Chucklers: Laughter is Contagious

by Jeff Brackett

  A small group of students stood laughing at the dorm across the lawn, throwing rocks through windows. Could this be the epidemic? Something that drove people crazy? He needed more information. Walking away from the window, he brought up the call log on his phone again. Erica’s number was at the top, and he hit the call-back icon. Once more, a fast busy was the only sound he heard.

  He cursed and became aware of the rise in his heart rate. Deep breaths, Ross. Feel your heart. Control it. He got it back under control and tried to think. Text her! He remembered learning that SMS texting used a different frequency or some such. He started typing.

  ERICA ITS ROSS. U THERE?

  He waited a few minutes before assuming she wasn’t going to reply.

  WHEN U GET THIS, CALL OR MSG BACK. CRAZY SHIT GOING ON. WANT 2 KNOW UR ALL RIGHT.

  “So now what? Can’t call anyone. Erica’s out of town. Parents are out of the country.” That gave him pause. Were they all right? What about Alex? What about any of his friends?

  For the next several minutes, he sent text messages to anyone he could think of. But Ross really didn’t have a lot of friends, and within ten minutes, he was at the end of his contacts list. Sitting there, he tried to think about what he could do next. His stomach growled, reminding him that it had been almost twenty-four hours since he had last eaten. Since money wasn’t a problem for Ross, he almost always ate out. He thought about the crowd outside. Well, I’m not going outside with them running around. He had a few energy bars in his gear bag, and was pretty sure he had some noodle pouches in the pantry. There was bottled water in the refrigerator. It wasn’t much, but he figured he wasn’t in any danger of starvation. Not before the police arrived, anyway.

  That thought gave him pause. When would the police arrive? Erica had mentioned millions dead in Africa, and there was apparently enough going on locally to flood the cellular network. He hadn’t been able to get through to the cops, but surely someone else had. How would he know?

  Of course!

  He hopped up and opened his laptop. While it was powering up, he went to his gear bag to get a couple of the energy bars. Reaching into the bag, he paused at the sight of his dao. Even thinking of carrying it made him feel a bit foolish. Until he remembered the bodies outside. He grabbed the energy bars and the dao before moving back to the laptop. He munched one of the sweet, nutty bars as he got online and checked some of his social media sites.

  As he read, his appetite was suddenly forgotten. People from all over were reporting scenes similar to what he had seen outside his window. Many of them had seen worse. There were estimates of tens of thousands of attacks all over the country.

  His cell phone chimed, distracting him from the screen. He had a text.

  GOT UR MSG. STAY THERE. COMING OVER. —ALEX

  Ross closed his eyes and sighed with relief. Alex was all right. If he was okay, then this couldn’t be all that bad, right? But the irritating little voice in his head chided his logic. “Then why hasn’t anyone else replied?” the voice asked.

  Ross had no answer to that. He took another bite of the energy bar and waited.

  Chapter 54

  Ken Holtzapfel

  Parking Garage

  They could see that the security guard’s booth was empty before they ever reached it, but Ken could see that there were hundreds of cars in the garage. He panted as they approached. “Looks like there’s a play going on tonight.” He looked back the way they had come. People still ran through the streets, but it didn’t appear that any of them were coming after the two of them. “Maybe we can find someplace to hide.”

  They ran down the ramp and began to weave their way through the sea of parked cars. About halfway across the garage, Ken heard hooting and laughter behind them. Looking back at the ramp, he saw a dozen or more people shouting and laughing as they ran down the ramp. He pulled Angela down beside him and they hid behind a sedan. His heart was pounding and his legs shaking. He was in pretty good shape for a man his age, despite having a sedentary job. He used the gym at his apartment complex three nights a week to counter the effects of riding in a cab all day. But he was approaching his sixth decade of life, and there was only so much that the gym could do for him.

  Angela peeked over the hood of the sedan and dropped back immediately. “Are they… crazy?” she asked him.

  “I got no idea. Figure we should watch them a minute to see.”

  They didn’t have to watch for long. A large man in a Stetson kicked at a sports car as he passed it. The car alarm went off and the volume of laughter increased immediately. The crowd began to shout and giggle as they began attacking the car. Most only had their hands, but one of them, a young woman in hooker heels and a “come and get it” skintight dress, started swinging her purse at the car over and over. The strap on her purse broke after a half dozen swings or so and its contents went flying across the garage.

  Keeping low, Ken pulled Angela toward a bank of elevators on the opposite wall. The posters beside the elevator doors advertised the current play, a stage adaptation of the old Christmas movie, Scrooged. It was billed as “the side-splitting comedy smash of the season.” Ken cursed to himself. He wasn’t in the mood for any more laughter tonight.

  “Up or down?”

  Angela looked confused. “What?”

  “We can either go up to the street level, or deeper below into the lower garage levels.”

  She appeared to think about it, then shrugged. “We already know what’s on the street. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not in a big hurry to get back up there.”

  Ken pressed the down button, and the door slid open with a loud ding. He looked back at the crowd that had been busy beating up the sports car. “Shit.”

  Sure enough, the sound of the elevator had caught their attention, and they were running toward them.

  “Let’s go, lady!” Angela was ahead of him as they piled into the elevator. She pressed the lowest level and then hit the “close door” repeatedly.

  “Come on. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

  Ken readied his tire iron, hoping the fact that only a few of their attackers would be able to get through the door at the same time might help him. For a brief second, he even contemplated stepping out of the elevator to try and hold them off while Angela escaped. But he realized that stepping through the door would trigger their sensors, making their closure take even longer. As the mob in the garage made it to the last row of cars between them, the doors slid closed.

  “Shit!”

  Her outburst caught him by surprise. “What?”

  “I left my purse in the cab. My phone was in it.” She started crying. “I’m gonna die and I can’t even call my husband.” Now that the immediate danger was past, she was beginning to sob in earnest, and Ken didn’t know whether to pat her on the shoulder or hug her. Neither action seemed appropriate.

  Before he could do either, the doors dinged again and slid open. He gently took her arm and pulled her toward the doorway. “Come on, Angela. We need to find someplace to hide.”

  She sniffed and nodded. “S-sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The young woman let him lead her out of the elevator. He tried to think of someplace they could hide, but they had effectively trapped themselves four stories underground. There was insanity in the streets above, and they had been forced to choose between fighting and hiding. Ken looked around. The fourth sub-level was mostly empty, housing only twenty cars or so. Everyone else had evidently found parking on the upper levels. Ken began trying car doors as they moved across the floor, and got lucky on the fifth try. It was an older model Cadillac, and the owner had left it unlocked.

  “Here, Angela. Get in here and keep your head down.” It was evident that she was spent. She offered no resistance as he put her inside. He started to close the car door when she put her hand out to stop him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just going to keep an eye on things while you rest.�
�

  She swallowed, then nodded, laid down in the back seat, and let him close the door. Ken looked inside at her, nodded as she looked up at him, then turned back toward the elevators. Sooner or later, their pursuers would figure out which floor they were on, and when they came through those elevator doors, Ken was determined that he was going to stop them before they could hurt that girl.

  The problem was that they didn’t come by way of the elevator. Ken’s grand plan of attacking them before they could clear the door was squashed as soon as he heard their laughter coming down the car ramp. Oh crap! There was no way he could confine them to a narrow area on that ramp. There was no way he was going to win a fight like this.

  “Ken?” Angela shouted from a hundred feet behind him.

  “Quiet!” He hissed, but he knew it was probably already too late. If her shout hadn’t let them know what level they were on, his reply probably had. He started running back toward the car he had left her in.

  “But I hear—”

  “I know.” He reached the car, where she had opened the door and was climbing out. “No, get back in and stay hidden.”

  “But—”

  “No matter what you hear, you stay hidden. With any luck, they won’t find you and the cops will get here in a few hours to straighten this crap out. Just stay hidden until you see the cops, all right?”

  “I can’t leave you out here alone,” she protested.

  “I’m gonna try and lead them away. I’ll get them to follow me onto another level, and then I’ll lose them and hide just like you are.” Angela hesitated, and Ken pushed her back inside. “Remember, you stay hidden no matter what.”

  He closed the door as the approaching laughter forced him to turn back to the ramp. He trotted back toward the sounds, earlier feelings of despair gone now. He would win. He would keep them from that woman. No matter what.

  It was obvious that they saw him as soon as they began coming down the ramp. He was still running at them, not wanting to be anywhere near Angela when he had to fight them.

  There was no finesse to their attack at all. They simply charged, trying to roll him over with their numbers. Ken was smarter than that, though. As he rushed at them, he juked to the left at the last minute, swinging his tire iron into the head of the first person he came to, spinning, and swinging again at the next.

  They all seemed to react a bit slowly, reminding Ken of someone who’d had a few drinks too many. Some stumbled as they tried to track his change in direction, and one actually spun so fast that he dropped to his knees, though he was back up almost immediately. The first one Ken struck dropped immediately, but he had caught the second one in the side of the neck and the man kept coming.

  Ken skipped back, moving out of range, and ran past the mob, back up the ramp. They turned to follow him and he let the leaders get close, then reversed direction and slammed the pointed end of the tire iron through the shoulder of the first. He’d been aiming for the man’s throat, but missed in his hurry to get in and out. Still, it dropped the man for a moment, and Ken was able to lure them farther up the ramp. If he could lead them all away from Angela, he figured she had a decent chance of lasting until the cops came.

  One of the crowd was faster than the rest, and was almost on Ken before he realized the man was there. If not for the man’s panting laughter, he might have managed to get a hand on Ken. But his laughter betrayed him, and Ken swung the iron hard and low as he ran. The man collapsed, and Ken could only hope he had managed to break the man’s knee with his wild strike.

  At any rate, it was another attacker down.

  But Ken was tiring quickly, and the mob wasn’t deterred. He made it to the top of the ramp, and the level ground gave him an added burst of speed. He gained a little more ground, but his breath was labored, and his pulse pounded in his ears. The elevators were a hundred feet or so ahead of him. He glanced over his shoulder. The lead pursuers had fallen behind a bit. He estimated that they were another hundred feet behind. It might be enough.

  He put everything he had into the sprint for the elevator. He hit the button, looking back at the laughing mob as he prayed for the elevator to arrive quickly. They were still fifty feet away when the door slid open. He jumped inside, hit the button, and stood ready at the door, ready to engage the first person who breached the doorway.

  He almost sobbed with relief as the door slid closed just before the first laughing face reached him. Panting, he raised his tire iron as the elevator slowed, ready to strike at anyone waiting as the door slid open. But there was no one. He looked over at the Cadillac where he had left Angela. It appeared untouched. He thought for a second about climbing into the car with her and trying to hide. It was a tempting idea, but he knew if that mob didn’t find him in the open, they would probably start looking for him in the few cars down here.

  Weary but determined, he trotted back to hide beneath the ramp as the sound of laughter drifted down from above.

  Chapter 55

  Erica Chapman

  Dealership

  “Lady?” The shouting pulled her out of the darkness. “Come on, lady. We gotta get moving. They’re coming!”

  Erica looked at the stranger. “What?” He was familiar, and there was a reason he was frantic, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why. He slapped her. “Hey!” She pulled back in anger. “What the hell?”

  He nodded. “Good. Come on, we gotta get out of here.” He reached across and unsnapped her seatbelt as she tried to shake the cobwebs from her head. There was a noise from outside and she turned dazedly to see a crowd rushing toward them.

  Oh, that’s nice. Must be people coming to help us. She squinted to try and focus better. Wonder why they’re all laughing? The sound was like fingernails on the chalkboard of her mind, and it brought her memory back at once. She gasped. “What happened?”

  “We wrecked.” He unsnapped his own belt and opened his door. “Not really a good time for explanations.” He held a hand out to her. “Come on, let’s go!”

  She started to open her own door, but it wouldn’t budge. There was a pickup attached to the rear of the van, the metal crumpled and twisted where they intertwined. The driver of the pickup was laughing and slapping his hand against the steering wheel, uncaring as he bled profusely from a long gash on his forehead. Looking past him, she saw the crowd running toward them and they, too, were laughing hysterically.

  She grabbed her purse out of habit, and scrambled across the console toward the passenger door where the stranger with the pistol waited. As she stepped out of the wreck, something caught her eye, and on impulse, she reached down and yanked the length of aged, yellow wood from where it was wedged between the passenger seat and the door frame.

  “So help me God, lady, if you don’t get your ass in gear, I’m gonna leave you!”

  Erica looked around. “Where to?”

  He pointed to the Nissan car lot across the street. “We need new wheels.” She couldn’t argue his logic, but she had her doubts that they were simply going to be able to walk in and grab a car. Lacking any better idea though, she sprinted for the darkened glass building at the center of the lot. For the second time in an hour, she tested her legs and lungs, easily outdistancing her new partner once again. Purse bouncing against her hip, lacrosse stick pumping in the air with each stride, in less than a minute she was racing through shiny new Sentras and Altimas that reflected the lights from the street lights and spreading fires.

  “What about the door?” she panted.

  There was no answer from behind, and she looked back over her shoulder to see him raise his pistol. “Hey!” She ducked as he fired into the glass pane to the right of the dealership’s front door. The glass splintered, and he fired twice more. The pane finally succumbed to gravity, falling and scattering shards all over the floor and sidewalk. She changed her destination accordingly and never slowed as crystalline shards crunched beneath her feet. An electronic alarm sounded as she entered the building, evidently trigg
ered by a motion detector. There was a darkened hallway directly ahead, dimly lit by the streetlights a block away, and she immediately began trying doorknobs. Loud crunching over the klaxon of the alarm announced the arrival of her pistol packing partner.

  “They’re about thirty seconds behind me.” He spoke loudly enough to be heard above the alarm.

  “Then come here and help me find an unlocked door.”

  He started jiggling doorknobs on the other side of the hall. The third one Erica tried opened. “Got one!” she hissed at him. She glanced up the hallway to the broken glass in front. Their nearest pursuers were still in the parking lot, but rapidly approaching the building. She didn’t have time to see more, as her companion shoved her into the darkened office and quietly closed the door behind them. The darkness seemed absolute, and the sound of the alarm in the showroom overloaded her hearing. It was an odd sort of sensory deprivation in which the only things she could hear were the alarm and the pounding of her heart. She bit back a whimper. The blood pounding in her ears had her convinced that one of those things outside was going to hear her heart beating and come pounding through the door. Images of what they had done to that poor man in the SUV came back to her, and she struggled to keep herself under control.

  She gasped as she felt a pinpoint of pressure on the back of her thigh and her heart trip-hammered and skipped in her chest. She slapped her arm back and the lacrosse stick slammed against wood, the sound of it reassuring her that there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Somehow that made her feel better, and she got her panic under control. Reaching down, she found her assailant to be the corner of a wooden desk and smiled as an idea occurred. “Hey,” she spoke just loudly enough to be heard above the alarm, “help me move this up to block the door.”

  “Move what?”

  She heard him moving toward her and felt his arm brush against her back. She grabbed it, and forced it down to the desk. “We’ll need to lift it so they don’t hear.”