Vic cut him off, “We’ll wait.”
Marcus ignored Ali. “No, seriously, go ahead without me.” He looked at his watch. “I’m gonna call your mother right quick. I’ll catch up with you guys, but if I can’t find you I’ll text.”
“Wait, can I take my phone out to make sure I don’t miss your text?” Ali smirked.
Marcus sneered.
Ali shrugged in response.
“Okay, I know we’ve covered a lot so far and some of you may need a break,” Sabrina said. “Or need to go to the restroom. So, we will take ten minutes and meet right back here. Then I’ll show you, maybe, my favorite part of the campus. The Main Quad.”
The group dispersed in different directions as Vic’s stomach grumbled.
Ali, experiencing the same hunger, looked at Vic. “That’s why I didn’t know why you told my Pops we’d wait for him.”
“It’s only right,” Vic said.
Ali waved him off.
“What?” Vic said. “Listen, I know Marcus can be a little extra at times. But he’s trying.”
“Trying what exactly?” Ali said. “You know how he’s been since Patrice died.”
“Can you blame him? That was his son,” Vic said.
“Oh, I know that was his son. He never lets me forget it,” Ali said. “But he never remembers that I’m his son too. And that was my brother.”
A bright orange light blazed the sky. The campus ground shook, toppling most everyone over like little toy plastic army men in the middle of a tornado. The light did not last for more than three seconds, but the traces of the bizarre coloration remained above them for everyone to view. If it wasn’t for the auburn sky, the onlookers would have thought it was nothing but a severe earthquake. As seconds elapsed, and people began gathering themselves, they all felt a stark difference from before the disruption. Some people’s dispositions were altered. Fights sporadically broke out around the campus. It looked as if a spontaneous riot broke out amid the once tranquil Stanford campus.
“Wake up!” Vic shouted at a catatonic Ali as screams swarmed the pair in the middle of the White Memorial Plaza.
Vic couldn’t decipher what was going on. He looked around and Mr. Nelson was nowhere to be found. People ran and shouts of terror bounced around in every direction. Vic thought they were on the verge of getting trampled by the oncoming crowd.
“Come on!” Vic yelled two inches away from Ali’s face.
Ali blinked, then shook his head of the cobwebs. Still somewhat disoriented, he scanned the campus.
“Where’s my dad?” Ali said.
Vic didn’t answer as he tried to spot a place to hide.
“Let’s move,” Vic said.
“I’m not leaving him!” Ali’s head swiveled like an office chair.
Ali’s first thought was that they were in the midst of a terrorist attack. The lack of gunshots ruled out a wild gunman. There were no explosions either. But altercations broke out all around them and every direction looked like a free-for-all.
“Ali!”
The bass from his familiar voice whipped both of the boys around. They spotted Marcus as he dashed towards them with blood on his once crisp white dress shirt. He sidestepped a skirmish between two men and made it to Ali and Vic.
“We gotta go!” Marcus shouted.
Ali looked his father up and down. He noticed his bulging eyes. “What happened? Are you shot?” His voice quivered as he hesitated to touch him.
“I’m all right,” Marcus said. “Let’s move!”
Marcus’s affirmation didn’t put Ali any further at ease, but he moved nonetheless.
Then it happened. A vision they would never forget. Vic noticed it first and directed Ali and Marcus towards the action.
A woman grabbed a man and bit right into his chest. Another man ripped off the arm of a young woman with his jaws. The aggressors looked human, but moved around the campus on all fours like animals and pounced on their victims. The campus now resembled a wildlife preserve.
Marcus, Ali, and Vic ran away from the crowd, past the water fountain that was now sangria colored and filled with a variety of human limbs.
“There!” Vic pointed at the campus bookstore.
They sprinted towards the door and an alarm went off stopping them dead in their tracks. The light that accompanied the alarm blinded the three of them. Then, the metal gates on the glass windows dropped down. The loud thud was the sonic exclamation point on the fates of those left inside the bookstore. Ali, Marcus, and Vic watched as people tried to make their way out of the building by charging the glass to shatter it. Someone hurled a chair at the window. The glass didn’t even chip as they listened to the muted screams coming from inside.
“We need to do something,” Vic said. He looked up at Marcus for direction.
Marcus looked around. But there was nothing he could do. He realized he had to concentrate all of his efforts on their safety.
“We gotta help them,” Ali said.
Ali’s eyes locked on the horrified face of a middle-aged woman pressing against the glass as she begged for help. The screams got louder, until they could not see inside the bookstore anymore as the windows became clouded with blood.
“It’s too late,” Marcus said. “We can’t do anything for them.”
A gunshot rang out in a distance. Marcus, Ali, and Vic all ducked. A campus policeman fired at a man. The man kept charging at him on all fours like a rabid dog. The policeman plugged him two more times. He didn’t drop. Then, he shot him in the head, and he blew back onto the lawn. He stopped moving.
“Are those?” Vic said.
Ali looked at him.
“Let’s go,” Marcus said.
They reversed course and sprinted toward another building. Marcus tried to open the door. It didn’t budge. He looked behind him and neither creatures or other humans were following them. He grabbed a brick and chucked it through the first floor window. Then, he peeked inside to make sure the immediate surroundings were safe.
“Come on,” Marcus said. He served as lookout as Vic and Ali made their way in through the window. Marcus followed. The door had been barricaded with a folding table and chairs. The three of them slid a vending machine in front of the window to serve as a barricade.
Marcus ushered them through the building. He had no idea what he would do if he encountered one those monsters, but he was willing to do whatever it took to protect his boys and get home to see his wife.
“There?” Vic said as he pointed at the gymnasium.
“Too easy. If those…things get in, we’re sitting ducks,” Ali said.
“Good point,” Marcus said.
The screams from outside got louder as they closed in on the building.
Vic cracked open a door. The three of them braced themselves for what could possibly jump out at them. It was an equipment closet.
“We can use these,” Vic said. He handed Marcus a baseball bat, Ali a field hockey stick, and a bat for himself.
“Fam?” Ali peaked into the closet, and then he looked at Vic as he awkwardly held up his field hockey stick. What am I supposed to do with this? he thought.
“There’s only two,” Vic shrugged.
Ali rolled his eyes.
"Take mine," Vic held out his bat.
Ali thought about it. "No, you'll need it more than I will." A baseless assumption and boast, but that's just how Ali was and Vic knew that. He didn’t think anything of the comment.
"Up," Marcus pointed to the stairs. The higher we go lessens the likelihood those creatures will be able to find us, he thought. He ran up the staircase of the one floor building, and the boys followed closely behind.
They reached a door marked "Roof". Marcus fiddled with the door knob. The door only opened a few inches.
Marcus heard faint but distinct whispers coming from the other side of the entrance. It sounded like a man arguing with a woman.
Then the man's voice shouted, "Get the fuck out of here! We have weapons
, and we will use them.”
"Help us," Marcus said. He code switched to his non-threatening voice, as he knew that would make them more susceptible to opening the door. "We will not harm you. Please, I have my two boys with me."
"Leave now," the man replied.
"Please. I'm begging you," Marcus said. He didn't know what else to say. He was well aware they had no leverage in this situation and needed to seek refuge with whoever was on the other side of the door. "We're not those things. We are humans."
Nothing happened.
Marcus continued, "Listen, you sound like good people. You don't want our deaths on your conscience."
A loud roar and crash came from down the stairwell. Somebody or something had broken through the barricade, and Marcus, Ali, and Vic didn't want to stick around to find out if the new guests were friend or foe. The noise got louder.
"Let them in," a woman said.
A precious five seconds elapsed. A dejected Marcus looked back at the frightened faces of the two boys. They heard a commotion from behind the door. The door then opened wide enough for a single person to squeeze through at a time.
A blonde woman, late thirties, appeared. "Come in," she said.
Vic wedged through the cracked door first. Then Ali followed by Marcus. As soon as Marcus stepped through the doorway one of the beasts crashed up against the door. It poked its head through the small opening.
Ali and Vic got their first up-close view of the creatures they'd been trying to evade. It was an elderly woman, and the feral beast’s mouth was agape as she tried to wedge her way through the door. Her bright green eyes were without pupils and glowed right when the man, forties, wearing an old, faded Stanford University sweatshirt, smashed the creature in the head with a wooden 4x4. The beast fell back down the stairwell. The man locked and bolted the door and the group shifted a freezer back in front of it.
Marcus, Ali, and Vic were met with cold stares from the others on the roof. Nobody said a word or moved until the blonde woman spoke up.
"My name is Nelly." She then pointed to a brown-haired girl, teenager, and a shivering, small eight-year-old boy. "That's my daughter, Clara, and son, Phil."
Another teenaged boy wearing a red tour guide polo said, "I'm Nathan."
The man in the Stanford sweatshirt said, "Charles. And that's my son, Reggie." He pointed to a tall kid with broad shoulders. "The next starting quarterback for the Cardinals." He said it as if that status mattered in their current situation.
“I’m Marcus. And this is Ali, my boy, and Vic, his friend."
"You can put those down," Nelly said as she motioned to their weapons. “The roof is clear of those things. We all were on the same tour with Nathan when—"
As they placed their weapons on the floor in a pile, something smashed against the door. Marcus, Ali, Charles, and Reggie instinctively rushed towards the door and put their body weight up against the freezer. After five more thumps, the attempts to get through the door stopped.
"Holy shit," Reggie said. "Does anybody know what the fuck those things are?"
"I only seen them murder about twenty or so people and eat their flesh," Marcus said.
"This can't be," Phil said. "Monsters aren't real."
"They're not," Nelly said as she rubbed the top of her son's head. "They're just sick people."
"Sick people?" Charles said. “Get the fuck outta here. You know it's the Muslim terrorists right? Biological warfare. They're coming for us. It was only a matter of time.”
Everybody but Charles's son looked at him with a blank face. He stopped talking, because it suddenly dawned on him that he might've offended Marcus and Ali. Should I ask if they’re Muslim? he thought.
“Maybe the Muslims attacked here specifically to get Stanford’s next starting quarterback?” Ali said.
Vic laughed. Marcus wanted to laugh, because it was rare that he wasn’t the target of his son’s smart mouth. But he held it in, and lightly tapped Ali signaling him to stop talking.
"I have to get home," Marcus said thinking about his wife.
"What about Mom?" Ali said.
"I'm sure she's fine," Marcus said. He wasn't confident in his own answer, as he was probably more worried about her than Ali was, but didn't want to strike more unnecessary fear in the boy. "This is probably a local thing. She probably doesn't even know what's happening.
"It has to be on the news," Vic said. “But she doesn't even know if we're alive or not."
Marcus peered over the edge of the roof to survey the campus. Fires littered the once picturesque campus. As the sun went down, he couldn't make out the figures moving around below. Were they still human or the creatures? Nobody could tell.
"So...what are we going to do?" Nathan said.
Right after he posed the question, there was an explosion in a nearby building. The group on the roof witnessed a few survivors in other surrounding buildings jumping from windows by choice or by force. It was too difficult to tell from their vantage point.
"He's right," Marcus said. "We definitely can't stay here forever."
“What do you mean? We got food," Charles said. "We can stay for as long as it takes for help to come."
Ali stepped up and pointed to the mayhem on the ground, "Does it look like help is coming?"
Marcus motioned for Ali to fall back. "He's right. You don't know what else is going on out there."
"I'm waiting for the helicopter," Charles said.
"Helicopter?" Nelly said.
"There's always a helicopter," Charles responded.
"This might not even be an isolated incident," Nathan shouted. "Who knows what's going on in the rest of the city...state...or country?"
Nelly pulled Charles, Nathan, and Marcus together. "Maybe we should have this conversation away from them." She looked over at Ali, Vic, Clara, Phil, and Reggie.
Marcus and Charles nodded in agreement while Nathan was surprised to be included in the adult group. Together they walked over to the side of the roof.
The kids formed their own assembly in the center of the roof and were situated in a way where they couldn't witness what was going on down on the ground.
"What the fuck happened?" Ali said to Vic. "Be honest with me." Ali still didn't know what happened to him. Did he blackout? He didn’t even remember or feel the earthquake.
"Huh?" Vic said.
"One minute we're talking about food or something. Next thing we're in the middle of a horror movie," Ali said.
"Wait," Clara said. "He's joking right? You didn't see the light in the sky?"
Ali shook his head.
"What about the earthquake?" Reggie said
Ali shot him a blank stare. Vic put his arm around Ali's shoulder.
"They're right," Vic said. "All of that happened. We were talking, and then there was an orange light in the sky. And then the ground shook. Or did the ground shake then the light? I can’t remember. I fell to the ground. Well, everybody did really. Except you. I looked up and you were standing there...frozen. When I got over to you, you were just there...expressionless."
"Great, we're trapped on the roof during a terrorist attack with a short bus retard," Reggie said.
"You fucking meathead. Isn’t it time for your PED break?” Ali shot back at Reggie.
"Forget him," Vic said.
"I'm serious, Vic," Ali whispered. "But I don't remember any of that."
"Maybe you hit your head or the shock of everything blocked it out," Vic said. "Who knows?"
Vic downplayed the incident. He didn’t want to scare Ali as he sensed his blackout still had him shook, but he was puzzled about what actually happened to his friend as well.
"Well, you seem fine now," Phil said.
Clara nodded. "My brother is right. No use crying over spilled milk."
"Yeah, all of that doesn't matter," Vic said.
Ali dropped his head and came to terms with it. They’re right, he thought. Knowing what happened wouldn't make the slightest bit of differe
nce in their current predicament. His focus had to be on getting out of there and getting home.
Vic tried his cellphone. Nothing.
"There's no use in trying," Clara said to him.
"My battery is dying," Ali said. "Any outlets up here?"
Nobody responded.
"Try your CD player. Maybe we can get a news station or something," Vic said to Ali.
Ali reached for his backpack, but then stopped. "It doesn't have a radio."
Back on the edge of the roof the four adults tried to make sense of their current situation.
"I'm not going anywhere. Me and my boy are staying right here," Charles turned his back to the group like a bratty child on the verge of taking his ball and going home.
"Listen, I know you're scared," Marcus said to Charles's back. "We all are." Charles turned back to Nelly hoping she could talk some sense into the immature asshole. She nodded, agreeing with Marcus. "But we're going to have to make a move. Or we'll die up here. And we have a better chance if we all go together."
"Who the fuck are you?" Charles said as he walked closer towards Marcus. “Are you my boss now? I don't have to listen to you."
Marcus, fed up with Charles’s shit, pushed his chest out and balled up his fists.
Nelly noticed Marcus's hands and shouted, "Stop! You're scaring the kids."
"You think me raising my voice is scaring the kids?" Charles said. "Look at this shit. We're in hell."
"And you have all the answers?" Nelly asked Charles.
Charles looked around and took a deep breath. He had no clue what to do, but he decided to shoot with the first things that came to mind. "We wait up here for campus police...or the real police. Maybe the National Guard. The Army. Homeland Security. It's only been a few hours. They have to be coming, right?"
"We should operate under the premise that we're on our own," Nelly said. She pointed one hundred yards from their building. Nelly, Marcus, Nathan, and Charles looked as they saw a cop car crash up against a tree and flip over. The cop crawled out of the car and got up. He fired his gun at one of the creatures, then at another one right before being mauled by a pack of the beasts.
"Shit," Charles said.
Nelly believed she had succeeded in convincing Charles.
A Hard Reset_The Disruption Book Zero Page 2
