Three

I started to shake and ended the call to try again.  Screams echoed from outside and inside the building.  Kristin and I weren’t the only ones awake and seeing the attack.

Another guy ran from our building, yelling and waving his hands.  The dogs stopped their violent assault, lifting their heads as one.  In that moment, I saw they weren’t really dogs.  They had no ears that I could see, and their eyes glowed red. It wasn’t a reflection but an actual glow.

“Get out of there.  He’s not moving,” someone yelled from below.

Whoever said that was right.  The man on the ground was a bloody mess.  I couldn’t be sure, but one of his legs looked broken or chewed off.

Behind the dogs, a car beeped and the lights flashed as someone tried using their key fob as a distraction.  The dogs didn’t even flinch.  They remained focused on the new guy who had stopped waving his arms and was slowly backing away.  He disappeared from our line of sight and the dogs howled, leaping forward.

The screaming started up again.  Beneath those sounds, there was yelling.  There were too many voices at once, but it sounded like there were people at the entrance, trying to hold the door closed.

Kristin turned from the window and opened our room door.  She listened in the hall while I kept trying 911 and stared at the fallen man.  What the fuck was going on?  My mind played that panicked question on repeat until my fifth redial.  That’s when I saw I had a message.

It was from Ryan from about forty minutes earlier, thirty minutes before the music had turned off.

It’s the dogs.  Stay inside.  Stay safe.  Stay away from the infected.

I stared at the words, struggling to think and breathe.  The dogs.  Did that mean Mom, Dad, and Ryan had seen the same thing Kristin and I had just seen?

Are you safe?  Did they come by you? I tried to send back.  But the message kept failing.  I tried to call and received the same “circuits are busy” message.  I turned on the TV, and every damn channel had the damn EAS bars with a message warning everyone to stay indoors to avoid infection.

“Infection from what?” I said.

It took three tries to turn off the TV because my hands shook so badly. When it was off, I still heard the distant screaming and yelling.

“What’s going on?”  Kristin didn’t have any better of an idea than I did, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

She turned from the door, her face white.  Shock.  I’d seen it before when Ryan broke his arm. I walked over to her and tugged her back into our room before I closed and locked the door.

“You need to sit down.”  She vacantly stared straight ahead as I led her to the couch.

“Kristin, you’re in shock.  We both are.  But we need to get past it.”  Sitting beside her, I took one of her hands in mine and rubbed it aggressively.  Doing something helped quell enough of the panic that I could think beyond “what the hell is going on?”

Those things outside were what we’d seen in the video.  What was happening here had happened in Germany.  Germany had lost communications, too.  Why?  What were those creatures?

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.  “Ryan said the dogs are infected.  The TV is saying to stay away from them.”

She exhaled shakily and new tears trailed down her cheeks.  I’d take crying over numb silence any day.

I stood up and went to the window to check on the man.  I watched in horror as he struggled to pull himself in the direction of the building.  Part of his leg dragged behind him, leaving a bloody trail.  Chunks were missing from his side.  My already racing heart kicked up a notch.  He couldn’t be alive.  Not in that condition.

“Mya,” Kristin sobbed.  I didn’t realize I was making noises until she spoke.  I swallowed hard and turned away from the window.

“J-just freaking out.  Did you hear what I said about the dogs?”

“Yeah.  Infected.  Stay away from ‘em.”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm the shaking.  We couldn’t both lose it.

“Right.” I sat beside Kristin for a moment and rubbed her hand again.  “If the dogs are infected and they bite people, then the people they bite might be infected, too.  We should stay away from everyone.  Stay in our room.”

She nodded, and I picked up my phone.

“Just stay here,” I said to her before getting up and going back to the window.  With my back to her, I slid the window open and got ready to take a picture of the man.  He paused in his struggles and looked up, as if searching out the noises coming from our building.  There were many.  A lot of shouts and crying.

I snapped the picture and then zoomed in on the image to see his face.  It was the same creepy, cloudy-eyed look as the man from the German video.

“Are they still out there?” Kristin asked.  “The dogs?”

“Not that I can see.  But there’s a lot of yelling still.”

There was a scuff of movement behind me, and I turned in time to see Kristin walk into our shared bathroom.  She knocked on the adjoining door.

“Amy?  Dawn?  Can you guys open up?”

I hurried toward Kristin.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

The door swung open to reveal a very pale Dawn.

“Where’s Amy?” Kristin said, looking into their room.

“Nate’s dorm,” Dawn answered.  “I thought I was alone.  Did you see outside?  Why is he moving?”

“Who’s moving?” Kristin asked.

“Never mind.  Did you lock your door?” I asked Dawn.

“I don’t know.  I closed it when I heard the yelling.”

I moved into Dawn’s room to make sure her door was locked.  Once I verified it was, I used the peephole to look out into the hallway.  Someone ran past.  A door slammed shut further down the hall.  The screaming and shouting was getting closer.

“Let’s go to our room,” I said.

Kristin nodded and led Dawn through the bathroom.  I took a moment to push a desk in front of Dawn’s door then retreated back the way I’d come.  In the bathroom, I locked the door from the inside.

When I joined Kristin and Dawn, Kristin was looking out the window.

“Will you help me move a desk?” I asked her.

She didn’t say anything about the man still dragging himself across the parking lot as we moved the desk.  In the hallway, the noises grew quiet.  I caught Kristin’s glance at the peephole.

“Don’t look,” I said quietly as we eased the desk into place.

She nodded and moved to sit next to Dawn.  I stayed near the door, staring at it.  None of this seemed real.

A sound at the door made me jump.  I held my breath, listening.  The sound came again.  A rasp of something against the other side of the panel.  Swallowing and struggling to breathe quietly, I leaned forward to check the peephole.

A cloudy, once-blue eye stared back at me.  I jerked backwards and covered my mouth.  I would not scream.  I would not panic.  I would not die.

Our doorknob moved slightly.  Not a turn.  More of a jostle.  None of us made a sound.

I waited, holding still and keeping quiet. Screams erupted nearby.  The noise outside our door stopped.

I let out a shuttering breath that threatened to turn into hysteric sobs.  No.  They’d hear.  I took a steadying breath and then another, working to control the hysteria.  When I turned, Kristin and Dawn were staring at me with wide eyes.  Their pale faces were a reflection of how I felt.

Outside, a smattering of distant pops broke out.  Lifting a finger to my lips, I let them know to remain quiet and moved back toward the window.  I couldn’t see anything beyond the street lights.  The roads were empty of traffic.

“I think we’re on our own,” I said softly.

I tried to move past the panic fogging my mind.  What should we do?  Should we stay and wait for help?  It was smart.  It was what people did when lost.  Stay in one spot.

“We can stay here.  We have water,” I whispered, mostly to myself, “but only enough snack food for a day or two.”  It could work.  Yet, I couldn’t get the parallels between what had happened in Germany and here out of my mind.  The video of the man being bitten then getting up.  Seeing the man outside torn up and then dragging himself toward the building. And the cloudy eye in our peephole. The EAS used the term infection.  Infections spread.  Did staying in one spot make sense?

“Leaving means…”  I turned to look at the door.  The person who had been staring back at me wasn’t healthy anymore.  If we left our room, we would likely end up the same way.

I glanced at Kristin and Dawn and saw the same hopeless defeat in their eyes.

More pops sounded from outside, pulling my attention back to the window.  Nothing moved but the guy in front of the building.  Even the screams inside had died down.  I hoped it was because people were in their rooms hiding, not dead.

In the silence, I could hear the distant whine of several engines.

“Get dressed,” I said.  I pulled on my pants and yanked the sheets from our beds.

“What are you doing?” Dawn asked quietly, following me.

“There are people out there with guns and vehicles.  We have two options.  Through the door or the window.  There’s no way I’m going in that hallway.”

Before we finished tying the sheets, Dawn pushed out the screen and waved her arms.

“I see them,” she said.

We joined her at the window and exhaled in relief at the sight of several military vehicles followed by a line of cars and trucks.

“If you’re not infected, come to your windows,” a man yelled from below.  His gaze swept up the building and over to the other wings.

He spoke softly to several uniformed men who broke off and moved around the building, out of sight.

“Stay in your rooms.  We’ll knock when it’s clear.”

On the far side of the vehicles, people emerged from the shadows, running in an awkward jerking way toward the sound of his voice.  Before they got too close, the uniformed men standing in the backs of trucks, shot at them.  The runners dropped with a shot to the head.

“It’s real, isn’t it?” Dawn said.  “Zombies.  Hellhounds.  I’m not going to wake up, am I?”

I didn’t say a thing. What could I say?

Instead, I stepped away from the window and helped Kristin move the desk from the door.  I watched the halls through our peephole.  Gunshots echoed from inside the building.

Several minutes later, a shot rang out on our floor.  It wasn’t long before a uniformed man knocked on our door.

“It’s clear.  You have ten seconds to open the door before—”

I opened the door not waiting to hear the rest.

“Stay close and stay behind me,” he said.

We joined seven other girls.  Behind us, two more military men guarded the hallway from where they’d come.  An unmoving body lay on the floor.  The hysteria I’d shoved down threatened to bubble back up.  I turned away from the sight and followed the lead man.

We made slow progress through the rest of the wing, clearing other healthy people from their rooms, before we reached the stairwell.  Our footsteps echoed as we ran down four flights to the ground floor.

Outside, another uniformed man waved us toward the vehicles where other students were hurrying to get into the back of the trucks.  Through the chaos of evacuation, more infected ran from the dark.  Shots didn’t stop ringing.  Dawn and Kristin pressed close to me as we waited for our turn.

As soon as everyone was in and the buildings cleared, men with guns jumped onto the backs of the trucks, and the engines started again.