“You fucked up.”<br/><br/>“Excuse me?”<br/><br/>“You fucked up. My drink. You put sweet vermouth in my martini, not dry.”<br/><br/>The bartender scoffed. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years, lady, I know how to make a-" His patronizing smile melted away when she flashed the badge inside her leather jacket like a sorority girl at Mardi Gras.<br/><br/>“Care to keep arguing? Actually, you win this round, Sport. Your gin tastes like it was made in a bathtub. Like, eighty years ago. You can keep it,” she said, pulling a crumpled twenty out of her jeans pocket and flicking it across the bar at him with two fingers. Standing now, she turned on a well-worn heel and made for the exit.<br/><br/>God.<br/><br/>Daylight. How was it daylight? A look at her watch told her it was almost six in the morning. She’d finished her shift at 3 AM, and headed to the less offensive of two all-night bars in town to avoid going home to the unmade, empty bed. Ever since they’d broken up and he’d moved out, she’d found any and every excuse not to be there.<br/><br/>Rubbing her tired face with her hands, she then reached up and raked them through her choppy red hair. That had been the first thing to go after Trevor had left. He’d loved her longer hair.<br/><br/>Breathing in the stench from the dirty sidewalk was beginning to be a bit much. Misty stepped off the curb and jay walked to the unmarked Crown Vic on the other side of the street. She got in, then lit a Marlboro Ultra Light.<br/><br/>Trev hated cigarettes, too.<br/><br/>Gunning the engine, she veered out into nonexistent traffic and was headed towards home when the radio crackled to life.<br/><br/>“Hey Mist, you want another one?”<br/><br/>Theresa on dispatch. She knew Misty always wanted another one. Whatever kept her from going home and losing her shit.<br/><br/>“Yeah, whatcha got?”<br/><br/>“Another attack. Probably just bath salts again. You'd think people would know better by now,” she said, a nervous chuckle following her statement.<br/><br/>“Yeah. You’d think,” Misty answered, but both women knew what the other was really thinking. They were too smart to say it over the airwaves, and would never be caught throwing around the Z word anyway, but it was happening. Attacks all over the city that could no longer be chalked up to shady drugs or loose psychiatric patients.<br/><br/>The unthinkable was happening. People were eating each other.