by J. Okuly
Kitty raised an eyebrow. “My point exactly. Game, set, AND match.”
I had a thought as we sat there watching the world go crazy. “What are the odds that all four of us are immune to what's happening out there?”
Kitty frowned. “I'd say the odds are astronomical.”
“What do you think we have in common that makes us unaffected?”
“What do we have in common?” She ticked off the list on her fingers. “First of all, we're college students, roommates, female, childhood friends. We're the same age but we have different majors, different tastes in men, clothes, hobbies, and colloquial expressions. Does that about cover it?”
“Yep.” Thinking about it hurt my head because I could find no rhyme or reason for what was happening. I tried 911 again, then my mom's number, then the internet. Same old, same old ...
“I hope our families are okay,” said Bonnie. “I know my auntie is as nervous as a fly in a glue pot what with everything that's happening.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. “Et Tu Brute? Must we always talk like we're in the road company of Steel Magnolias?”
I set my phone on the dashboard. “I still can't get through to anyone,”
“It's a four hour drive to Austin,” said Kitty. “A full tank of gas would help.”
I nodded. “I filled it up this morning.”
“What do you think we'll find in Austin?” said Rebecca.
“I'm more concerned about what we'll find on the drive to Austin,” said Kitty. “I hope the highways aren't clogged with people or it's going to be a very long trip.”
“Highway to Hell,” agreed Bonnie.
I shivered.
“We should stay here,” said Rebecca.
I considered this. “We need to take a vote.”
“At least we know what we have in common,” said Bonnie. “Is everyone who is uninfected the same as us?”
“Doesn't work,” said Rebecca. “What about the two guys who are immune? What about all the people on the streets? They are different ages, different ethnicity, different everything.”
No one had an answer.
A moment later Swagger jumped into the car. “It's a mad house in there,” he declared.
“No worse than anywhere else.” Mark held a bag of groceries and a backpack. “I'm licensed to carry, plus I've got tasers and batons in case we need them.”
Bonnie spoke with the shrill tone of a terrified child. “You think we'll need all that stuff?”
I resisted the urge to cover my ears Sometimes her ear-piercing voice made me want to slap her to sleep and then slap her for sleeping.
Mark nodded. “The way I see it, this is the nexus of craziness and preparation is key to survival.
“We were talking about the drive to Austin,” I said. “We're all nervous about it.”
“One disaster at a time,” he said.
I turned the SUV out of the parking lot and headed toward I-35 South. When we reached the freeway, everyone in town seemed to have the same idea. Traffic was so thick you couldn't stir it with a stick. The on-ramp led nowhere except straight into a parking lot where no one was moving.
“I'm already car sick,” said Bonnie. “Sick, sick, sick.”
With that she slid the window down and threw up. And kept throwing up.
“Gross,” said Swagger. “I feel the blow-back on my face.”
“As crowded as it is in here, we're all blow backing on each other,” said Kitty.
“I have some Imodium in my pack if you need it,” said Mark.
“Isn't Imodium for diarrhea?” I added to myself, “Dr. Mark.”
“I meant Pepto Bismol,” he said.
“I could use some,” said Bonnie.
He searched his pack. “I don't have any,” he admitted. “But I thought I had some.”
“What?” Bonnie said in confusion and then vomited again.
“Bollucks!” exploded Swagger. “Pepto Bismol, Tums, Imodium, who gives a crap! Find something so she'll stop puking all over us.”
Rebecca frowned. “She can't help being sick. I'm not that peachy myself.”
“Swagger, why don't you shut your pie hole or I'll shut it for you,” Mark finally dug out a package of Tums and handed it to Bonnie. “Better yet, why don't you head over yonder to the edge of nothing.”
“Are you talking to me? Do I know you mate?” Swagger twirled his nose ring as he glared at Mark.
Mark eyed the skinny, foul-mouthed Englishman. “You're fixing to know me and not in a good way.”
“Oh please, will you both shut up!” said Kitty. “Now is not the time for a pissing contest. Put your testosterone back in the bottle.”
“What is happening to our manners?” said Rebecca. “Why are we turning on each other?”
“Now that she's stopped chundering, let's blow,” said Swagger. “Being stuck in this traffic is making me want to hurl as well. Open the window.”
“What does chundering mean?” I asked.
“It means let's get off at the next exit,” said Kitty. “I feel the need to chunder myself. There are so many people in this car and not enough oxygen. And your dog is breathing down my neck and her breath is not the freshest I've ever smelled.”
“Except we're stuck here,” I said.
And we were. Stuck. No one was moving. I tried the radio. Nothing but static. I finally found a station which smacked of religion.
“Sinners of the world repent!” the preacher yelled at us. “Your sins have done this to us. The end is nigh.”
“What does nigh mean?” said Swagger.
“Near,” said Mark.
“No, I meant what does nigh mean?”
“It means shut up,” said Kitty. “And turn that crap off.”
Chapter 2
A few hours earlier … How it all started
I sat in my Tuesday night art class when people began to change. At first, the infected did not attack anyone. At first we saw people changing, but we didn't use the word Zombie or Chomper as the uninfected called them. I was painting a still life of apples when the girl sitting next to me stood up. She began walking around the room gnashing her teeth. Others joined her. At first I looked around for the hidden camera. I suspected this might be a new reality show which filmed reactions to bizarre behavior. Then other students started running around the room smacking their lips together. They ground their teeth, opened their mouths, and chomped down as if they were mountain lions devouring a particularly large piece of meat. It was not a pretty sight no matter how you sliced it.
Those people not chomping their mouths or smacking their lips together looked at each other. Somehow we knew what was happening. We were a college-aged generation of millennials raised on scary movies and movies which poked fun of other scary movies. As many zombie movies as I had watched in my lifetime assured me there was something disturbing happening to these people. As a nursing student, my first thought was airborne pathogen. It was spreading around the campus and somehow a few of us were immune. I stuck with that idea.
The girl across the room, the one with the golden halo of hair, nodded at me. She was as terrified as I was but she didn't want to walk out of the classroom alone. I understood what her eyes were telling me so I stood up and she did the same. I grabbed my backpack and no one tried to stop us. Our instructor, bald Mr. Bell, was gnashing his teeth and smacking his lips like a deranged version of Mr. Clean. He took no notice of anything around him. For this I was as happy as a toddler gallivanting around the Christmas tree.
At first I thought I was dreaming as we hurried through the art building. I pinched myself hard on the forearm to make sure. It hurt … a lot. This was not a dream.
The blond girl and I race-walked through the darkened campus. My immediate goal was to reach my car and get the heck out of this place. The infected were everywhere doing that disgusting chomping thing with their mouths. Then a security guard pulled up next to us in his little golf cart.
“Need a ride to your cars
, ladies?” he asked.
I nodded and jumped on. The blonde girl said her vehicle was close by so she declined the offer.
“Good luck,” I called after her. She didn't look back.
The security guard smiled at me. He started to hum as we drove through the parking lot. This made me wonder if I had made a mistake accepting a ride from him. He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. I got ready to jump off if he didn't stop smiling like a goat in a briar patch while humming off-key. He weaved the cart around people who had gone insane, and then started to whistle a tuneless melody. As if the humming wasn't bad enough, the whistling was worse. I sat on the edge of my seat which would give me easier jumping access.
We crossed the small bridge which connected the fine arts complex to the main parking lot. I looked down at the dry broooke swathed in shadows and it appeared ominous under the muted, overhead lights. Students stood in the creek bed and glared up at us as we crossed over them, all the while smacking and chomping. What in the world was wrong with these people?
As I continued to stare, a guy threw back his head and started to howl. The full moon was humongous and bloated. His behavior reminded me of every werewolf movie I had watched on Netflix. Another guy joined in the howl. Then another. Soon the area below us was a wolfman symphony.
The security guard laughed. “What's going on tonight? Is this some kind of fraternity prank?”
Then I remembered it was Rush Week. Sorority and fraternity hazings. All that stupid behavior which made some people happier than a tornado in a trailer park.
“No.” I shook my head. “This is something different. Don't you feel it? Something is making them ...”
Then the golf cart swerved to avoid hitting a crowd of people. We ran off the sidewalk and into the trimmed, manicured lawn.
“Hey, watch where you're going!” he yelled at the group. Then he spoke into his hand-held radio. He listened for a response but none came. He tried again.
“I can't reach anyone,” he said. “This is definitely not normal.”
“There's my car.” I jumped from the cart when it slowed and ran toward my SUV, yanking my keys from my pocket.
“Thank you,” I called over my shoulder.
I threw my backpack into the front seat. Then I drove away from the madness which swirled around me in every direction.
The parking lot teamed with unaffected people running for their cars. As I exited the campus, I saw this phenomenon was not confined to the grounds of the university.
My small college town of Carnival, Texas had erupted into chaos. People ran down the main street chomping, smacking, and howling at the moon. Some were doing all three at the same time. Everywhere there was movement. It was as if all the residents on Frederick Street developed severe ADHD and no one could stand still for a second.
What was I thinking? I fished my cell phone out of my backpack and dialed 911. All circuits were busy. I tried my mom in Austin. All circuits were busy. How far-reaching was this insanity?
I looked around with unease. If zombie movies had taught me anything at all, it was that apocalyptic situations always escalated from bad to worse to nightmare. Of course, this was the real world and not a movie, and these people were not the walking dead. They were gnashing and chomping their teeth but they hadn't actually attacked anyone. Yet.
After a harrowing drive, I pulled into my garage. I shared a house with three childhood friends who were students at the U. I ran into the kitchen and found Nova, my darling dog, agitated and barking at me.
“Come on girl, go potty. We're getting out of here.” I cracked the back door and let her run into our fenced-in backyard to do her business.
“Kitty, Rebecca, Bonnie!” I yelled. “Where is everyone? My roommates didn't answer so I checked the entire house. No one home. Could they be studying at the library or out on a date? Or running the streets howling at the moon?
I swallowed and my throat felt as if it was being scraped with sandpaper. I drank some water but it didn't help. Was I getting sick? Was I changing into one of those crazies? No, I wouldn't go there!
Then I heard howling outside the window. Nova joined in.
“Nova, get back in here!” I yelled at her from the door.
She stopped in mid-howl and ran back inside the house. My baby was a black Dobie with a sleek coat and long, skinny legs. She was also obedient and intelligent and I loved her more than an armadillo loves ice cream.
“Come on girl.” I slammed and locked the back door. “We need to pack our stuff.”
Five minutes later I hefted my suitcase and headed for the garage. I collected all the bottled water we had in the house and as much non-perishable food as I could haul in my SUV. I threw in my sleeping bag, Nova's food and water dishes, dog food, and bedding.
As I turned the ignition on the car, I made a plan. Step one, drive around and find my roommates if at all possible. Step two, get out of town and head for Austin where my mom and my brother lived. If an independent 20-year-old woman ever needed her family, this was the time.
Chapter 3
“This is a parking lot,” I said after we were stuck on the freeway for fifteen minutes. “And we're off like a herd of turtles. There's an off-ramp in another mile and I say we get off here and try a different way out of town.”
“Amen to that,” said Kitty. “That's what I've been saying all along.”
Fifteen minutes later, we made it to the off-ramp and followed all the other people who had the exact same idea.
“Okay, we can follow Jefferson Boulevard out of town,” I said.
Jefferson was worse than the freeway.
I lay my head on the steering wheel. “What now?”
“May I make a suggestion?” said Rebecca in her Downton Abbey tone of voice. “Everyone is panicking and the roads are parking lots. What if we wait until tomorrow? The roads will flow smoother by then.”
That sounded like a plan to me.
“We should stay together,” said Mark. “We can set up a perimeter at my apartment and take turns standing watch.”
“Good idea, bad location,” said Kitty. “Our neighborhood is quiet and our house is large enough for everyone.”
We finally arrived home after two hours on the road with nothing to show for it. I slid the SUV into the garage and shut the automatic door. We went inside through the kitchen door. We carried only things we needed for the night in case we needed to make a quick getaway. That meant Mark carried his guns, tasers, batons and knives.
Once inside, I let Nova out to do her business in the back yard while I kept my eye on her. No crazy, howling Chompers had decided to scale the fence. I had Mark stand with me as he held his Glock pistol. Before tonight I didn't know a Glock from a goose but he had already began our weapons training and now I knew his gun had a name.
“The important thing,” he said, “is to keep the safety on until you're ready to shoot something. I mean the minute you're ready to shoot and not a minute before. The minute things have gone to Hell is the time to flick that safety off.”
“Were you in the military or something?”
He lowered his gaze. “Special forces in Iraq.”
I had seen him as a campus security guard, a rent-a-cop, a geek in a golf cart. It was human nature the way we stereotyped and mislabeled people rather than seeing them as unique individuals.
I finally said, “I'm glad you made it out alive so you could be here to help us tonight.”
He nodded and lowered his gaze, either out of embarrassment or concentration on the gun.
“I decided I didn't want to be a career soldier,” he said. “I wanted an education. I've changed majors a few times trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. All I know is I want to make some kind of difference to the world even if it's only in a small way.”
“Well, I guess we all want to make a difference somewhere, somehow in the grand scheme of things.”
He grinned and for the first time I noticed his smile. It was
a very nice smile. He had dimples. I liked the way his eyes lit up with amusement. His eyes were more green than blue and I liked that as well. I liked his blond hair. I liked his short haircut which was military looking.
“How about you?” he asked. “What's your major?”
“I want to be a nurse,” I said. “I want to work with children.”
“I can see that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem like a kind and patient person. I could picture you working with kids.”
“Hey y'all,” Bonnie interrupted our conversation. “I'm warming up the soup I made yesterday. We also have crackers and left-over cornbread. Come in and wash your hands.”
“You're in for a treat,” I said to Mark. “She's a fabulous cook. It's a wonder we don't all weigh four hundred pounds by now.”
He laughed and I whistled for Nova. She bounded into the house ahead of us and I closed and locked the French doors. I closed the curtains because I felt blocking out the night gave the house an extra layer of security. Ridiculous … but whatever worked for me.
Swagger's eyes seemed to roll back in his head as he took a sip of the broth. “Oy, that's some good stew.”
“It's soup,” said Bonnie. “Chicken noodle soup.”
“Whatever,” he said, “It's bloody delicious. You got any more stuff you made? We could take it with us.”
“Well, the cornbread won't spoil,” she said. “I'll whip up some more and we can pack it up.”
“This is scrummy” said Swagger. “I never thought I'd taste better cooking than me mum's.”
Bonnie blushed to the roots of her hair and I guessed Swagger had made at least one friend in our group.
Rebecca cleared her throat. “Um, so what's the plan of action? Wait until the traffic clears tomorrow? How long should we wait?”
Kitty said, “The first thing I'll do is try for an internet signal on my phone or computer. I want to find out if this is a localized phenomenon or happening everywhere.”
“We should keep trying to reach the outside world,” I said. “Try texting people and see if anyone answers.”