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Six Weeks Ago

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I woke up when the first person in the dorm screamed.

My room was silent. My roommate wasn't supposed to show up until the second week of class, and the ceiling hung dark and unfamiliar above me as I lay deathly still in bed. Just listening. The clock projecting red numbers onto the wall near my feet read 4:13 AM.

A scream in the night in a dorm-style university residence is the kind of thing I maybe should help out with, but didn't want to. That's something I'd learned about myself over the years. It didn't matter how much first-aid or survival training I gained; how well I could stitch myself up or start a fire or build a shelter from scratch in the backwoods. When someone screamed in the night and it wasn't my responsibility, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for someone else to deal with it.

Footsteps speed-walked up the hallway. The resident assistant for our floor knocked on the door three rooms down. When it opened, I heard someone sobbing. Then a thump like a body falling to the ground, and silence.

It was raining outside. Or trying to, anyway; the first few drops smacked my window now and again, and the wind kept whistling and falling still again like there was a storm on the way. The forecast wasn't predicting a storm. I rolled over and pulled my blankets up around me, waiting for the RA to walk away again. She never did. Eventually, I fell back asleep.

Footsteps in the hallway woke me up again. Someone sprinted past my door as I opened my eyes. I remembered the scream. It was just after six now, and I think my mind started counting seconds on its own, because I got to seventy-six before the next scream ripped the silence. The person on the other side of the wall from me shot up in bed. She asked a question across her room, but nothing replied. Feet thumped to the ground. She repeated the question—a name—again, then again, louder, more panicked.

A car screeched and crashed outside.

The person in the room beside me went silent. I realized she'd pulled out her phone when her shaky voice reached me through the drywall. "Campus police?" Something about a medical emergency. Then she said, "Dorm room 304. Amy—"

Her voice cut short as she crumpled to the floor.

I sat up slowly.

I knew what real fear felt like. It was like a claw that wrapped around you without your consent, and then gripped you, pulling all your skin tight across your body. I could hear things, but only like I was underwater... warped, garbled, detached from their meaning. Someone began shouting down on the lawn outside my window. Someone else shouted in the hallway. A door slammed.

I crawled out from under my covers, hands gripping the blankets as I pushed them off. My door was unlocked. I stumbled over to it and stopped again with one hand on the doorknob, listening. Voices and footsteps rippled up and down the hallway. I could hear my own heartbeat through my skull, a drumbeat more befitting of a war drum than a flesh-and-blood organ. A voice passed by outside, panicky, shrill. "Call an ambulance. I don't know what's going on."

I slammed the lock shut and leaped back into bed, scrambling under the covers. Something was happening outside, and I don't know what. The only thing I felt was a sudden, overpowering instinct not to open my door, and not to make a sound, either. Another body hit the ground outside. Someone began to sob loudly. "Help," they said. It wasn't a shout. They weren't actually calling. "What's happening? Help. Somebody? What's going on?"

I dared to reach for my phone. When I'd whisked it back under the covers with me, I pulled it close and opened the news. There was...

There was nothing.

The last articles were some celebrity's new baby, coverage of the beachfront swim race I cheered on two days ago, and an ongoing newsfeed with updates on the flooding in the county south of us after last week's storm. I clicked the feed, to find the last news bite dated to 11:56 last night. It hadn't updated again since.

I returned to my browser search and blanked on what to type. My ever-helpful brain supplied my hometown's name. Nothing. Stupid. I tried this town's name instead. This turned up the university's student page on Geode, the most popular social media platform of the last few years. The page was exploding. The second-newest post stole my breath away.

Why are there bodies everywhere?

I began to scroll frantically, skim-reading the flood of activity. Panicked students typed the same questions I'd heard through my wall and out in the hallway, only now there were more. There were pictures. A fourth-floor view from the window, showing a car skidded off the road outside, the driver's form still visible in the front seat. Motionless. A hallway scattered with people who all looked like they'd collapsed where they stood. A screen clip of a news anchor. Out of nowhere, their eyes rolled back in their head, and they dropped out of sight.

Don't call the police, read one post on the Geode page.

What's going on? read another. Is it a pandemic?

The news is down

Stay in your rooms. Don't interact with anyone

Phones are dangerous. Don't call anyone, no matter what you do.

My roommate won't wake up?

Campus police phone line is down

I'm in room 112. Someone come help me, please

Where are the RAs?

Does this mean we don't have class today? Lol

Guys, this isn't just the town. It's all over

I'm trying to call my family. I can't get through

What's going on?

My phone buzzed. I saw the banner of a text pop up at the top of the screen, and didn't process the danger fast enough not to read it. It was from my sister.

Mom and dad collapsed. I don't know what's happening, T, but don't call. People go down as soon as you say their names. If I don't see you again, I just wanted to say I love you.

When you watch apocalypse movies or read apocalypse books, there's always a heroic narrative in them. Someone always survives, ventures out into the dangerous world, and rallies other survivors around them. I fantasized about that sometimes. How it must feel to have people look up to you and think you're smart and charismatic, responsible for so many lives. I'd even been in survival-like situations. Nothing life-or-death where other people were involved, but at least enough to know that I rose to the challenge when I knew what I was doing.

Turns out when I'm faced with real danger that I don't know, I don't react like a hero. I don't fight back or take the lead or try to find out what's going on. I react like prey, and hide.

I clicked off my phone screen the moment I'd read the text preview. My heart was beating hard enough to hurt. My whole chest hurt. Phones are dangerous, someone on the Geode page had said. Don't interact with anyone. Did that mean I just screwed myself? I didn't want to die. I was supposed to be a survivor, not the kind of person who went down six hours into the apocalypse. But the truth was, I was only good at the outdoorsy kind of survival stuff. I could light a fire and pitch a tent and stitch myself back up if I got injured. But this wasn't the backwoods. This was the city, and I was up against something I didn't understand.

Still, some things were transferable. The first rule of surviving was to shelter in place. To stay where you were, in case rescue came.

I wanted to answer my sister, but I couldn't take chances. I threw my phone across the room and burrowed under my covers. Pulled them right up over my head. Nobody came to my door. Nobody called my name. Did anyone even know it? I was suddenly much more glad I'd skipped most meet-and-greet frosh week activities. They got too awkward, so I chickened out, hid in my room, and played video games instead.

People go down as soon as you say their names.

My mind supplied another memory, and a snippet of tune. In elementary school, we used to play a game called Red Rover. Two lines of students linked arms, facing one another. They took turns deciding who they wanted to steal from the other team, and sang their intention and their target's name. The student they called had to run at them, to try to break through their line. Someone broke their arm playing that game when I was in third grade. The school banned it after that.

We didn't stop playing. We just played behind the hill instead, and posted someone on guard to warn us when a recess monitor was coming.

This wasn't a pandemic. It was some apocalyptic game of Red Rover, which meant it was probably a very bad dream. I clung to that thought. Just a dream. The storm should have been my first tip-off: there wasn't even rain predicted last night. If it was a dream, I could ride it out, and wake up in the morning to my first proper day of classes, everything back to normal.

My heartbeat slowed again. My blankets were sweat-soaked, but still warmer and safer than stepping outside, so I snuggled down and shut my eyes.

The sun streamed though my window when I woke up again. The clock read 10:29 but I didn't have class until 12, so I was still early. Everything was quiet. Relief throbbed through me so hard, I rolled onto my back and just dropped flat on my mattress, trying to process what the fuck I dreamed the night before. I got nightmares on occasion, but they were usually of me drowning. The stress of moving to a new town and starting university must have done some messed-up things to my subconscious. I fumbled for my phone, and went still.

It wasn't beside me. It was still on the other bed across the room, where I distinctly remembered throwing it.

My chest tightened again. That was a thing, right? Throwing things in your sleep. I slid out of bed and tiptoed across the room to retrieve my phone. No new texts. I was sure my family would have texted me if the world had ended while I was sleeping in. I typed in my passcode and my heart jolted again. There was a text. From my sister. Why wasn't it on my lockscreen?

I clicked the notification and forgot how to breathe.

Mom and dad collapsed, read the preview.

It wasn't a dream.

My hand shook as I opened the text. There it was, word for word. I could barely type straight as I answered.

Bee? I love you, too. Are you still okay?

Then I just stood in the middle of the room with my phone in my hands, staring at the screen and waiting. Brooklyn didn't reply. I needed this to still be a dream.

When I couldn't take the waiting any longer, I crept to my door instead. I froze with one hand on the doorknob as deja vu from last night pounded me from all sides. I didn't know what I was going to find in the hallway, if last night wasn't a dream. I saw pictures on the Geode page.

The pictures.

I let go of the door and darted to the window instead. When I peeked through the curtains, there was a car run into a pole at the edge of the road. I jumped back like the curtains had burned me. This was it. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't even brave. I was dumb enough last night to wait out whatever happened while hiding in bed, and dumb enough not even to answer my sister. I never told my family that I loved them.

Before I could second-guess myself again, I unlocked my door and cracked it open. I instantly slammed it shut again. The hallway outside was littered with bodies. 

Like this chapter if you know That Person who'd be happy class was cancelled  😂

Comment whether you'd help or hide!