It was amazing how well it was going. The first couple of days, she was able to write over two thousand words each. The third day dipped a little, only eighteen hundred, but day four was amazing. Three thousand, six hundred, and seventy-eight. She had never written that many words in one day before. The writer’s high she had when she finally removed her fingers from the keyboard was the purest combination of euphoria and serenity she had ever felt.
The rest of the week had gone so well that she had lost track of the days and actually worked through Christmas, the day she had originally planned as a break. It was after ten p.m. when she finally realized it. She laughed at herself for getting so lost in her work.
She had been planning on calling her friend Patty to wish her a merry Christmas, but Patty’s home was in Delaware, so it was nearly eleven thirty there. Probably too late.
Belinda decided to text her instead. She could give Patty a call tomorrow. She dug her phone out of the dresser where she’d stuffed it, and turned it on. As it went through warming up and connecting to the network, she walked down the hall to the common area, grabbed the frozen mini-supreme pizza she’d been saving for this day out of the refrigerator, and popped it into the microwave.
Four minutes later she returned to her room with her gourmet meal on an elegant paper plate. From her smaller dorm-room fridge, she grabbed a Diet Coke and plopped down on her bed. The pizza was still a bit too hot, so she picked up her phone to text Patty, but paused, surprised, as she looked at the screen.
She had over two dozen text messages, and nearly as many voicemails. Most were from Patty, while the rest were from her other two close friends, Josh and Kaylee.
Patty: where r u? r u okay?
Patty: r there any containers there?
Patty: why rn’t u answering ur phone?
Kaylee: B, you ok? You’re all alone. You should come here.
Patty: answer ur phone!
Josh: Are you watching this? PCN…crazy!
Patty: Belinda, please PLEASE answer!!!
Belinda stopped reading and listened to the first of Patty’s voicemails. “God, I hope you’re okay. You’re probably watching TV, right? This is insane. Please tell me there are none of these things in Madison. Call me back as soon as you get this, okay?”
Ignoring the rest of the messages, she called Patty.
Two rings. Three. Four.
“Hi, it’s Patty. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Beep.
“Patty? It’s Belinda. What’s going on? I just got your messages. Call me.”
She tried Kaylee next. This time it didn’t even ring before going to voicemail. Belinda left a similar message for her.
She called Josh.
Two rings. “Hello?”
“Josh?”
There was a pause, a sniffle, then a stuttering voice, “Josh isn’t with us anymore.”
Her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. What does that mean?”
“Please don’t call again.”
The line went dead.
Despite the request, she did call again, but went straight to voicemail this time.
She stared at her phone. What the hell was going on?
Are you watching this?
Josh’s message.
She rushed across the room, plugged in her TV, and turned it on.
Though the television was tuned to what normally would be the Glitz Network, the logo in the corner belonged to Prime Cable News.
She watched for five minutes, but nearly nothing the news anchors said made sense. It was as if they were speaking another language, or, probably closer to the truth, working off a set of known facts Belinda was unaware of. What was clear was that something horrible either had happened or was happening.
She grabbed her computer and switched on the Wi-Fi for the first time in over a week. As soon as she had the signal, she opened her email program. While the messages started to download, she launched her web browser and went to the PCN website. There, she devoured story after unbelievable story, her shock growing with every paragraph.
When she read everything she could, she searched for news more specific to Madison.
TEN SHIPPING CONTAINERS LOCATED AROUND CITY
A later story talked of finding five more boxes. In the most recent article, posted that morning, she read about the sick showing up in large numbers at local hospitals, and that at least seven hundred people had already died. The reporter speculated that the total was far greater than that, as there were likely many more who had been too sick to seek medical help and passed away in their homes. The death toll was probably in the thousands, the reporter said.
Thousands? That was just here in Madison. If this was truly as spread out as the other reports suggested, then…
Oh, my God.
Unable to focus on the words anymore, Belinda walked over to her window and looked outside. Six floors below was the park that surrounded the dorm. Sometime in the past few days it must have snowed. The last time she’d checked, the ground had been bare, but now there was a layer of white at least a few inches thick.
The only way she could pick out the pathways was by the lights that lined them. Usually the grounds crew kept the paths clear to prevent the buildup of ice. But there wasn’t even so much as a footprint in the snow. Anywhere.
She looked back at the door to her room. When the break had begun, someone from the cleaning staff had come up to her floor every other day to do a light dusting, and see if the trash needed removing. Belinda couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen or heard one of them.
With a sense of dread, she reentered the hallway and made her way back to the common room. The trash can had one of those flopping panels to push rubbish through. She pulled the entire top off and looked inside the barrel. She could see the discarded containers and wrappers from her meals stretching back at least five days. Someone should have dumped it out already.
She ran to the stairwell door and pulled it open, thinking she could find one of the other students who’d stayed. But before she took the first step down, a voice in her head screamed, Wait!
The virus. The highly contagious virus. If anyone below had it, they’d give it to her. At the moment she felt okay. Actually, she felt good, never healthier. If she wanted to stay that way, she needed to avoid everyone at all costs.
She backed away from the stairs and slowly closed the door.
Using an extra bedsheet she had, she tied off the staircase door’s handle, making it harder for someone on the other side to open it. She dragged her roommate’s dresser out of their room and leaned it against the door. It might not have stopped anyone, but at the very least, it would crash down when the door opened, alerting her that someone was coming.
A bigger problem was the elevator. She could call it up and pull the stop button, but she had no idea who might have been inside in the past several days. Perhaps the virus was waiting for her on the control panel.
The thought made her pause. An hour before, she’d only been worried about where she should break the next paragraph of her story, and now she was living in fear of killer microbes.
The best she could do with the elevator was to tie her roommate’s mattress in front of the opening. She wasn’t satisfied with it at all, but she didn’t know what else to do.
For the next ninety minutes, she sat on the floor watching the news, her pizza forgotten. When she finally turned it off, she didn’t go to bed. Instead, she sat down with her laptop, opened a new file, and began to type.