by Hetzer, Paul
“I took Shawn over to his old frat house where he had arranged to stay for the night so we wouldn’t have to drive back into town. Everyone else was still sprawled out in the lawn in chairs and blankets watching all those meteors falling while I was trying to keep Shawn from falling on his face. By midnight he was passed out on a bed with me curled up next to him, trying to shake that uneasy feeling that was bouncing around in my mind like a tune you can’t get rid of. I don’t remember when I fell asleep, although I finally did.”
Dontela stopped and motioned to Katherine to pick up the narrative.
Katherine smiled at her nervously and nodded. “The party lasted through the night. I drank too much and ended up with a boy in my room. He was toasted too and other then some clumsy heavy petting and kissing, we simply fell asleep there with our clothes still on. I didn’t even get his name. The sun was well up when I woke and this guy was still lying there in bed. He had vomited half on the bed and on the floor and I was real pissed! I started yelling at him and shaking him but could only get a few moans out of him. He wouldn’t wake up.
“His skin was scorching hot and I started to get a little scared too, although mostly I was just angry at him. I thought maybe he had alcohol poisoning or something. Maybe I did too. My head was pounding from a hangover and my mouth was dry. I ran down the hall to one of my sorority sisters’ rooms, though she wasn’t there. The other sister staying in the house for the summer had a downstairs room and when I ran down it was locked up tight and she didn’t answer the door no matter how hard I knocked. I thought maybe she had met up with one of the frat guys and had shacked up with him at one of the other houses on Rugby Road.
“Then I saw the living room and the yard outside the window. People were laying strewn out on the couches and chairs inside the house and on the outside they were curled up on blankets where they had sat watching the meteor storm. They all appeared to be out cold. It was after 11 in the morning. There shouldn’t have been that many there still, no matter how much they drank. That was when I started thinking things weren’t right.
“I about jumped out of my skin when the bathroom door slammed opened next to me and this brunette chick stepped out dressed in only her panties and a tee-shirt. I must have startled her too because she let out a little squeal when she saw me. Her name was Patty and she was a second year student also taking some summer courses and crashing there with one of the frat boys for the night. She was staying with a bunch of students down in the Old Dorms. She had just woken up and stumbled into the bathroom to pee and wasn’t even really aware of where she was. Of the about fifty people that had stayed or passed out in or around the house, there was only the two of us that woke up. We tried to wake everyone, but they were exactly like the boy up in my room, burning with fever, and like, in a coma. By then, I wasn’t angry, I was scared to death. After Patty dressed, we headed out to other parts of the campus to get help. I was beginning to think that someone had slipped poison into something people ate or drank the night before. Was I ever wrong!” Dontela nodded. “Yeah, I had the same experience when I woke up right after sunrise. I was already pissed at Shawn for acting so juvenile that night and wasn’t even going to bother waking him in the morning. While I was getting dressed he woke up on his own complaining about a splitting headache. I told him it served him right. He talked me into staying there with him, and even though I was pissed at him I still loved him, so I stayed. The aspirin didn’t even touch his headache, and I could tell it was a really bad one. When the fever started building I got really worried. I told him we needed to get him to the clinic but the knucklehead refused. I kept pushing water into him hoping he would get better. Sometime before noon he stopped responding to me anymore and I got really scared. I started thinking, shit, my man is going to up and die on me!
“I called 911 and damn if no one answered, only some message saying to please hold if it’s an emergency and someone would be on the line shortly. Why the fuck would I be calling 911 if it wasn’t a damn emergency? I left to try and find some help to get Shawn to a car so I could get him to the hospital. There was nobody around. It was like a ghost town. No one answered doors when I knocked. I was getting freaked the fuck out and that bad feeling I had the night before was coming back stronger than ever. I went out on the street and started yelling for help.”
“That’s when Patty and I were leaving the Alpha Delta Pi house. We heard her calling and ran up the road to her,” Katherine chimed in. “We were near hysterical.”
“Yeah, it was surreal,” Dontela continued. “These two white girls running at me in a panic screaming their fool heads off while I was doing the same thing as I ran toward them. We kind of ran into each other, grabbed hold and started tugging in opposite directions. I would have been comical if it wasn’t so damn absurdly terrifying.” She laughed cynically to herself at the memory. “We were jabbering at each other like a couple of scared hens and then the realization punched through our thick skulls that this wasn’t something that was local to each of us. That is was happening all over. That’s when a kind of calm came over me. I actually had to slap Katy to get her to shut her damn mouth for a minute so I could talk to them.”
Katherine blushed slightly in the firelight. “I was so terrified I just wanted to throw up.”
“Anyway,” continued Dontela, “I told them we need to get in my car and start driving around campus looking for help. That’s what we did, simply started driving around, blasting the horn and yelling for help out the windows. It was fucking eerie! Not a soul around. There were some abandoned cars on the main roads and a couple had people in them in that same comatose state that Shawn was in. Finally on the south side of the campus we came across a guy walking around in a robe looking all but lost to the world. His name was Eric and he said when he woke up and couldn’t find anyone around that he thought he was the only person left in the world. You could see the shock and fear in his eyes. We probably all looked that way.”
“There were probably around a thousand faculty, interns, summer students and support people on campus that week. Only four of us were walking around not sick,” said Katherine sadly.
“After finding everyone sick and unresponsive around campus we drove out into Charlottesville,” Dontela said. “It was the same everywhere. We couldn’t go far because traffic had snarled on many of the roads and we couldn’t drive around it. I guess when people started getting really sick, they left their cars sitting where they were and tried to go get to help. There were a lot of people passed out on sidewalks, in yards, just about everywhere you looked.”
“That’s when Eric said that the comet did this to everyone,” said Katherine. “We couldn’t explain why the four of us were okay and everyone else was so sick, although we were sure it was because of the comet.”
“We did find one radio station broadcasting that gave us some news; nothing good, just that this shit seemed to be happening all across the country, and it reinforced our idea that it was the stuff from the comet doing this.” Dontela scratched her head nervously while Kera threw a piece of wood into the fire. She stared up at the burst of glowing embers that drifted into the sky like over-energized lightning bugs. “That’s when we started making phone calls to our families. I got hold of my parents in Georgia. They sounded fine, along with my younger sister and brother. I broke down and cried like a little bitch when I heard my momma’s voice on the phone. I felt like the scared little girl I was trying so hard not to be.” Dontela sneered scornfully at the memory, her teeth flashing in the firelight. “I promised them I would be home soon. I hung up thinking maybe things weren’t so bad.”
“My parents weren’t so lucky,” Katherine said sadly. “My dad answered the phone and told me that Mom was really sick. He was so happy to hear from me but I could hear in his voice how scared he was. He was staying home that morning to take care of her. He asked me to come home now, to leave right then. We live just up in Fairfax, Virginia, less than two hours away. I told him I would get m
y stuff in the car and that I would leave for home in a little while. I think it was about one in the afternoon when we were making our phone calls.” She paused to wipe tears away from her eyes. “Eric couldn’t get hold of anyone at home. He was totally freaking out. He finally got hold of his grandmother, who lives on the other side of the country. She was as scared as he was. His grandfather was sick and she didn’t know who to turn to for help. Patty was in the same boat as me, except it was her dad that was sick and her mom doing okay. They were up in Chicago, so she was going to have to go on a major road trip to go home. Poor girl didn’t even have a car here. She was just bawling into the phone that she wanted to come home.”
Dontela picked up her narrative again. “We found two more people on the edge of town, a crotchety old woman and a young Mexican guy who barely spoke a word of English. We ran across the old woman first walking around in her nightgown in a complete daze. We tried, but she wouldn’t go with us. She was looking for her husband, walking the route he had taken that morning to run to Walgreens to get some cold medicine after he had felt an illness coming on. He never came back and she was worried sick. We would have driven her along the route if it had been passable. That old biddy refused to come with us and we left her walking down the sidewalk in that ratty pink nightgown with a pair of matching slippers. We never did see her again.
“As we were heading back to campus this asshole came running out of nowhere and I about run him over. He came over to my window chattering away in Spanish. I didn’t understand a fucking thing he said. His eyes were big as saucers and you could tell that motherfucker was spooked and completely out of his element. He was pointing back up the road, trying to get us to turn around and go somewhere.”
“I know a little conversational Spanish,” said Katherine, her eyes still welling with tears, “but he was talking so fast I could barely catch a word. When we got him to calm down I found out that he had a wife and friends at a nearby apartment that were very sick. I tried to explain to him that people everywhere were sick and that we were trying to find help. We asked if he wanted to come with us. He just went off on a rant again, and wanted us to come and help, but there was nothing we could do. We finally had to drive away with him trying to hang onto the car and screaming at us. It was awful and I felt so bad, but what could we do? We had our own friends and family to worry about.”
“We went back through the abandoned vehicles to Rugby Road so I could go check on Shawn. When we got there Katy and the others agreed to help me get him into my car so I could head home. It didn’t even cross any of our minds that the roads were blocked with traffic still. I figured we would find a way.” Dontela shook her head at their naivety. “All of us just wanted to get home and get away from the damned nightmare.
“Shawn was still unconscious and had started to drool blood down the side of his cheek. I don’t know why, but that scared me more than anything else that had happened that morning. It took all four of us to get him down to the car, he wasn’t a small man. We stuck him in the back seat and put a blanket over him. Eric and Patty were talking about just taking whatever damn car they could find the fucking keys for and driving up to Chicago. Eric would drop off Patty at her parents’ house before he headed on west. It was sometime after 2 in the afternoon and we were standing by my car after loading in Shawn and saying our goodbyes and good lucks to each other. That’s when things started getting a lot fucking worse.” Dontela glanced over at Katherine, who shifted uneasily as the images of that day were remembered so vividly, haunting both of their thoughts as if from some late night B-movie horror flick.
Dontela stared deep into the glowing coals of the fire before resuming. “The windows were down a little in my car because of the heat. Shawn was sitting up, his face at the window, his eyes looking right at mine.” She paused in thought. “No, not at them, right through them. At first I was like, thank the baby Jesus, he’s awake…but they weren’t his eyes anymore. They were the eyes of a monster. He snarled like a lion and lunged at me through the window. He hit the glass so hard his nose split, smearing blood all over it. All of us jumped back scared to death. Patty screamed and that only sent Shawn into a full-blown motherfucking rage. He was growling and yelling, trying to jam his hands through the crack in the window to get at us.” Finally, sorrow overwhelmed her and the tears flowed down her face while she recalled the horror of that moment.
“I was just in shock. I kept crying his name over and over again. He was pounding away at everything inside that car trying to get out. I ran back toward the frat house. I couldn’t watch anymore.” She turned her head away to hide her tears and fell silent.
Katherine cleared her throat and spoke again. “The rest of us followed Dontela toward the house. None of us said a word. What can you say to a girl you barely know whose boyfriend has recently turned into some sort of monster? When we reached the porch we heard some people yelling gibberish from up the road. It was coming from my sorority house and several of the girls and guys were on their feet. Even from where we were we could tell there was something wrong with them. Patty screamed again and it was like a wolf catching the scent of its prey. They saw us and just bolted toward us, snarling madly. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast as they did. We couldn’t get through that door fast enough and get it closed behind us. We barely got it locked before one of those people hit the door like a battering ram. I thought it was going to come off its hinges. Thank God it held. Patty collapsed on the floor, blubbering like a baby, and I wasn’t in much better shape.
“Eric kept his composure the best of all of us, although he was just as scared. He told us to check the house for anyone else while he pushed a big heavy desk in front of the door. The people outside were pounding and beating on the door trying to get in, they were making awful animal sounds; guttural noises. It was like a nightmare.
“The house was empty except for us. The students that were staying there for the summer must have not made it back there after the party. We were lucky for that. We believed we were pretty safe in there. The first floor windows were pretty high off the ground and the whole house was brick, so we hoped the crazy people outside couldn’t get in. After we made sure the place was secure, we settled down in the living room to wait. We figured the government would be fixing this soon somehow. So we merely had to wait until the authorities got here and captured those people.”
“You’re kidding?” Steven asked skeptically. “You really thought the government was going to save the day for you?”
Both Katherine and Dontela nodded.
“Yeah,” Dontela answered. “The government has always been there when people needed help. We thought it wouldn’t be any different this time. Maybe take a little longer, but they would fix things. As I said, we were naïve. We had a lot of growing up to do still.” She stabbed the fire with a stick while looking defiantly at Steven. “I called my parents again. They were still okay and hadn’t seen anything out of the normal around their house. The nearest neighbors were down the road a bit. They did say all the television channels had stopped broadcasting and there was no one on the radio either. I told them what was happening there at UVA and that I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get home. They said when the news channels were still broadcasting they were saying this was happening all over the country and maybe the world. The authorities were telling everyone to stay home and try not to interact with other people; a kind of quarantine. My papa pretty much told me to be safe and stay there and wait for help to arrive.”
“I couldn’t get hold of my dad anymore,” Katherine said in a whisper. “It just rang and rang.” Fresh tears filled her blue eyes. “Patty got hold of her mother, who was hysterical. Her father had attacked her and bitten her badly. She had locked herself in the bedroom, but he was beating on the door and she was afraid he was going to get through. Patty stayed on the phone with her until she heard the door crash open and her mother scream. She said she heard the phone drop to the ground and wouldn’t tell us anythi
ng more. She never talked to her mother again.”
Steven and Kera listened in silence. There was no need for words. They shared each girl’s grief and understood the emotions that surged back and forth through her and Dontela as they told their stories.
Dontela put her arm around Katherine’s shoulder as the girl tried to choke back her tears.
“I rag on her a lot about being a rich sorority girl,” Dontela said, looking at Katherine as she spoke, “but we’ve been through a lot together since that day. I don’t think either of us would be here if it hadn’t been for the other. We got ourselves a bond stronger than any sisterhood.”
After a few minutes Dontela continued their story. “The M-80s beat on the doors for about an hour. All the racket they were making attracted even more of them. After the phone calls we all sat huddled together in that darkened living room with all the shades drawn and the lights off listening to the horrible racket they were making. All of us were scared shitless. Sometime in the early evening most had lost interest in us and wondered away. There were still a few outside. They kept going over to my car whenever Shawn made a noise or moved around, I guess to see what he was. They never bothered him or each other for that matter. It was just us that set them off.
“There was some junk food in the house, not a lot, scarcely enough to get us through a day or so. The power was still on then, and the water was working. We never did lose that. I was planning on ditching the group and trying to still get home to my family, even though they told me to stay put. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, especially with Shawn bouncing around like a demented animal in the back of my car.”