afullmargin
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2009
- Posts
- 225
The first inkling Tiff had that anything was wrong was when her roommate didn't come home after work. Sure, it was spring break and she'd been getting pretty hot and heavy with her boyfriend of the semester but she always at least texted if she wasn't going to make it back before her opening shift at the coffee shop where they both worked. When the manager called and said she pulled a no-call, no-show there was no doubt something funky was up.
Tiff was halfway into her shift when the police showed up and told them all to go home and lock the doors - some kind of epidemic. Every channel and every website had different information; H1N1, Anthrax, the flu, rabies, leprosy - but they all said to stay indoors until the all clear was given and that everything was under control.
The second day, the cable went black. Then the radio, and then she couldn't even pull a wifi or cell signal.
By the fourth day, she was out of food and in the middle of the night the power died. Brief glimpses out the windows had told her that everything was NOT under control - it looked like everyone outside was on drugs, fighting and screaming. The random-sounding gunshots kept her inside on her bed where she tried to keep calm by working on her midterm papers until her laptop battery died.
Eventually, it was hunger that drove her out of her ground-floor apartment late in the evening on the fifth day. There was a mini-mart down the street that was even open Christmas day... and if they weren't open Walmart wasn't too far to get to. Clutching her keys with the longest jutting up between her knuckles, she'd at least been smart enough to wear her navy tracksuit in case she had a reason to run - nothing about what was going on felt right and she wanted to be ready.
Not even a block from the mini-mart, she could see that not only was it closed but that the front window had been smashed. There was nobody on the street that she could see and her curiosity and hunger got the best of her, leading her to sneak in through the broken doors as quietly as she could manage, her trainers crunching the glass as she crept away from the counter toward the aisles of convenience foods.
Tiff was halfway into her shift when the police showed up and told them all to go home and lock the doors - some kind of epidemic. Every channel and every website had different information; H1N1, Anthrax, the flu, rabies, leprosy - but they all said to stay indoors until the all clear was given and that everything was under control.
The second day, the cable went black. Then the radio, and then she couldn't even pull a wifi or cell signal.
By the fourth day, she was out of food and in the middle of the night the power died. Brief glimpses out the windows had told her that everything was NOT under control - it looked like everyone outside was on drugs, fighting and screaming. The random-sounding gunshots kept her inside on her bed where she tried to keep calm by working on her midterm papers until her laptop battery died.
Eventually, it was hunger that drove her out of her ground-floor apartment late in the evening on the fifth day. There was a mini-mart down the street that was even open Christmas day... and if they weren't open Walmart wasn't too far to get to. Clutching her keys with the longest jutting up between her knuckles, she'd at least been smart enough to wear her navy tracksuit in case she had a reason to run - nothing about what was going on felt right and she wanted to be ready.
Not even a block from the mini-mart, she could see that not only was it closed but that the front window had been smashed. There was nobody on the street that she could see and her curiosity and hunger got the best of her, leading her to sneak in through the broken doors as quietly as she could manage, her trainers crunching the glass as she crept away from the counter toward the aisles of convenience foods.
