book excerpt: Book 1 of Shadow Trilogy For Sheriff Cunningham, the lock down is a nightmare. The Pandemic has cast a darkness over his life, his job and the village he holds dear. One morning he enters the house of Nicholas Murphy, whose daughter allegedly turned fanatic, shot her mother and brutally assaulted her father before dying. The Mayor wants to bury this case deep, but the violent behavior and unnatural death of the daughter bothers Cunningham and he seeks help from Medical Examiner Dr. William Sterling. But this is no ordinary murder, and leads to traces of a neurological contagion that changes the brain and breeds paranoia and fear. To prevent violence, Cunningham urges the villagers to hand over their firearms. His strategy backfires, because they discover one significant factor far too late. And before his eyes, the entire village turns into a mob of mindless zombies marching towards the city of New York.