Living Dead: The novel by Dr. Charles Benjamin Hensley

**Somewhere in Mainland China - 2004**

The excavation site sat under an oppressive sky, surrounded by towering cliffs that bore witness to a history few dared to recount. Dr. Jonathan Hayes, an American professor of archaeology, had traveled far, driven by whispers of an ancient mystery buried beneath layers of time. Accompanying him were his sharp-minded associates, Rebecca, a keen-eyed Briton with a knack for piecing together puzzles, and Li, a Chinese-American researcher whose heritage tied him inherently to the soil they excavated.

As they unearthed the sealed entrance to a cave, the atmosphere grew thick with unspoken dread. The Chinese workers, sensing an underlying menace, refused to tamper with the past. Driven by curiosity and ambition, Jonathan and his team succumbed to the allure of the unknown and breached the entrance themselves.

Inside, the light of the flashlight danced eerily across the disquieting scene of decapitated skeletons—silent sentinels from a forgotten plague, dressed in remnants of their mortal toil, some still clad in the uniforms of healers. The grim scene was disrupted only by a solitary WHO box marked "SARS unit," an echo from a time not so distant.

The male associate, Li, pocketed a small token—a skeletal hand—oblivious to the calamity it heralded. In the shadows of ignorance, a corpse stirred. The creature, resumed from a macabre interlude between life and death, laid claim to Rebecca, setting in motion a dance of death that culminated in a desperate struggle for survival against the stirring dead.

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**Halloween - Cerritos, California - Present Day**

In the suburban confines of Cerritos, California, Halloween night unfurled with an air of innocence and playful fear. The Peterson family, content in their urban sanctuary, opted for thrills at Knott's Scary Farm over traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating, absorbing themselves in an illusion of safety.

Their daughter's friend, Emily, had accompanied them. Unknown to them, Emily carried secrets of her father’s troubled 

past—a finger bone of unsettling origin tucked away as a perverted talisman.

Brought to life amid screams and laughter of the theme park, her careless act of dropping the bone unleashed pandemonium. What was once confined to tales of the past became the present, and the echoes of the desecrated cave reverberated in decaying flesh hunting for blood.