by Steven Pajak
The uproar from the crowd remained loud enough to drown out our voices. We had to shout to be heard above the din. People were screaming like they were on an amusement park ride. I saw people crying hysterically, while others just ran around making panicked noises. It was like a scene out of a bad movie, only it was real, and it was happening right now. I couldn’t blame them, though. For the first time in a long time, I was scared, too.
“Get them inside,” I shouted at Nate again.
Together we ushered our people back into the building, at least those that hadn’t separated from our pack. Nate still held Mary’s arm as he escorted her through the thick metal doors. I put a hand on each person’s shoulder as they passed me or patted their back, trying to let them know everything was going to be all right. But inside the building did not offer any sense of safety. We were greeted by more screaming and crying people who were sprinting and shoving, not caring about anything other than getting out, getting away from danger.
Without having to tell him where to go, Nate led Mary north through the corridor and the rest of our staff followed. Our path led us pass the original source of disruption. Curiosity getting the better of me, I risked a quick glance and was just in time to see Jim’s teeth locked currently onto some poor girl’s cheek. He was tearing vigorously at her flesh, whipping his head from side to side, trying to pull loose the chunk of meat.
A tall black man stepped out of the crowd and came to the girl’s aid. He reached in with long arms and grabbed Jim in a chokehold. Miraculously, another guy emerged from the throng of panicked people to help. He dropped low and gripped Jim’s legs. Together the two men took Jim down to the ground. As Jim hit the ground one of the campus police officers joined the fray, piling on top, forcing Jim down onto the cold tile. The three men struggled heroically while Jim thrashed at them, kicking and clawing for purchase. The officer reached for his cuffs and after much straining was finally able to cuff the VP. The poor girl lay just a few feet away from Jim, screaming her head off. The flesh on her right cheek hung like the flap of an old baseball that had been hit too hard and popped its seams.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. Did Jim actually bite that girl? What the hell was happening here?
This all happened in a matter of seconds, but seemed a lot longer. Shocked and in awe, I turned my head away from the bloody scene, looking frantically around, trying to keep my staff in view. I waved my arms to my staff, trying to get them to move toward me. A quick count revealed I’d lost a few already. I walked beside those who were still with us, keeping up a brisk pace. We exited the building and I stopped just outside the threshold.
“Everyone listen! When we exit the building I want you all to go home! Just take whatever you have with you now and go! You can get the rest of your stuff tomorrow. The office is locked so don’t worry about your belongings.”
For a moment they all stood looking at me, as if they did not comprehend what I’d just said. Other students continued to exit the building jostling and shoving us, just wanting to get the hell away from this place.
“Did you hear me? Stop standing there and go!” I yelled and waved my hands again. I stomped my feet for emphasis. “Go! Get out of here! Go home now!”
My display got them moving although I probably scared them even more than they had been. I didn’t care at this point, as long as they left here safely so I could leave. We all moved in the direction of the level one parking lot which was closest to our building. My car was parked out there.
I started when another gunshot exploded somewhere behind us. The muffled sound could have come from within the structure, or it could have just sounded funny because of the echo between buildings. I couldn’t help but think of Jim. Did the officer shoot him? Everyone ducked in response to the report but I was elated to see they kept moving, dodging or pushing through the throng of people all flooding down the path. Just as I stepped onto the sidewalk a car blew past us, barely missing Nate, who’d already dropped down onto the blacktop. I recognized one of my missing people behind the wheel.
Out of nowhere a lady from our computer science department ran up to me hysterically. I thought her name was Sue. She grabbed my arm halting me.
“What in God’s name is happening?” she shouted and sprayed me with warm saliva.
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging her hand off of my arm and wiping her saliva off me with my hands.
“Is it terrorists?” she asked. “Who’s shooting?”
“I don’t know who was shooting. Just go home,” I said and got moving again. “Just get the hell off campus!”
Now that we’d reached the parking lot our group broke up, everyone going off in our own direction toward our vehicles. Before they got too far I yelled, “Don’t come in tomorrow unless I call or text you! Stay home unless you hear from me!”
Breathless, I reached my Santa Fe and unlocked the doors with the keyless entry remote. I reached for my messenger bag to toss it onto the passenger seat, but my bag was gone. I’d lost it somewhere in all of the action. Screw it, I wasn’t going back. I dropped into the driver’s seat and started the car. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and didn’t like the way my eyes looked. These were the eyes of a frightened man, not a fearless leader. Ignoring my haunted reflection, I shifted my gaze. I was blocked in my spot by a large red pickup truck. Throngs of pedestrians who were now exiting the main building where classes were held wove dangerously in and out of the line of cars. I heard a thump and felt the Santa Fe shudder. Two guys ran quickly between the parked cars, their bodies slamming into my car.
Word was spreading and people were panicked and wanted out. In their haste they were merely succeeding in prolonging their exodus. Seeing all those cars and people reminded me of trying to get home in 2001 after hearing about the 9/11 attacks. It took an hour just to get out of the parking lot and then another hour to get off the main residential street and to the expressway. I didn’t have time for that. Whatever was going on was serious and I wasn’t going to stick around and become a fixture in this parking lot.
I slammed the transmission into drive and firmly pressed the accelerator down. The SUV surged forward, crashing through the shrubs that surrounded the parking lot, jumping the curb and then dropping down another. I jarred in my seat as the SUV dropped five inches. I slammed my shoulder against the door and felt my ear hit against the cold glass, but then I was out of the lot and onto the street. I shot out into traffic heading eastbound on Bryn Mawr, just narrowly avoiding being hit by a Corvette. Swearing under my breath, relying strictly on my instincts at this point, I pulled the wheel to the right and swerved back onto the sidewalk, probably causing major damage to my tires in the process.
The lady in the Corvette gave me the finger and laid on her horn as I drove down half the block on the sidewalk. I swerved again halfway down the block to avoid a group of people who broke through the shrubs and ran out in front of me. I think I even clipped a portly gentleman, but I couldn’t be sure. I took the first chance I got to get back on the street when I saw a slight opening. A parked car pulled away from the curb leaving me a hole and I exploited my good luck. I pulled hard to the left and cut in quickly behind him, again avoiding being hit by another car that followed too closely behind.
At the next northbound side street I stopped traffic and attempted to make a left turn. Horns blared behind me and angry voices drifted on the cool air. I had to force my front end into oncoming traffic because no one wanted to let me in. I burned rubber when I shot across traffic, fishtailing onto the side street. To my surprise, the side street was clear. Taking advantage of my luck again, I accelerated to fifty miles per hour, quickly putting distance between me and the campus.
Risking taking one hand off the wheel, I thumbed on the radio and switched it to AM where I could always find news. I really didn’t expect anything to be on the news so quickly, but in this day and age everyone had a cell phone and camera and news spread quickly on the internet and other social media
sites. There was not yet any news about what happened on campus, but quite unexpectedly, there were reports coming in from other parts of Illinois, portions of Indiana and Missouri, and as far away as New York, Pennsylvania, California and Texas, that people were being attacked and bitten by groups of crazed people. So it wasn’t just here at the university or even just in Illinois that these bizarre attacks were occurring.
What the hell is this about? I wondered. Why would groups of people coordinate and physically attack people and bite them? For Christ sake, didn’t they know that blood carried disease? The only explanation had to be that these people were experiencing some sort of mental breakdown. However, it seemed extremely odd that so many people were experiencing the same sort of mental breakdown across portions of the United States. Perhaps if this was an isolated instance that theory may have seemed reasonable.
The radio announcements continued to pour in. I left the one-way side street and turned left onto Peterson Boulevard. No sooner had I turned when I was immediately slowed by heavier traffic, most of which was from the mass exit from the university. I no longer felt the need to just get myself away from danger, but I now was concerned for my wife and children. This was no longer something scary that was happening at work; this was something scary happening all over the damn place. I needed to get to the kids, get them out of school and get them out of the city. I needed to get us home and into my wife’s welcoming embrace.
Braking because of the traffic, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my wife’s number. I needed her to start getting our bug out bags and the rest of our gear together in case things progressed and we had to leave our home. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, I had nagged my wife about making preparations in case of a natural disaster or if we were invaded by whatever fanatical religious group decided to declare war on the United States. Although she balked at the idea in the beginning, telling me that I was being paranoid, she eventually relented. I bet now she would glad she’d relented to my paranoia.
On my first attempt calling my wife I was greeted with a weird beeping tone that resounded monotonously in my ear. I immediately dialed again with the same result. My third attempt prompted an “all circuits are busy” message. After the fourth attempt I was dropped right into her voicemail without any ringing. Angry with my service provider, I left a message with our danger code phrase, Alas Babylon, so that she would know to start getting prepared.
Traffic continued to be at a standstill. Frustrated with the gridlock, feeling like time was slipping away from me quickly, although it had only been less than fifteen minutes since the fire alarm started its relentless buzzing, I opened my door and stepped out to see what the heck was going on. The line of cars on the westbound side, the direction I was travelling, continued all the way down to Pulaski, about a mile and a half down. From my vantage point, it looked as though there might have been an accident ahead that had the intersection blocked. None of the cars on the eastbound side were moving either, which meant something was going on behind there, as well.
I picked up my cell phone and again dialed my wife, but circuits were still busy. I quickly pounded out a text message but almost immediately it was returned as undeliverable. With disgust, I tossed the cell phone onto the passenger seat.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, almost all of the cell phone towers in the area had gone down simultaneously at 9:03 AM, and nationwide just minutes later. All across the country people were frantically dialing loved ones or calling for emergency services, while others were using their smart phones to access the web, Twitter, Facebook, My Space and blogs, looking for and sharing information. Apparently, cell towers were stressed so far beyond their limits in such a short span of time that they were unable to handle the unprecedented strain. In less than a half hour after the first reported events, we were left without our precious communication devices.
When I looked toward Pulaski Avenue again, having finally given up on calling my wife, I noticed the first wave of people running down the street. I stood flabbergasted a moment, digesting the fact that they were actually abandoning their vehicles. The frightened people were moving between and around cars, up the sidewalks, and some even struggled up and across the roof of parked vehicles.
As the first of the fleeing drivers passed I yelled, “What’s going on up there? Why are you running?”
A woman passed by at full run, breathing heavily. She didn’t even look at me. Another group of people passed me, running wildly through the street and moving east. I was quickly becoming accustomed to folks fleeing. None stopped to answer my query. I didn’t think they would be frantically running from a vehicle accident, so something else must be going on down the road.
In the distance I heard the first screams. After a few more seconds ticked away I spotted several men and a woman, like those that had attacked people on campus just minutes ago. Their clothes were bloody and they had wild but dull looks on their faces. They ran together in a pack like wild dogs. To my horror, one of the men snared a balding fellow who was trying to skirt around a pick-up truck. The crazed man pulled the bald guy down quick and hard, his teeth darting down and coming up with a mouthful of baldy’s flesh. Baldy screamed once, loudly, and then his scream was cut short when the crazy guy took a bite out of his throat.
“Oh my God.” I reeled back a step and pressed my body against the Santa Fe. I ran my hands through my hair, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. I knew I needed to act now, act quickly, but I didn’t know what to do. My mind seemed to be hibernating. I think I might have been suffering from minor shock.
A second crazy from the group tackled a teenage girl just yards away from baldy, taking her down like a lineman would sack a quarterback. Their bodies slammed loudly into an abandoned car, rebounded almost comically, and hit the pavement with a sickening sound. The bastard started biting her back, his head dipping quickly and tearing through clothing to get at flesh. The girl screamed as though she was being killed, and she was, damn it. Her screams were enough to break through my brief shock and to get me moving finally.
Running to the rear of the Santa Fe, I opened the back hatch. With fumbling fingers I pulled open the hidden compartment in the floor panel under the rubber mat where the jack and tools to change flat tires was stored when I originally purchased the vehicle. Shortly after buying the SUV, I’d removed all of the tools and instead, stored my Romanian SKS carbine there. With a slight tremble in my hands, I pulled my truck gun out of its hiding place, feeling awkward fielding a gun in the middle of a Chicago street.
Focusing my attention on my task, I reached into a green canvas bag that lay beside the rifle and grabbed a 10-round stripper clip. Carefully, I loaded the SKS, roughly thumbing the rounds into the magazine. I pulled back on the bolt carrier handle and chambered a round. The stripper clip pinged onto the street beside my right foot.
Screams and unintelligible, panicked voices were all around me now. It was difficult to remain calm. I could feel fear gnawing at my belly. Ignoring the sounds around me, I reached back into the canvas bag and pulled out the other nine stripper clips and started to distribute them into my pants pockets. Carrying the SKS in my left hand, I quickly returned to the front of the SUV.
Scanning the area, I immediately spotted the third crazed man and his target, a young Latino man, on the south side of the busy street. The crazy man gorged on one of the kid’s arms. The terrified kid tried ineffectively to beat him off with the other. The fourth crazy, a woman in her forties dressed in khaki pants and a pale blue button down shirt, was just two cars away on my left, beating a bloody fist against the driver’s side window of a red Honda Civic. Behind the wheel of the Honda, a young lady in her early twenties looked on in terror as the crazy woman left bloody palm prints against the glass. In the back seat of the small car, a young girl, about four years old—only a year younger than my son—huddled in the back seat with tears streaking down her horrified face.
The glass broke under the intense shock of the cr
azed woman’s battering fists and showered the young woman with gummy chunks of safety glass. Once the glass barrier that separated her from her prey was no more, the crazy middle-aged woman reached inside and grabbed hold of the other woman’s arm. As unintelligible utterances issued from her bloody lips, she tried to pull the young mother out of the vehicle.
Instinctively I raised the SKS to my shoulder and got a bead down the iron sights. I was comfortable using the stock sights on the SKS; I had taken it to the range and fired more than three thousand rounds through the carbine in the last several months. My hands trembled only slightly as I lined up my sights between the crazy woman’s shoulder blades. I took a deep breath, controlling my breathing and my hands. I closed my left eye and held my breath.
Just as the crazed woman dipped her head to take a chunk of the woman’s arm, I fired the SKS, hitting my mark just a half inch below my point of aim. Her body slammed forward against the Honda from the impact of the 7.62 x 39mm round, but to my surprise, she did not go down. Amazingly, she turned away from the vehicle, looking a bit stunned but otherwise unaffected. I watched blood spreading across her chest and the exit wound center mass. She set her eyes on me and started toward me, slowly at first, and then at a run.
Steadying myself by leaning up against the fender of the Santa Fe, I lined up my next shot and fired, this time hitting her in the abdomen. Again she did not go down. Undeterred by the bullet which tore her stomach open, she continued her charge. I fired again, this time scoring a thigh shot, but the woman merely stumbled, hardly breaking her stride.
“What the hell?” I shouted.
I shot yet again, the bullet tearing out her throat and the back of her neck. Another stagger and the crazy woman, just yards away now, still kept coming. I fired a fifth time as she closed the gap but still she stayed her course. Now only ten feet away from me, the next bullet tore out her left eye and blew out the back of her skull. Finally she went down. Her body crumpled to the ground just a few feet away from me, and skidded to a halt just a foot away from where I stood.