Ockham's Obstacle

Searching for some video evidence to confirm what Lucas had guessed at was a laborious task.  Given that he was looking for evidence that the zombies were only motivated to attack living targets, it was going to be difficult to determine whether they would also attack the recently dead.  After all, in order to determine whether they would snub a corpse, Lucas would have to come across video of a zombie discovering a corpse.  And that situation seemed extremely unlikely to happen unless it was specifically arranged.

Of course, while perusing dozens of videos, Lucas did notice a couple of recurring trends that he had first observed in the initial video that sparked his idea.  None of the zombies ever attacked one another, they just had some way to tell the others were not their preferred target.  That seemed to hold even when the zombies came into the frame of the video from different places, suggesting that even though they had never encountered each other before, they could still discern regular humans from other zombies quite easily.

That was not something Lucas himself could always determine from the videos he saw.  Of course, the videos he saw were not optimal for making such determinations, but he had seen the one downstairs.  Before the injuries Evan had inflicted upon it, that zombie did not appear to have anything physically wrong with it other than a very minor wound that might be possible to overlook.  That also seemed to be the case with at least some of the zombies in the videos.

On the whole, the zombies did have very agressive behavior and the way each one ran towards their targets seemed to be reckless.  But while he was watching people running for their lives, there seemed to be no obvious way to tell the difference between an uninfected person and a zombie.  Somehow, the zombies could tell the difference, and apparently didn't make mistakes in their determination.

Someone knocked at the door while Lucas was focusing his thoughts.  Stepping away from the laptop and kicking a few papers and empty pizza boxes to one side, he moved closer and paused for a second to listen for growling before unlocking it and swinging it open.  Leon was out in the hallway, and shrugged apologetically.  "Hi, Lucas, we're just gathering the names of  everyone, that way we know who's in the building.  Is anyone else in there with you?"

"No.  And I think you already know my name."

"And your last name?"  Leon held a hard cover textbook in one hand, writing onto a sheet of notebook paper with a pencil as he talked.  "There might be another Lucas around."

"Oh.  Right.  It's Jones."

"Thanks."  Leon nodded to him and then began to walk down the hall to the next door.

Lucas locked the door and returned to his thinking.  Other videos seemed to confirm that the zombies gave up on attacking their targets not long after the targets stopped trying to struggle.  In the cases where a video continued to show the attack, every time the infected would give up biting less than a minute after their victim stopped struggling.  Usually, the usefulness of the video would end there as the fool capturing the evidence on their cell phone or whatever device they used realized they were in danger and ran.

Together, those two things did seem to confirm his wild notion that they were drawn to life, but the difficulty in actually concluding that was obvious.  There was no mechanism he knew of for them to accomplish that feat using basic human senses.  The idea was so outlandish and wild that it would be flatly unbelievable if he hadn't been prompted to consider it by the video evidence.  If he was going to conclude something as crazy as the zombies could somehow see life, he had to be extremely careful to eliminate every possible alternative explanation.

And even then, it could still be wrong.  There might be something much more mundane taking place that didn't rely on some unknown magical powers needing to exist.  There was also a very good chance Lucas just wasn't smart enough to figure out what was going on.  This whole line of thinking was extremely shaky.

But then, the matter concerning the blood lingered in Lucas's mind.  The zombie shouldn't have been able to remain active with severe blood loss, and yet it did.  There was no explanation Lucas could think of to account for that, apart from things that were completely magical and entirely unknown to science.  Everything about this was just wrong, and thinking about it, that really bothered him.

After a few minutes of perplexed confusion, Lucas considered that maybe he was going about this the wrong way.  He was really struggling on the why of things.  When really, maybe that was the wrong way to approach this problem entirely.

The basic parameters of this phenomenon were still unknown.  Worrying about the why or how should probably come after the basic questions of what the zombies were capable of had been more fully answered.  And if he really wanted to, Lucus could play dead out in the lobby and see if the zombie still showed an interest in him past the time it took them to lose interest in a motionless victim.  That experiment wouldn't tell him if they were capable of seeing life, but it would still be able to give him useful information about zombie behavior.

Even if the underlying explanation was still out of his grasp- even completely new- it was still possible to make useful observations, perform experiments to conclude additional details about the phenomenon.  Whether or not he could understand the reason why things were happening, he could still observe what was actually taking place.

If the underlying process was entirely new or magical, scientific thinking was still the best way to go about exploring this phenomenon.  Whether or not it was something outlandish according to his current knowledge, would have to be a question for another time.

Complications

With the survey complete, Evan felt like they were at least starting to make progress.  Slow, incremental gains, but progress nonetheless.  Once they were contacted by whoever was going to come by the following day, they could be reasonably certain they would be able to know when the building was empty.  The method wasn't as thorough as Evan would have preferred, but it was much better than nothing.

Maybe in the morning they could check their count again, but for now, the group was moving onto other issues.  Leon, Erin and the girl who had identified herself as Chloe returned to the common room, talking about establishing some kind of organized watch over the building's exits.  Evan intended to go there as well, but as he lingered in the main lobby waiting for Jorge and Simon's quiet chat to end, he heard footfalls rapidly approaching from the floor above.

Looking up the stairway, Evan witnessed Esteban appear at the top of the steps, his face worried as he descended partway, wringing the blue sleeves of his sweater nervously.  "I think something's wrong.  Rob's starting to get a lot worse."

"Oh, shit."  Evan slipped up before he could catch his own language.  He had intended to return a lot sooner to check up on how their victim had been doing, but with the fight, then Victor and the survey, he hadn't realized just how much time had passed.  "What's wrong?"

"He's infected, moron."  Simon said bluntly, holding the length of heavy pipe in his hands as he approached the stairs.  "He's going to turn into one of them and there's nothing we can do about it."

Ignoring the comment, Esteban spoke to Evan as he leapt up steps two at a time, both soon at the top.  "He has a real bad fever."

Pausing at the top of the steps, Evan turned to face downstairs.  "Jorge?  You still down there?"

"Yeah."  Came the reply from Jorge, who peeked around from the bottom of the stairs.  He was just as freaked out as anyone else was in the moment, a nervous habit of tracing his fingers over his mustache as he looked on.

"Leon's a medic, right?  Get him and have him bring that first aid stuff to..."  Trailing off, Evan glanced to Esteban.  Evan did have some experience with basic first aid, but it was probably better to have more people around to help.

"Room 317."  Esteban said as Simon began to follow them up the stairs.

"I have some bottled water and aspirin I brought with me in my backpack.  It's in my friend's room, and if he's still in there, we should go pick that up."  Evan led the way as he spoke, moving down the hallway.  "I might have something in there that will help.  I'll be right up."

"Good."  Esteban confirmed, turning away to follow Simon up the steps to his room.

Breaking into a dash down the hall, Evan rapped heavily on the door.  The reply was not rapid, so he thumped against it once more.  "Lucas!  You in there?"

"Geeze, what's wrong?"    Lucas fiddled with the lock noisily, then opened the door with a scowl on his face.  Stepping back as Evan forced his way inside, Lucas exclaimed.  "What the hell?"

"No time to talk.  Rob is sick!"

"Who is Rob?"

"The guy we let in."  Evan replied as he snapped up his backpack by the strap and slung it over his shoulder.  He slipped out the door as quickly as he entered, leaving Lucas behind as he ran down the hall and bounded up the steps to arrive at the proper room.  Evan didn't bother to look back as he had left.

By the time Evan made it to Esteban's room, Simon stood with Esteban nearby, arguing.  "We need to get him the hell out of here before he bites anyone and we get sick too."

"No, we need to tie him down and make sure if he does turn he can't hurt anyone else."

"How are we going to tie him down, genius?"  Simon crossed his arms as he barred the opening with his size, holding the blunt instrument in his hands with a scowl.

"Get out of the way.  Now."  Evan commanded the larger man, taking a deep breath in case he tried to get his way through violence.  "We don't have time for this."

"We can lock him in the office, or a janitor closet.  Somewhere safe.  But not outside."  Esteban offered, taking a tentative step closer to the door.

There was a brief period of silence as Evan was ready for a possible fight.  He understood Simon was simply trying to keep people alive, so he didn't really want to have to fight him.  But that wasn't a good enough goal for Evan.  Evan was trying to keep everyone alive.

Finally, a couple other thudding runs approached from the hallway, and Simon sighed heavily.  "God damn idiots."  Simon stepped aside.  "If you keep doing things like this you're going to get all of us killed.  We can't have any of these things inside the building with us."

Strange Speculation

Lucas rewatched the video he had discovered several more times, pausing it here and there to focus on the behavior of the zombies during the attack.  For the most part, it looked to be a little over one and a half minutes from a successfull attack to a full propogation of the infection into a new zombie.  Regardless of what was causing it, the mechanism producing the reanimation could take hold rapidly.  Yet another terrifying mystery to pile onto the list of inexplicable traits.

More puzzling to Lucas was what drew the attention of the zombies in the first place.  Obviously, the zombies were focusing on something that drew them to uninfected humans, otherwise they would recognize each other as legitimate targets and attack each other.  Also, they seemed to lose interest soon after the victims stopped moving, which would indicate that was an important factor.  So at first he thought that it must have been something about the way people were moving or behaving.

However, upon one of his many reviewings Lucas noticed a motionless figure that had attempted to hide among the crashed vehicles in the street rather than flee through the mob riddled with confusion and panic.  Despite not moving, he had been discovered and attacked by one of the infected.  That made the idea that they were attracted by movement seem rather unlikely.

Although, it still might be possible the man did something the camera couldn't see, Lucas didn't think that was very likely anymore.  But he had no idea what other possibility there could be.  Either way, it indicated hiding by not moving would probably not work.

Examining the other detail remaining to his speculation, when the zombies abandoned their targets was also peculiar.  They didn't move away as soon as the movement of their victim ceased.  Instead, they lingered for many seconds afterwards.  And when they entered their phase of shifting targets, they would choose to attack some people who were not moving, but being actively targeted by another zombie.

Once reselection occurred, they weren't at their new target for long, and when one of them abandoned a target, they all did.  Each one of them responded as if  they were responding to one, unknown cue.  The evidence was right there in front of him, but what it meant was mystifying.  As much as Lucas could figure, there could only be one of a couple of reasons for that.

Either they were somehow intelligent and communicating with one another, which seemed very unlikely considering the speed at which they behaved and the almost mindless way they dashed at their targets.  Or they were capable of sensing somthing that led them to their targets and when the person was killed, they weren't seeing it anymore.

Lucas wondered.  Were these zombies capable of seeing whether a human was alive or dead?  Were they somehow capable of directly sensing human life?

Whatever mechanism could explain that ability was likewise confusing.  Lucas had read accounts of living people who were thought to be dead, but who had only been asleep, breathing shallowly.  Body heat might be an indicator of life, but the zombies were determining living or dead at a distance, they were abandoning the bodies before there was a chance for them to cool down.

With his mind filled with strange considerations and thoughts, Lucas began speculating how to test his idea.  There had to be some way to tell if they were sensing human life and once that question was settled, the mechanism by which they did it could be examined.

Accounting

"What is it?"  Came a call from the other side of the door.  Unlike a lot of the surrounding dorms, this entryway was unadorned with any sort of name or identifying markings.  The plain, grey, concrete walls were scraped smooth, and a piece of old tape had fallen nearby on the floor.  Evan almost considered picking it up.

"We're counting how many people are in the building with us."  Evan called out so he could be heard.  "We're looking for names so we'll know who to say is in here when they start rescuing people tomorrow."

The doorway opened a crack, the face of a slightly pudgy white man appearing in the gap as he peered into the hallway.  A moment later he opened the door wider and leaned out to look down the hall.  He had brown hair with a sparse, light beard and regarded Evan with a suspicious look before his appearance softened.  "Brad."

Lifting the clipboard he had been given, Evan wrote the name under the others he had collected so far.  "Thank you.  And a last name?"

"Ogle.  What's going on?"

"Nothing right now, but we're going to try to organize things a little so we can all know what is going on when something starts to happen.  You might want to go to the common room and help out."

"Okay.  I'll go down there later."  Brad stepped back and closed the door, the lock clicking latched.

The sixth floor survey wasn't difficult for Evan, just time consuming.  Waiting at each door for a reply to the knocking took some time, but if about a minute passed without any reply, he would move on.  A couple of people seemed to think he knew what was going on and wanted to talk for a few minutes after Evan had explained what he was doing.  One girl refused to open the door but provided her name through it.

Everyone Evan talked with at least agreed to give him a name, so writing it down on a sheet of paper he thanked them and moved on.  Now and then someone heard talking in the hallway and poked their heads out to see what was going on.  Explaining the situation of trying to see how many people were in the building ensured there was no trouble with getting cooperation.  Everyone was just understandably a little freaked out at first.

By the time Evan visited every room on his assigned floor, he had a list of eight names.  Five girls and three guys.  That was a little more than he expected to be present, but it wasn't like the building was anywhere near full.  After all, there were twenty eight rooms on this floor.  Responses from only seven of the rooms wasn't that bad (one room was a refuge for two people).

Descending the stairs to the bottom floor, Evan rejoined the others in the lobby.  Then trying to ignore the zombie, the group compared names to make sure there weren't any duplicates. Evan wasn't the last to finish, but according to Jorge and Erin, they had enough time to go through and get everyone's name from the first floor.  It wasn't long to wait before Leon came down the nearby stairs and gave them the numbers for his floor.

By the end of their joint operation, it was starting to get darker outside and it was almost four o'clock.  But they had a number which would be useful later on.  Forty five.  That was a pretty large number of people to keep track of.

Most of the people in Evan's dorm had ignored advice to stay inside and attempted to flee, but that may have had something to do with the fact that his dorm was also a little closer to the roads and parking garages of the city.  Blackwood dorm was surrounded by park and university walkways.  The prospect of being vulnerable for the few extra blocks to find a car must have deterred a few more people.  Or maybe more people here had just realized that fleeing wouldn't make a difference if they didn't know where to run.

Glad that the task was finished, Evan spoke to those who had helped him.  "Good work everyone.  Now we'll know we're not leaving anyone behind when they come by to rescue people.  Let's get these names into one list and keep a copy in the common room.  If anyone turns up who's not on it, then we'll add them."

Blue Sky Research

By the time Lucas returned to his room, he figured he just didn't know enough to understand the blood experiment's anomalous outcome.  Of course there had to be an explanation, he just didn't know enough right now to come up with one that made sense.  Even if the zombies were somehow caused by nanomachines, he figured they'd still probably be in the blood.  So he considered that explanation, as arbitrary as it was, pretty unlikely as well.

Performing a few searches to first check up on the blood link, Lucas found a few anecdotes suggesting his observations were made by others, but nobody had yet given a try at a serious explanation.  By all indications to his ameteur knowledge, it seemed as if something entirely unknown was happening.  Some other chemical process to generate movement.

It was unfortunate, but the only thing Lucas knew for sure was that he didn't know enough to figure out this particular puzzle.  Maybe somewhere on the Internet already had an answer of some kind, but he doubted it.  Of course eventually scientists would figure it out, but he would have to wait for that to happen.

Although Lucas had no idea how to progress further on the blood issue, it might be possible for him to figure something else out.   He had a logical, scientific mind, and this phenomenon appeared to be ripe for investigation.  There might be a lot of other things to discover about the zombies.  He'd just have to stumble upon something else.

Searching the news, there was still little information about the nature of the epidemic.  The same recommendations were being provided and the same sparse details remained.  The general news didn't say anything Lucas didn't know.  Other than general information about evacuations and what the government responses was looking like.  Some of it was new, but it wasn't very interesting, so Lucas ignored it for the time being.

Lucas found a momentary sense of amusement as one article warned against people venturing outside and trying to confront or neutralize the infected.  Oddly, even though people in the comments section and everywhere else seemed to have settled upon calling these zombies, the news was steadfastly refusing to call them that.  The step by step guide to survival and key to recognizing an infected were a little silly given that constraint.

Finally, with the news not much help, Lucas decided to turn his thoughts towards science.  Not knowing where he might be able to learn something useful, Lucas didn't know what to search for.  Perusing online for videos to examine seemed like a start, so he tried that.

Examining a number of videos, Lucas tried to aim for direct video of the zombies themselves.  Not many videos were suitable for study, as most of them were short, or part of a news broadcast, but after a bit of scanning he did discover some invaluable raw footage.

Most of the direct videos were useless messes of shaking and screaming.  Lucas turned the volume down on his computer in response.  Many were obviously taken via a cell phone camera.  A few less were of substantial quality, but annoyingly short, showing only a few seconds of a marauding figure before ending.  It was almost as if the people catching the video were outside and close by, and stupidly attempted to record the zombie before they realized that it might be a little dangerous.

After many tries without any success at all, Lucas did manage to find something which might give him a lead.  It had a vantage point from a second or third floor of a building, and showed a busy street intersection below.  A few people were on the sidewalks in small groups, walking around.  A small cluster crossed at an intersection as the direction of traffic changed.  The place was unfamiliar to Lucas, but looked like just another street corner.

As the video proceeded in silence, the people walking along the sidewalks paused, drawing to a stop.  A moment later a tight knot of people ran into the view from up the road.  The people scattered about spread, and one car hit someone who ran into the street.  The traffic ground to a halt as the human traffic around them burst into a roiling mob.

A few people straggled behind, either trampled or confused amidst the panic.  Some cars still moved, careless of and knocking about the figures swarming the streets in a mad dash.  Then the zombies came, maybe a dozen and a half, recognizable by their frenetic pursuit.  The figures, quick and heedless of the automobiles, sometimes leaping onto or climbing over them, ran towards the nearest figures and tested car doors or windows.  Cars came to a halt or collided into each other in an attempt to avoid the undead forms.

Impeded by the crowds, the chasing figures did succeed in knocking over some of those fleeing.  One climbed into a car.  A man who tried to fight back was taken down by a group of three attackers.  As most of the zombies succeeded in claiming a victim from the crowd, the mob thinned out, making its way out of the frame with most of their pursuers behind.  One car hit a couple zombies as it careened out of frame, which only sent the figures splayed out on the ground momentarily before rising up and returning to their selected targets.

The scene was relatively quick, less than a minute, and it seemed to be over.  A final zombie, not as fast as the rest and probably injured, pursued its quarry out of the frame to the left.  The others, as far as Lucas could tell, were biting at their victims, but it was a little hard to tell where.  The chaos was more or less over, and the victims were trying to fight back against their attackers.  Thanks to the distance, the little spots of spreading blood were a little easier to tolerate than they otherwise might be.

As Lucas watched the remainder of the video, he did notice something peculiar.  Surprised by what he saw and curious to examine it closely for clues, he rewatched the video a couple of times in order to understand the progression of events more carefully.

After a little more than a minute, one zombie, apparently done with the woman it was biting at, rose up and ran to join one of its peers to gnaw upon its new target.  The woman that had been left behind had stopped moving, and lay there motionless, a dot of discoloration upon the road where her blood was pooling.

Then the three who had taken down the fighter leapt up and abandoned their target.  Leaving their fallen victim behind to bleed out in motionless death.  Again, they joined nearby figures, fanning out and eagerly piling onto them where they could fit.

It happened again and again, until there were no more people upon the ground who had not been attacked and the zombies ran out of frame, scattering.  By the time that began, the woman who had been abandoned first moved.  Lucas thought he saw a twitch at first, then she stood up and took off in a mad sprint out of the frame.

Between the time she was abandoned and the time she rose up to dash away, barely under a minute had passed.  The others who were attacked soon followed her lead, but one remained behind, lingering around a crashed car and attempting to open the door.  The video had lasted just under three minutes and in that time the zombies had nearly doubled their population.  That was quite worrisome.

Volunteer Work

As Evan approached the glass doorway to the common room, the bald black man who had tended to Robert's injury noticed him and let him into the room.  "Thanks, Leon."  Evan glanced around, noticing immediately that fewer people were around than before Victor had left with his group.  "Where did everyone go?"

"Back to their rooms."   Leon shrugged.  "I don't think everyone is okay knowing that there might be an infected in the building."

"Ah, I see."  Evan couldn't really blame them, but that probably meant he would have fewer people available to search through the building.  Still, it helped things if everyone was staying in one place.  Curiously looking around the room, he performed a quick count of the people still here.

The television was still on the news with the volume at a respectable level to not drown out conversation elsewhere in the room.  Only a couple guys were still watching the broadcast from the nearby couches.  A slender black girl was in the far corner typing on a laptop.  She had glanced up for just a moment when Evan had first returned to the room.  Within the kitchen space near the entryway, three people were using the area to either prepare food or boil water.  One of the three was perusing the contents of the refrigerator.

At a table near the door, three more people were speaking hypothetically about what would happen when the military arrived.  Leon returned to them, contributed something Evan didn't hear, then added.  "That's what we would have done."

While Evan counted, the curly haired blond girl entered the room from the hallway and walked over to join Leon's group.  Including her, there were eleven people present, all of them unfamiliar.  He only knew Leon's name because of the assistance he had generously offered to Robert not that long ago.  It was unfortunate, but until this was over, he would have to accept being a stranger to most of the people in the building.

Walking to the center of the room, Evan spoke out loudly enough to be heard.  "I'm sorry for interrupting, but I please need your attention for a little while.  My name is Evan and we need to go through every room in the building and count how many people are here with us.  I need some volunteers willing to help me do that.  And we should have someone who can get the keys to each room."

"Sounds like a good idea."  Leon got up from table he had just rejoined.  "I can get us the keys if we go to the office.  It's near the front lobby."

The blond girl who had just arrived came over as well, but the majority of people around were quietly neglecting to volunteer.  She didn't say anything, but she did smile and nod.

"We should try to have at least one person per floor."  Evan cajoled the passive crowd.

While waiting for a few more seconds, the girl using the laptop in the back corner apparently finished whatever she was doing, closed it and approached.  "Well, let's get this over with."  She proceeded past him and into the hall.  The others following soon after.

"Nobody else?"  Glancing around at the three who had volunteered, Evan caught up with and joined the others in the hallway.  If Jorge and Lucas were still in the front lobby, maybe he could get their help as well.  They were heading in that direction anyway.

"Okay, so are we going to get peoples' names and write them down?"  The black girl suggested.

"That's a good idea."  Evan affirmed.

"Does Simon know we're doing this?"  Leon asked as they proceeded down the hallway.

"Doing what?"  Simon appeared at the end of the hallway as they approached.  He crossed his arms over his chest.  Jorge was standing nearby somewhere behind him.

Evan weaved to the front of the small group to respond.  "We're going to go to every room.  See how many people are in here with us."

"Go ahead if you like, but you're not getting the keys to the rooms."  Simon shook his head as he stepped to one side.

"We need to check every room.  Even the ones that we don't get an answer from."  Evan replied.  "Someone might not hear us knocking or be scared and not answer."

"Only the RAs are trusted with access to the rooms."  Simon shook his head indignantly.  "You're not even a resident of the building.  You aren't getting any room keys."

"It should be fine."  Leon ventured.  "I think we can trust him and Erin."

"And if one of them steals something from a room, are you going to be responsible?"  Simon asked in a judgemental tone.  There was an uncomfortable silence, barring the noise made by the undead at the door.  "If someone needs a key you can come back down and get it then."

"Let's just knock on the doors and ask for names."  The black girl said.  "Write down each person's name who answers their door, then come back down and compare lists."

Evan sighed.  "Fine.  But we could still use a couple more people helping us."

Jorge shrugged.  "Yeah, I'll help."

Simon, keeping his attention on Evan, shook his head.  "I'm watching the door in case of trouble."

Progress at establishing order was a little less smooth in Blackwood than it was in Mansfield, but Evan felt good that they were at least taking steps towards progress.  Their method could potentially undercount, but it would at least be better than no number.  With the one girl's suggestion of getting names, at least then it would be easy to tell later on whether or not a new person had to be added to the list.

"Okay, first of all, we should get some paper and write down all of our names."  Evan began.  "Then each of us takes a floor and checks every door.  When we finish on our floor, we come back here to check on this floor and meet up with everyone else."