Zombified (Episode 2): Yankee Heights (2 page)

Unplug for once
, Matty thought.  He ducked into the men's room and stepped up to a urinal.  Someone in the stalls grunted; the announcement preceded a heavy splash.  Matty pulled his tee shirt up over his nose as he finished and washed up.

His first class was over, so Matty ambled through the halls in no rush to get to his next course: Probability.  He passed by the library and turned into the long hallway of classrooms leading to the mathematics department. 

A short, lean man with balding silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses paced the corridor; he fussed with a red bowtie, smoothing his hands over a pressed suit.

"Hey, Professor!"  Matty trotted over.  "What's with the gestapo at the front?"

"Mr. Josephs," the professor greeted Matty; "It's nothing to worry about, I assure you.  Move along and—"

"You know I'm not going anywhere until you spill the beans, teach."  Matty set his feet apart and crossed both arms. 

"Now I remember why you were such a thorn in my side last semester."  Professor Gibson frowned. 

"What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?"  Matty shrugged.  "Come on, out with it."

The teacher smoothed his sleeve and nodded to an empty classroom.  They stepped inside; Professor Gibson shut the door. 

"There was a threat called in this morning," he said.  "Someone threatened to come in and share their illness with the university."

"Huh?"  Matty's eyebrows scrunched down.  "What kind of a threat is that?  It was taken seriously?"

"Well," the professor cleared his throat, "they claimed to have the flu that is going around and they threatened to commit suicide."  He mimed firing a gun at his temple. 

"Whoa.  That seems pretty radical, teach.  Why not threaten to come in and leave dirty tissues everywhere?  I mean, a splattered brain is nasty business but it's hardly necessary to spread germs."

Mr. Gibson nodded.  "Precisely the point.  There was fear we were dealing with a sociopath."

"Gotcha.  Campus security wasn't checking for weapons, though.  If this looney toon was threatening to bring a gun, why not screen for guns?"

Professor Gibson shrugged.  "My guess is that they didn't want to alarm the rest of the student body.  The state police were confident they knew where the call originated and it wasn't from anyone registered at the university."

A buzzer rang: next period was about to begin.

"That's my cue, teach," said Matty.  "I know!  This is strictly hush-hush, right?"

Professor Gibson smiled.  "What a bright young man you've become.  I take all the credit."

"Naturally."  Matty opened the door and melted into the stream of students flowing along the hallway.

CHAPTER 2

Ten out of twenty-four seats were empty.  The math professor didn't even bother with attendance.  His lecture droned on; Matty sat in the back, hand pressed into his cheek and pinky finger pushing the corner of his right eye up, giving the appearance of being half awake.

"So knowing the possible combinations of cards, what are the odds of drawing a straight flush at the poker table?"  The teacher twirled a piece of chalk in his hand.  "Anybody?"

"Damn near impossible," some smart-ass called out.  Snickers and giggles filled the room. 

Matty rolled his eyes and banged his forehead on the desk.

"Mr. Josephs," the teacher raised his voice above the juvenile squawking, "would you care to wager a guess?"

Heads turned to the back.  Matty was by far the oldest student in the room, having waited until he was twenty-six to start at community college.  How he despised the foolish eyes pointed in his direction, challenging and taunting him.

"Fine," he said; "if we're talking about a five-card draw, then the odds are something like one in three hundred and seventy thousand—give or take."

All eyes turned back to the professor.

"Let's do it out and see how close Mr. Josephs' guess is to the answer."  He started laying out the equations on the board. 

Matty lowered his head back down and tried not to snore.

A few minutes later, the teacher's sudden shout wrenched Matty from a pseudo-daydream of half-naked pixies and seductive mermaids—one of his favorites.

One of the girls sitting in the front row had collapsed; she was on the floor, limbs twitching, as the teacher tried to clear the area around her.  Another student had bolted out the door, yelling for help.

"Nobody go near her," the teacher said; "there's nothing you can do.  Let the seizure run its course."

Matty packed up the textbook and slung his backpack over a shoulder.  A small crowd gathered around the convulsing figure; the teacher hovered nearby, pushing people back and asking everyone to stay calm.

"Class dismissed," Matty murmured.  He opened the door and stepped into the hallway.  "What a fucked up day this is turning out to be."

His next class wasn't until one, so Matty meandered to the cafeteria and bought two large coffees.  The library was deserted, and he found an isolated booth in the far corner.  He checked the desk and the partition walls, but nothing new had been carved since the last time.  "For a good BJ" was still there, but the number was scratched off.

Matty slid the netbook out from its nylon sleeve and powered it on.   While it was loading, he sipped the steaming coffee and shuddered.  "Fuck me, that's worse than Drippin's brew." 

He keyed in the login password and was on the desktop in a few seconds.  The wifi link indicated an excellent signal; he opened the browser and surfed through various news sites.

The flu epidemic had spread to most major cities, but the mortality rate was less than three percent.  Matty sifted through some articles about the biological factoids of mutating viruses and suppressed immune systems, eventually landing on a page that showed something new and disturbing.

Video clips of people having seizures all over the place filled a page entitled "Wave of Seizures Shocks Medical Community".  The clips were uploaded by phone and were not part of the original article, but it was an exact replica of the scenario from Matty's previous class.

The article read: "Seemingly healthy people are suffering from seizures—some of them considered 'Grand Mal' seizures.  Health officials are stumped as to the cause of these seizures, and there appears to be no link to the ongoing flu epidemic."

What kind of shit did they put in the vaccines this time?
  Matty wondered.  He closed the browser and opened the 'Games' folder. 
An hour of world conquest and dictatorial regimes should make me feel a whole lot better
.  He popped earphones in and turned up the volume.

Matty polished both coffees and stacked the cups inside each other.  He checked the time: twenty minutes to his favorite class, Philosophy. 

A warning beep sounded from the game: another enslaved city was in revolt. 
This is how we handle rebels in Mattopia!
  He clicked on a nuclear icon and plotted the missile launch; the flash of fire and erupting mushroom cloud indicated a direct hit. 
Booya!  Now let's see you revolt, peasants!

Reveling in autocratic power, he failed to notice the declarations of war piling up in the diplomacy field near the bottom of the screen.  As Mattopian troops massacred unarmed rebels in the digital world, his computer-controlled opponents launched a dozen ICBMs and reduced the once-thriving Mattopia to ashes.

"Sons of bitches!"  He yelled out, standing and shaking a fist at the computer screen.  His eyes scanned the library, suddenly aware of the silence that he so eloquently shattered. 

"There's no one else here," a brunette with pigtails and neon-pink glasses said from the circulation desk.  "Sounds like a pretty intense book."

Matty pulled the earphones out and smirked.  "I was playing 'World Conquests' and got nuked by a handful of upstart countries with no respect for absolutism."

"Uh-huh."  She rolled her eyes and went back to texting, tweeting, or whatever she was doing on the handheld mind-control device. 

"Like you even understood a syllable of what I just said," he murmured. 

Matty powered down the netbook and slid it back into the sleeve.  He tossed the empty cups on the way out.  Outside the library, the hallway was silent and void of movement. 

He wandered the halls for a bit, peeking into dozens of empty classrooms.

"Hello?"  He yelled out, cupping both hands around his mouth.  "Well ain't this a bitch."  On his way back to the cafeteria for another round of java, Matty bumped into Dan LaFleur, a fellow nerd and chairman of the computer gaming club: somebody who appreciated digital dictatorships.

"Hey MJ, what are you up to?"  Dan asked.  He cracked every knuckle on both hands in quick, rapid-fire movements.

"I'm trying to figure out what's going on around here?  I sat down in the library for an hour to play some conquests and all of a sudden it's a ghost town.  What gives?"

"Dude, classes have been cancelled for the rest of the day!"  Dan snorted; it was his special version of chuckling or laughing or… something to do with amusement. 

"Shit.  I could've stayed home and slept all day."  Matty threw his hands up. 

"Hey, it's all good MJ."  Dan stepped in closer. "There's a big party tonight at the Phi Moon Beta house.  Everyone is invited!"

"Are you shittin' me?"  Matty gawked.  "Everyone?"

"Well, everyone who isn't in bed sick or, you know," Dan shook his limbs in mock seizure, "having a spasm."

"At least there's something to do.  When does it start?"

Dan shrugged.  "The guys at Phi Moon went to the liquor store.  They said it was going to start as soon as they got back."

"Any desperate freshmen ladies or girls with terribly low self-esteem?"  Matty raised an eyebrow.  "For your sake, I mean."

"Aw, real funny asshole!"  Dan gave Matty the finger.

"I'm gonna get some grub, but I'll see you at the party," said Matty.  "You want anything special to drink?  I'm not a beer guy, so I'll stop and pick up something worth drinking."

"I already have a couple pints of Jack."  Dan gave a thumbs-up.  "I'm heading there now, so I might be wasted by the time you show up."

"Good idea: start earlier and increase your odds of finding a woman desperate or drunk enough to show you her tits."  Matty laughed and punched Dan in the arm.

"Fuck you, MJ!  At least I've gotten laid in the last year!"

Matty bowed.  "You take this round, Daniel-san, but I don't know if your hand counts." 

"Har-har-har," mocked Dan.  "You're full of laughs today, funny guy."

"Hey, it's a fucked up day filled with fucked up news," said Matty.  "I have to lighten the load somehow."

They chatted about the latest games before heading out to the lot; Matty was parked on the opposite side of Dan.  Only a handful of cars remained when Matty got to the pick-up. 

He climbed in and started… after a few tries, he started the engine.  Matty lit up a smoke and pulled out of the campus, heading for a local sandwich joint to pick-up an eighteen-inch torpedo stuffed with turkey, cheddar and real mayonnaise.

There were only two other college-aged kids in the shop when Matty arrived.  A television off in the corner reported on the flu epidemic, escalating violence, economic woes, and host of other my-life-isn't-that-shitty type of stories, but nothing on the seizures.  Even the flu coverage was subdued; maybe it was because he had heard a dozen similar reports in the past, but Matty pushed it to the edges of his awareness.

"Hey Matty," said the chocolate goddess behind the counter.  "The usual?"

"Yup."  He dropped a ten on the counter and tried to not stare at her. 
She has to be the sexiest creature on this good earth
. 

Someone in his mind took a snapshot of her smiling face—sparkling ivory teeth contrasting with rich brown skin—and kept it in a photo album; the imaginary album was filled with synaptic recordings of her voice, almond-shaped eyes, glossy lips, smooth arms, and oh-so delicious—

"Do you want the change, Matty?"  She waved a hand in front of his eyes.  "You okay, honey?"

"Hell no!" He pushed her hand away.  "You know I always tip, Kayla."

"Sure," she said.  "Seriously, are you okay?  You zoned out or something."

It's now or never
, something inside told him. 

"No, I'm not."  His mouth became the Sahara.  "All right, here it is: you distract me.  I can't think straight around you.  Do you wear some sort of pheromone perfume?"

She smiled that heart-stopping, knee-shaking smile of perfection.

"Was that a compliment, mister?"  She teased, winking sidelong at him.

"See!" He pointed at her.  "You are too damn beautiful to go winking at me.  Every time you smile or laugh or… wink, I get jelly legs."

Good thing there's nobody behind me
, Matty thought.  The sandwich chef at the workstation glanced over; Matty saw him shake his head. 
She probably gets hit on all the time
.  His heart sank. 
I'm just a number
.  Matty glanced at his order stub. 
Number fourteen, to be exact
.

"That's really sweet," Kayla said. 

Here comes the but
…

"Are you going to the Phi Moon house tonight?" she asked.

I didn't hear a but
, he thought. 
Did she just ask about the party?
  His mind reeled; his lead tongue sunk down into his throat. 
Answer her, numb-nuts!

"There isn't much else to do," Matty replied.

Well, that's not entirely true
, he thought. 
There is her
.

"Then I'll see you there, okay?"

"Kayla," Matty said in a hushed voice, "I am madly in love with you."

She laughed a rich, throaty laugh and slapped a hand to her mouth.  "I'm so sorry!"  Kayla apologized to the two customers and her co-worker.  She leaned over the counter and whispered, "You're going to get me in trouble!  I'll see you tonight."

"Yes you will," he replied and gave her a wink.  Judging by her reaction, Matty guessed that it came out slightly less seductive and more than a little goofy.