He tried calling her cell. Same error message.
He placed the handset back in its cradle and frowned. He had hoped to reach Shelly and Isaiah; he was somewhat anxious about their wellbeing.
When a hurricane had struck the Gulf Coast a few years earlier, Andy had been on a platform off the coast of Southeast Brazil in the Lula Field. He recalled that he hadn't been able to get a hold of Shelly for a week after the storm, but he finally did.
"Patience," he said softly. "I need patience."
Chapter Four
Jim Gibson
Day 1
"You coward!" he yelled as a grenade exploded next to him. "Even the noob tube is better than that!"
"Say that to my shotgun," Jim said into the headset, laughing.
Colors danced across the television as Jim shot the heavily armored character in the face with a sawed-off shotgun. Jim’s opponent yelled so loud he could hear him over the headset.
"Hey Vik! Calm down buddy!" Jeff yelled at Jim’s roommate, laughing. "I can hear you over my headset! It’s after midnight on a weeknight man! Some people probably have class tomorrow!”
"I can hear you too Vik. Besides, you know," Jim paused as Vik killed his character. "You're likely to get a spawn kill."
Vikram laughed as the match drew to a close.
Thunder suddenly shook the whole building. The remnants of Hurricane Vicky were moving in, threatening to deluge the area with rain. News reports had said New York City was going to be hit with the most powerful hurricane it had ever experienced. Of course, that meant folks in Buffalo would get whatever was left after the storm moved ashore. Jim imagined his mom and stepdad were glad to be on the other side of the country for the deciding game of the World Series.
He stood up to stretch, gazing out the window of his dorm. It was raining hard outside. The south campus of the University at Buffalo stretched to the south of the dorm and in the distance, partially obscured by curtains of rain, the VA Hospital stood tall, a luminous sentinel in the night.
Jim sat back down to resume the carnage. While the new match loaded he glanced down at his phone; it had been vibrating all night long. According to Cortana he had 20 missed calls and 124 text messages!
He thumbed through the list of missed calls. His mom had tried calling him a dozen times, his dad had tried a few, his sister had a few and his brother Phil had a few. What was going on? He started to dial the number for voicemail when there was a loud knocking on the door to the dorm.
Jeff and Vik turned to see what had made the noise. Jim stood and walked over to the door. It was late, who would be knocking at his door at 1:00am on a school night? He peered out the peephole.
There was no one there. Suddenly, a tall man wearing white face paint staggered up to the door. He had bloody clothes on and looked like he was dressed up as a zombie.
"Come on man!" Jim yelled. "Halloween's not until Saturday!"
The man growled in response.
"Real convincing man! You know Sigma Phi is having a zombie party on Saturday! You should go! Your growl is pretty convincing!" Jim yelled, laughing.
Then Jim heard screams come from down the hall and the pale man turned and shuffled toward the source.
Jim opened the door and poked his head out. He saw a woman down the hall who had multiple people dressed as zombies on top of her. Fake blood was everywhere.
"That's not funny guys! Come on, some people have class tomorrow!" he yelled.
Someone exited a dorm room closer to the group with a baseball bat in hand and bashed one of the costumed guys in the head. The man fell down with a growl.
"Hey! Why'd you do that?" Jim yelled, stepping into the hallway.
"Dude! There's a quarantine!" the guy with the bat yelled back. "Agh!"
Another costumed man had bitten him in the ankle. The man with the bat fell over and began convulsing and foaming at the mouth as blood poured from his ankle.
"What the…?" Jim asked, startled.
He suddenly felt hands grab him from behind and pull him back into his dorm. It was Jeff!
"Dude, did you see the text message from Campus Services?" he asked, handing Jim his phone.
"No, what is it?" he asked.
"Just read it."
Jim opened the text message from Campus Services.
"Quarantine initiated. All students to remain indoors where they are. If ill, please contact Campus Health Services ASAP."
"What's that all about?" he asked aloud.
"I don't know," Vik replied, pushing the couch in front of the door. "But I suspect it has something to do with the altercation down the hall."
"Altercation? I think someone died!" Jim replied incredulously.
"Eaten by zombies?" Jeff asked skeptically.
He shrugged. "I don't know. The guy with the bat totally got bitten in the ankle by one of the guys dressed like a zombie. Dude with a bat started foaming at the mouth then."
"You don't think Sigma Phi is pulling a Halloween prank, do you?" Vik asked.
Jim shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe they're pulling the prank to make light of Campus Services' instructions."
Jeff turned the Xbox off and turned it to the news.
"And as Vicky moves into the Buffalo Metro, it has been downgraded to a tropical storm," the mustachioed news anchor said. "Now folks, remember, the quarantine means you should stay in your home until notified it's okay to leave. If you or anyone you're with is displaying symptoms of Owasa Disease, the authorities want you to hang a red sheet or towel in your window. If you don't have a red sheet or towel, a red shirt or jacket will suffice. A medical professional will be by to assist you as soon as possible. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming."
Jeff turned the TV off. "Sounds pretty serious."
Jim nodded. "Yeah, it does."
He sat down on the couch and looked at his phone. He had text messages from his mom and his brother imploring him to call them. He tried dialing out. No luck, he couldn't place an outgoing call. He tried texting them. No luck. He tried his voicemail. Miraculously, it connected.
"Hey loser!" his brother Phil said in the first message, left at 10:30pm, "You watching the news? Call me back."
"Jim," he heard his mother yell over the roar of the crowd in the next voicemail message, "The pitcher for the Washington Senators just died on the field! Wait, what's that Steve? Oh my! Oh my!" She screamed. "James, we are going back to the hotel. Please call me when you get this. I love you!"
"Hey! It's your dad! You been watching the game? Washington's pitcher just died on the mound! Anyway, call me." His dad had left the third message.
"Hmm," Jim said.
"Your mom at the game?" Jeff asked.
He nodded. "Yeah, I never understood why Steve was a Mariners fan."
"Me neither," Jeff replied, sitting down. "Then again, your dad works for the Detroit Tigers. Maybe she married Steve to spite your dad."
Jim laughed. "Maybe. Man, Steve was such a…" he paused, shaking his head. "Never mind. I guess we might as well play more Hail of Bullets."
"You don't want to watch a zombie movie?" Vik asked, surprised.
"You know what? Yeah, let's watch Night of the Living Dead," Jim said. "Hey Jeff, where's Connor?"
He shrugged. "I guess he's out with Giselle."
"Huh," Jim replied, as he placed the DVD in the disc tray.
“Aren’t you a bit freaked out about this?” Jeff asked.
Jim looked down at his phone. He held it up to his face. “Hey Cortana, what’s going on?”
His phone made a dinging noise and then he heard, “Quarantine has been enacted. No other information available.”
He repeated his question.
“I’m sorry, I do not seem to have an Internet connection. Please try again later,” his phone said.
He looked at Jeff. “I guess we’ll have to wait to see what’s going on anyway.”
Jeff shook his head. “Fine, let’s watch the movie. Mayb
e you’ll have cell service again later. I don’t have cell service either.”
“It’s probably just the storm,” Vik said.
“Okay, we’ll watch the movie,” Jim said.
He thought about his mom as the protagonists of the movie sought shelter in the farmhouse. He had grown up in a nice townhouse in the Upper East Side in New York City. His older brother Andy, older sister Vicki, older brother Phil and he had enjoyed a pretty comfortable childhood as his mom had inherited a bunch of money from her grandparents shortly after Phil was born.
His parents divorced when he was three and then his mother had married Steve Rojas. Steve was a managing partner at Rojas, Platt and Gaul Managing Partners. Jim never did like him. He had been rude to Jim and always seemed to prefer Tyler, Jim’s younger half-brother.
Jim’s dad took a position as a radio broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers and moved to the Motor City soon after the divorce. Jim flew out to visit him one weekend a month during the school year and one month per summer when he was a kid.
Jim’s brother Phil was three years older than he was. After he graduated from high school and received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the City College of New York four years later, he came to Buffalo to get his Master's Degree from the University at Buffalo. Jim followed him out to Buffalo to work on his undergraduate studies after he had finished high school.
Vicki was his older sister. She had moved to Chicago with her husband Todd in the year Phil had graduated from high school. She was a nurse in the Windy City. Andy was the oldest. He had moved away after high school and only returned every couple of years to visit on Christmas. He worked on offshore oil platforms and lived in Alabama with his wife and son.
Jim sat there on the other couch wondering how everyone was doing as the zombies surrounded the farmhouse in the movie. Gradually, the growling noises in the hallway outside the dorm quieted down.
At 3:20am, he was awakened as his phone vibrated. He had a text message; it was from Campus Services.
"Students, please remain where you are. Police and National Guard will be by as the rain lets up to release you. Please call us if someone in your dorm is ill."
He looked around. Jeff and Vik were both asleep on the floor. The movie had returned to the menu screen. Jim fell back asleep.
A pounding on the door woke him up. It was still dark outside and raining. He stood and walked over to the barricaded door. He peered out the peephole. Connor and Giselle stood there, soaking wet.
"Hey! Jim! If you're in there, please let me and Giselle in! There are zombies out here! Zombies!" he called out. He knocked again.
"Hang on," Jim said as he moved the couch that was barricading the door. He then opened the door. "You guys okay?"
"Yes!" Connor said tersely as he and Giselle walked in.
Jim closed the door and locked it. "Where have you guys been?"
"Walking here in the rain," Giselle said as her jacket dripped rainwater into a puddle on the tile floor.
"I see that. So you guys saw real zombies?" Jim laughed. "Sigma Phi was pulling a prank last night, everyone on this floor was dressed up like zombies. They even simulated a guy getting turned into a zombie and a woman getting eaten. Man, their pranks get crazier every year. Oh, and how did you guys get here? You know there's a quarantine in place, right?”
"Jim, I don't think those were actors last night. There's totally a dead lady at the end of the hall. She got eviscerated," Connor replied, grimacing. "And yes, there is a quarantine in place! But when zombies broke into Giselle's house, we ran, and came here. I expected to see more police, but…" he shrugged, "I didn't."
"You guys walked here all the way from Tonawanda?" Vik asked.
"Yep," Connor replied.
Jim whistled. "And you guys didn't get eaten by zombies?"
He didn't smile. "No. Did you hear me man? There's a woman's corpse in the hallway!"
Jim’s smile faded. "You did say that, didn't you? I thought you were kidding."
"He wasn't," Giselle said. "Go see for yourself."
Jim moved the couch again and walked out into the hallway. He looked down toward where the action had been the night before and saw a woman lying in what appeared to be a pool of blood.
He walked toward her and gasped as he reached her. Her abdomen had been torn open and she had been disemboweled. Jim felt dizzy and nauseous.
He turned away from the co-ed's corpse, leaned over and threw up on the floor. As his stomach heaved, suddenly the lights went out. His vomit made a wet sound as it splashed on the floor in the dark.
He coughed and stood back up as the retching stopped. He wiped his mouth with his shirt and heard a scratching noise on a nearby door. He heard more growls come from other dorm rooms.
"Guys?" he called out. His voice echoed in the hallway.
"You okay? It sounded like you just hurled!" Jeff yelled.
"Yeah, I did hurl. There's definitely a dead woman down here."
"Uh, what happened to the lights?" Jeff asked.
"Power must have gone out. It's raining pretty hard out there."
Jim started walking back in the direction of his dorm room, feeling along the wall. He passed doors that were pulsating as furious scratching sounds issued forth. Finally, he made it back to his dorm room.
"It should be daylight out soon," Vik said.
"Good, my phone's almost dead," Giselle said in response.
"Yeah, my iPhone got soaked on the way here," Connor said. “Lousy phone.”
Jim re-entered his dorm.
"Well guys, me and Giselle are pretty tired," Connor said, stretching. "All that walking in the rain can make one quite sleepy. I think we're going to walk next door to my dorm and change into some dry clothes and sleep."
"Okay, be careful," Jeff said.
"We will," Connor said. "We've got some furniture I could rip apart to kill zombies, if the need arises."
Jeff grimaced. "You mean my table?"
Connor shrugged, grinning. "Possibly. That’s okay, Ikea has more of them I’m sure. Goodnight all!"
Jim pushed the couch against the door after they had left. "I'm pretty beat too."
Vik nodded, "Yeah. I guess we might as well sleep some more."
"Yeah, is it okay if I stay here?" Jeff asked. "I'd rather not sleep next to the lovebirds."
"Sure," Jim said.
Jim awoke around noon. He stood up, stretched and looked outside. It was still pouring down rain. The streets were nearly empty, except for a stopped police car blocking the road. Its lights were flashing and the driver side door was open. There was no cop in sight though. He turned and walked back to the couch in the front room. Jeff was laying on the floor snoring. The power must have come back on at some point during the morning, as the clock on the stove was flashing.
He tried calling his mom again. His phone still wouldn't connect to the network. He turned the TV on and saw that a video outlining the conditions of the quarantine was looping. He sighed. What was going on?
Jim tried to remember what he had heard about Owasa Disease, but kept drawing blanks. As a film student, he hadn't really been following that part of the news lately.
He got up and walked into the kitchen. What did he want to eat? He opened the cupboard and scanned the shelves. Ramen sounded good.
He pulled a couple of packets out and set them on the counter. He pounded his fists on each packet a few times and heard the distinctive crunch as bricks of noodles were broken up. He then opened a cabinet and pulled a saucepan out.
He filled it with water and put it on the stove. After he turned the burner on he pulled some chicken out of the fridge. He had grilled some chicken a few nights before in the Quad and had some left over.
He then cut up some broccoli and carrots from the fridge and waited for the water to boil. When it did, he emptied the packets of noodles into it and added the chopped vegetables and chicken. Then he waited.
He heard footsteps behind him.
&nbs
p; "What are you making?" Jeff asked sleepily.
"Ramen with chicken and vegetables. If you want some I can add more noodles," Jim replied.
"Sure man."
He added a couple more packs of noodles. When it was finished cooking, he poured some of the water out. Jim spooned some of the steaming noodles into a bowl and walked back into the living room. As he sat on the couch, Vik walked out of his bedroom.
"What did you cook Jim? It smells good."
"Ramen with chicken and vegetables. There might be some left after Jeff finishes making his bowl, if you want some?"
"Sure, that sounds good!"
Vikram Patel had come to America with his family from India when he was two. He had grown up in Houston and had come to UB to study Mechanical Engineering. He had been Jim’s roommate since their second year of college.
Jeff, on the other hand, had been Jim’s friend since they had been six. He had lived a block further down East 73rd from where Jim’s mom lived. His dad had been a senior analyst at some investment firm where he ran some department that dealt with buying Treasury bonds. He and Jim went to school together until their sophomore year of high school.
That fall, Jeff’s dad’s investment bank collapsed and he lost his job. Jeff’s parents were forced to sell their townhouse, which, in retrospect, miraculously sold very quickly. They moved to Queens and then Jeff and Jim only got to hang out occasionally until college.
Around 2:00 pm, Connor and Giselle knocked on the door and Jim let them in. They all watched some more zombie movies and talked about what they would do when the quarantine was over. Surely the authorities were clearing areas of zombies, right?
Chapter Five
Katie Barnes
Day 0
“Let’s get going,” the police officer said as he climbed into the squad car. “Hey, why are you crying?”
Katie was practically hysterical. “Please don’t take us downtown! Please! Just take us home, please officer! I’m so sorry we broke curfew! Please just take us home! Please! Please!” she cried.
Joel placed a comforting hand on her back. “Officer, I understand you have protocol to follow, but please take us home. That’s where we will be safest. I can assure you neither we nor anyone in our household is infected. We can happily abide by the rules of quarantine there,” he said calmly.
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