Slept Through Thursday (Part 2)

Photo Credit: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) (Flickr.com)

Slept Through Thursday is a serial story. To start with the first chapter, please click here. Click here for more chapters!

“Well,” I said, staring at the computer screen, and quite sarcastically, “that explains a lot.”

It wasn’t the information on the computer screen that was helpful. It was the lack of information. The entire campus appeared to be off the Internet. But the campus Intranet was working, and that was where some of the really bizarre stuff could be found, like pictures of gangs of cows running around the streets looking menacing, or message board posts from students talking about hiding from a tiger, or a shaky video someone shot of a herd of cats and dogs working together to yank a janitor down from a tree. I didn’t know what to make of any of this, particularly since the messages all seemed to stop around 3:30 AM. It was as if everyone quietly vanished around that time.

I had to sit and think about all of this for a moment. It occurred to me that our campus had a veterinary facility on it, and it had always been rumored that there was an entire menagerie of exotic animals in the basement. So maybe, somehow, a tiger got loose from there, and some cows followed in his wake. That seemed unlikely, but plausible. But it still left me with that haunting video of the dogs and cats, working together. Maybe the janitor had been really mean to them, but it seemed unlikely that they would rise up together against him. None of this made any sort of sense.

Finally, I found a message board thread titled, “What we know.” Someone named George Lewis had been keeping it updated throughout the day, with its last message dated at 3:17 AM. I studied these postings for a few minutes, trying to make sense of his rambling writing style so I could understand exactly what was going on. Unfortunately, George was a really bad writer who seemed to be oblivious to capital letters and punctuation. Every post was one giant paragraph with no coherent structure. I sighed. Apparently, going to an easy-to-get-into school like Midwestern U meant you didn’t have to be proficient at written communication.

What I could discern was this: at some point on Thursday morning, the entire campus had been shaken by an extremely loud sound. People rushed out of the building and saw this giant, sphere-shaped thing hanging above the campus about a mile up in the sky. There was a tremendous earthquake, and a lot of people ran into buildings and hid. The earthquake lasted for about an hour, tapering off around 11:30 AM. Everything was calm and quiet for about two hours until the animals started pouring out on the streets, acting strangely and chasing people down. The weirdest thing of all was that they didn’t seem interested in killing or mauling the people they caught; they would just herd them off or carry them off towards someplace out near the south farms. No one really knew what was going on there.

And that was it. A bizarre, implausible story that sounded like something out of a fanfic sequel for Animal Farm where the animals extract their revenge on the humans. I didn’t know what to make of it. I also couldn’t fathom how I could have slept through all of this if there were earthquakes and loud noises going on. Living in the dorms had taught me to be a heavy sleeper, but this seemed to be a little too much for even me.

After some reflection, I realized it was almost 6AM, and the cafeteria at the dorm down the street, the one with the awesome omelet bar and freshly-baked pastries, was about to open. I decided I’d think better on a full stomach, and left my dorm, hoping that maybe I could find someone along the way. I kept my eyes open for roving gangs of animals, of course, but I didn’t see any at all on my way, aside from a few birds — not even a squirrel.

The door to the cafeteria at the other dorm was still locked when I arrived. I glanced down at the analog hands on my watch and saw that it was 6:05 AM. “Maybe they’re getting a late start today,” I mused, and sat down on the stone bench outside and waited. There was nothing to do, and I realized it was times like this that I really wished I’d taken up smoking, as my friend had suggested, so I’d at least have a cigarette and a lighter to play with while I waited. After a few minutes, I pulled out my phone and started trying to play around with the Internet, but I didn’t seem to be getting a signal. That was hardly a cause for surprise; my phone network’s coverage was terrible in this area, and I’d been thinking about switching to a different carrier all semester. I’d just never gotten around to it.

Finally, around 6:25, I started pounding on the door. There was no answer. That was weird. It occurred to me that during this entire time, I had not seen anyone, which was also weird. I was starting to wonder if those kids from Campus Crusade for Christ had been right when they’d been trying to tell me about their rapture, or whatever it was called, where all the true believers were supposed to disappear and leave all the sinners behind. Apparently, there’d be a lot more Christians on this campus than I’d realized. That, or the devil had decided to rapture away all the sinners as well. But that didn’t make any sense, because I hadn’t been raptured by anyone. Unless… “Maybe I’m the Antichrist,” I said out loud, and laughed. No, there had to be something more to it than that.

“Hello?” I heard a female voice call, accompanied by some loud grunting. That was odd. I turned and looked over my shoulder and saw a girl walking towards me, holding a leash in her hand.

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan