My Zombie Girlfriend

Chapter 13

When they left the bathroom, everyone was on their phones, backs to everyone else, fingers plugging up their non-phone ears, spread out across the first floor and partially up the stairs. "Mom? Mom, can you hear me?"

"Jason, are you at home? Where's Dad?"

"Hello? Hello?"

Zane thought of Owen, over at Jeff's house and probably freaking out. Before he knew it, his phone was in his hand. Wilson grabbed his wrist before he could scroll through his list of contacts. "Don't," he said. "The first thing everyone does is try to call their loved ones. It overloads the system, which then crashes, and then no one can call."

Around them, there were more exclamations of, "Hello?" and "Can you hear me now?" and "Damn, I don't have a signal. Does anyone else have a signal?"

Wilson tilted his head. His meaning was unmistakable: "I told you so."

***

Once everyone had determined that no one had coverage, no matter if they had AT&T or Sprint or Verizon, they slowly wandered back to the living room and sat down to stare at the muted television with the current news story on repeat. Kendra was crying softly in a corner, using Kyle's sweatshirt as a tissue, which he didn't seem to mind. Ross was prying under the bandage on his arm and insisting to anyone who would listen that he was sure it had been a dog bite and he was in no way infected, and even if he was, the doctors had given him rabies shots so he should be fine, just fine, why don't you believe him?

Ross was easy to ignore, however. The footage from the news helicopters had switched to shots of the evacuation centers and everyone was busy looking for their family members and friends among the crowds, or else recounting the last known locations of said loved ones:

"My stepmother's at home, and my Dad is on a business trip in Houston, so he should be fine, right? He's not coming back until Tuesday."

"Gramma's at an assisted living facility. Do you think those are being evacuated? Everyone else is home. Unless Mom decided to go to yoga class... God, I hope she didn't go to yoga class."

"My little sister went with her friends to the movies. What if they're still sitting in the movie theater and they have no idea this is even happening?"

Then the lights flickered, and the nervous chatter stopped.

"What was that?" Kendra whispered, wiping her wet cheek on Kyle's sleeve.

Darkness pulsed in again, shutting off the television, and now Kendra emitted a little shriek.

"It's fine," said Ricky. "Just a blip in the power. We should probably turn off some of these lights, everyone's probably freaked out and have all the lights in their house on and—"

The lights flickered three times in quick succession and then they all heard that sound of humming electricity stopping and the lights went out completely.

In the sudden darkness more than one person shrieked.

One by one, little rectangular lights appeared – cell phone screens that gave the room a strange, eerie glow.

"My battery's almost dead," wailed Anna.

"Quick, get these candles lit," Ricky said. "Before everyone's phones die."

All of the guys had lighters now, thanks to the preparedness drills from earlier in the week. Zane pulled out his own lighter and fumbled getting it to work. He'd never had to use a lighter before.