While Austin Sleeps

While Austin Sleeps
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I don't understand how a disease can do this to a person. How can it spread so fast? I just. . . . I'm sorry this is one of the first chances I've had to get to a working computer since this all began. I'm really not sure how to begin. Just...

My name is Dagan Moore, and up until a few weeks ago I was a junior at the University of Texas at Austin in the Mechanical Engineering program. I was taking summer classes in the hopes of graduating in 4 years instead of the usual 5. Now I'm bashing in the skulls of my professors and classmates or worse, watching as they devour the living.

Three weeks ago I was in the library, the PCL 11th floor. I have been putting off my science courses as long as I could and this summer it was time to pay the price. It looked like it was going to take an act of God for me to pass Bio. Chem. I guess in a way that's what happened. I had a corner that no one else knew about, it was my exam spot, no one to bother you and no guard to kick you out. I guess I had fallen asleep around 2:00 am. The sun was still tucked behind the horizon when my roommate Adam, Adam Berskin, and his girlfriend Sandra Nguyen woke me up.

Sandra is in my program but happens to be one of those lucky SOB's that hardly has to lift a finger, in other words she's about twice as fucking smart as I ever think I could be. Adam's a Lit. major and I'm not sure how the two of them got together, but barring classes they never leave each others' side. It was Sandra that showed me the tunnel system under the school. That's how they got to me that night. They had heard the alarms going off and turned on the TV in time to catch one of the last reports coming out of the east coast about the plague.

The "Quarantine," or as I like to call it marshal law was being put into effect while everyone slept. It seemed like a thousand flood lights kicked on and lit the sky while Adam, who was very out of breath, tried to explain what the report had said. My arms were raised above my head in a stretch when the night sky lit up. If it hadn't I wouldn't be writing this now. Roughly fifteen feet behind Sandra was Amir, an amazing mathematician I had met a couple times in different classes, but something was very wrong with him. His eyes were all white and he was moving like he didn't have total control of his body. I would have thought he was drunk if I hadn't known him to be a very devout Lebanese Muslim, then I noticed his lips. What looked to be a crazy smile was in fact the look a face gets when a person chews off their own lips.

Amir's skin was so pale it almost seemed grey and open wounds had begun to fester all over his once olive skin. I gasped and let out a pathetic scream while yanking both Sandra and Adam behind me and away from Amir's outstretched hands. The skin and meat had peeled back from the tips of his fingers leaving little more than red tinged bone dripping with gore. Out of sheer terror I grabbed the chair closest to meet and hurled it at Amir with everything I had. I must have gotten lucky with the way the chair hit or maybe the way Amir's head hit the study table behind him when he fell either way he was the first. Some since then hardly even rate a blur in my memory but the second death of Amir at my hands is crystal in my mind, and I fear it always will be.

I've gone on too long as is. There were 17 of us when this started now there are 5. I try not to think about those we have lost and only hope those that remain can find a safe place. For those that may be reading this and curious, the survivors are Adam Berskin, Sandra Nguyen, Chants Bennividas, Alexis Johns, Homer Gaige, and myself.

We have to keep moving, but I'll try and write again soon now that I know others are out there to read it.



--
Brent Acuff
"I drank what?!" -- Socrates