Chapter 27: The Scent of Disaster (Part I)

Elaine reluctantly abandoned the field after their serendipitous encounter with Roger’s friend. Emily looked busy, standing up atop the newly constructed stage with her apparent lieutenants. She didn’t answer cell phone calls or shouts; the people with her on the stage adequately blocked both egress and ingress and shielded her from the general crowd. A more imaginative way to contact her could have been devised, if Elaine didn’t already have more important mission parameters. Also, Emily showed all of the body language characteristics of stress—arms crossed in front of her chest, small movements with her mouth to respond to questions, rarely turning from a single individual in the encircling staff.

From what could be seen from the sidewalk, Emily had every appearance of wanting to be someplace else.

Elaine’s cell phone started working—with partial roaming service—after she exited the Manzanita dormitory but it still couldn’t sync up with its higher functions, at least it could place and receive calls. Using the newly created Faraday cage components for an ad hoc antenna, Zane contacted her shortly after they’d made it into central campus to prepare their synchronization.

Robert’s friend, Howie, struck Elaine like the usual slacker persona she encountered numerous times in her undergrad classes. His baggy clothing covered a semi-muscular core that mimicked an equally dumb act covering up a somewhat analytical personality underneath. Frog would have labeled him a slacker—someone who had all the intellectual facility to get the job done but poured all of his insight into getting drunk, stoned, or partying. She wondered if this could be a phenotype particularly susceptible to the nam-shub—although, he seemed to have broken it easily enough.

Most of the other individuals under its influence—making the majority of the students milling about at that moment—busied themselves talking to the apparently uninfected or doing small organizing jobs for the upcoming concerts. They had come upon Howie himself while he was handing out fliers about the concert, but he gave up his post with ease and shortly after Frog offered him her phone number if he came along.

“So, you’re on the fencing team?” Howie asked.

“Keeps me in tone,” Frog said, flexing her wrist to bring out the tendons in her arm. She extended her smooth muscled arm for him to take in as she spoke. “Best thing ever before hitting the Rec Center for a quick swim.”

Frog handled his questions with demurring responses that were deceptively simple. Elaine could detect carefully worded undertones in every reply, carefully chosen to guide his next question and keep him distracted on her. She’d seen her do it many times with potential suitors; it gave Elaine some time to listen to him to talk to see if she could suss out the nature of the underlying indoctrination. Although, at the moment, Elaine was multitasking: the control, another student named Andrew, spoke with Roger.

“People started acting strange earlier this week,” Andrew said. He’d been partnered with Howie while handing out the fliers but he didn’t show any signs of the nam-shub himself. When questioned about it, he said that he’d simply been conscripted by another student and since the cancellation of his class he didn’t have much to do until the end of day. “I don’t see what’s so special about her. Emily Early. She’s just another poster to look at on my walk to class every morning. I knew something must be up when my friends started talking about her like she’s the Second Coming. Then my class gets cancelled so that everyone can volunteer for her fundraiser?” He shrugged. “What else have I got to do.”

Pudgy in all the adolescent places and gawky of frame, Andrew’s appearance told the story of a typical college student to Elaine. He wore casual slacks to go along with a button-down shirt and comfortable sneakers, nothing name-brand, and little to set him aside as anything more than another Freshman. He’d already explained it would be his second semester and already learned the trick of carrying only a few books in his backpack, a black and gold thing emblazoned with numerous felt pen drawings.

The difference between Howie and Andrew might prove to show how the infector worked. So Elaine broke into Roger’s conversation and asked, “So you don’t think that much of Emily?”

“Why should I?” he said. “I mean, I don’t vote in these things. Not like student council actually does anything. I didn’t see a reason to waste my time. But, listening to some of my friends you’d think I was speaking blasphemy every time I wanted to go watch a movie instead of spread the word about Emily’s campaign. It really started to creep me out. Then there’s what happened today. I figured, if I couldn’t beat ‘em, I might as well join ‘em.”

“Do you spend a lot of time talking to your classmates?”

“No,” Andrew said. “I keep to myself mostly. I don’t need to go to study groups or anything like that. I’m a book learner myself, always been better with the words on the page. In fact, I work mostly out of my notes when I’m studying, rather than those of my friends who use their iPhone to record classes and play them back later…

“I hope you don’t mind me tagging along.” He paused. “I just noticed you talking to ‘dude’ over there and you said something about knowing what might be going on. You’re different than the campus zombies, so I. Well. Figured I’d join you instead.”

“Sounds like you have a workable survival strategy,” Elaine said. “But, I don’t know that there’s any physical harm to be had from the Early campaign. And we don’t mind if you come along, you’ve already become an important part of my research.”

Behind them, the crowds of students continued to snowball. Many more people appeared amid the sidewalks than should have for the time of day. Andrew’s class probably wouldn’t be the only one cancelled by the progression of the nam-shub meme and its drive to pull the campus together at the concert. Small clots of students now even clustered around the entrances to the MU, some of them waving impromptu signs advertising the concert and Emily Early. As the group continued past the administration buildings and towards the Hayden dormitory, Elaine spotted more students with stacks of fliers like Andrew and Howie passed out.

A rolling ASU police car prowled slowly by, cutting through the scattered foot traffic; the officer within, eyes hidden by a pair of black sunglasses, waved a salute to some of the sign bearers in front of the MU.