"Alright, John, get the rope from under the sink and find a rock and my notebook on the coffee table," I instruct him before turning to everyone else.
"Alright, you've all chosen to stay, and with that, you chose to take the risk of trying to survive this thing together. I won't promise that all or even if any of us will make it through this, but I promise to try my best to make it so we all can truly live through this. And right now, I need you all to go back to your rooms, process what's going on, and then take stock of everything in your apartment room by room. Once you're done, bring the list back to the roof, and Ted will give you another apartment to take stock of." I order, dismissing everyone and waiting for John to return while I pack up what's left of the food and move it to the unpowered fridge freezers on the 5th floor.
After about 10 minutes, John comes back, saying, "I couldn't find a rock, so I grabbed a potato masher." Quickly handing me the items where I begin to assemble them into a crude type of grappling hook with a note attached to it.
"Marcus, you're a pitcher for the baseball team, right? Think you can hit the dorm building beside us?" I ask as I hand him the masher while holding on to the other end of the rope.
"I've never tried pitching a potato masher before, but I could try? Anywhere particular you want it to go?" Marcus asks while getting closer to the edge of the roof and getting into his pitcher's stance.
"I'd say preferably their roof, but so long as someone gets the message, it should be fine." I say while watching him wind up his right shoulder before letting that potato masher fly.
And... He whiffs it... Barely making it to the ground floor of the nearby building, leaving the rooftop silent...
"Marcus... I thought you said you were a pitcher for the team?" I ask, starting to reel the potato masher back in.
"If you would ever attend any of our games, you'd know I road the bench and was a relief pitcher! Just give it to me; I'll get it this time!" Marcus says snatching the masher from my hands and throwing it again... And again... And again...
And after 12 more tries and two busted windows, he finally made it to the roof. Luckily, all this commotion got the attention of those in the building, and a few were there to read the note and began doing the same thing we had while also setting up an anchor for their end of the rope.
It took about 30 minutes, but we were able to set up a pulley system across our two buildings, letting us transfer messages. Luckily, those taking stock in my building found some more rope, and we began the same process to the building to our left. It's about now that the far-off highways leading into the heart of Fort Worth are completely congested with outbound traffic. I asked John to run to our living room and grab my binoculars to start looking around and taking a log of everything he saw.
And after about two hours the three remaining buildings were all connected together with our daisy chain pulley system.
John says he saw some sort of commotion, a fight maybe? Leading to several cars abandoning the highways for the off-roads and those stuck in gridlock to flee their vehicles.
Unfortunately, no word came from the sixth summer housing dorm, which led me to believe they were already infected or too scared to do anything.
After the other building residents ate, and those who chose to leave did.
The Building Demographics were:
Guys Girls
> Building D: 23 29
> Building E: 35 18
(My Building)
> Building F: 42 25
> Building G:. 47 20
> Building H: 14 52
Map of the Dorm Building Positions
====================================
B:G B:H B:I
B:F B:J
B:E B:K
B:D B:L
B:C B:M
B:A B:B B:N B:O
| |
++++++++++++++++| |+++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++| |+++++++++++++++++++
LEGEND:
B:(Letter) = Building and Identifier.
= = River
| | = Skybridge
+ = Lowered Highway
Totaling about 305 people in all, with varying degrees of food and water, Building G houses most of the engineering students who I task with two jobs: devising a blueprint to draw a temporary gathering mechanism for water from the creek behind Building H and a purification method for it, and a blueprint for mounting makeshift solar panels and windmills on the top of the buildings and the necessary steps to accomplish this.
For this, a Senior Mechanical and Electrical Engineering double major, Miranda Lee, a petite, young Asian American woman with black hair, a button nose, bright, coppery hazel-colored eyes, and an evenly proportioned body, volunteered to join Me, John, Marcus, and the Pompous Prick (a.k.a. Lawrence Montgomery the IV) on our scouting run to McKinley Hall and the campus police station.
As the sun begins to lower on the first day of our apocalypse, everyone left alive in the dorms quietly hunkered down through the darkest night of humanity.