While the majority of the building's stranded residents burst through the doors, Lucas withdrew to the back of the chamber. Once Leon confirmed that the door had been firmly closed once again, the dormitory regained its formerly robust sound of life. Numerous people had shed excess water from coats and umbrellas throughout the lobby upon their entry as they departed to other areas. Such was not uncommon an event for the old cement flooring on rainy days, giving the place a very normal feel despite the lack of electricity.
Lucas watched the proceedings silently from beside the stairs along the back wall. Unlike Jorge, he was not very concerned about being protected from another strange blackout event. Instead, he desired to overhear additional information, while remaining on the periphery of the clamor- out of everyone's attention. There was a brief period of noise as the various arriving residents vacated the front lobby in clusters, leaving behind a small contingent of people sharing their knowledge of the situation.
Simon loudly cursed the retreat of the rescue operation again. Chloe related a horrified description of coming across a shot figure, presumably a dead body. The Hispanic person with the black eye Lucas didn't know conveyed distress at witnessing the expedient departure of a few densely packed city buses. After a minute the turmoil abated and the room somewhat cleared; a single conversation had coalesced out of those remaining.
Lucas picked up on the proceedings as Leon finished a thought, "-sure they'll come back soon."
"The damn cowards have tanks! They have machine guns! Why the fuck are they running away at all?" Simon replied.
"Probably because of the thing that just knocked almost everybody out. If that happened again while everyone was out in the open, the zombies could kill a lot more people while everyone was unconscious." Chloe shook off and folded an umbrella. She had set a carrying case beside herself in a dry location.
"That's right. If everyone can just pass out like that, it makes the situation different than anyone expected. If that's possible, they need to figure out what they should do about it." Leon added.
"Couldn't some zombies have gotten past them somewhere and are running around where people think it's still safe?" George leaned against the wall on one side.
"Isn't that what happened?" Erin spoke tentatively. "Just a bit after we woke up there was shooting. People were running and screaming."
"That's right." George said. "The zombies must have come forward while everyone was unconscious and got a few people who were behind the front line. When the soldiers woke up they noticed and took care of them."
"I don't think all of those were infected." Chloe motioned to her head. "Some of them weren't killed correctly for that."
"Oh, I didn't notice..." George trailed off, a sick look on his face.
"God damn cowards just panicked." Simon asserted. "They killed all the nearby ones before the whatever the fuck that blackout was. And now they're all terrified just because we were all knocked out for a few minutes."
"It's not like a mass blackout is normal." Erin countered.
"We should get the hell out of here too." Jorge called from the back of the room. "While it's still safe out there."
"It's not safe out there. If that blackout event happens again while we're outside it could be a disaster." Chloe set her umbrella against the wall. "At least if it happens again while we're inside, we won't have to worry about the zombies."
"Plus we don't even know what direction would be safe." Erin added.
"Don't you get it? There's something else out there!" Jorge breathed heavily as he approached the doors. "That's why they're running! We should get out there and try to follow them before they get too far ahead of us."
There was a brief moment of uneasy silence as the wild assertion sank in. Simon spoke next. "What the fuck are you talking about? They're in cars, we can't catch up with them."
"Nobody we saw out there mentioned seeing anything." Chloe crossed her arms in front of herself.
"Come on, the thing that created the blackout!" Jorge spoke with a tremble in his voice. "It destroyed the helicopters and knocked everyone out. We need to leave before it heads this way!"
Lucas couldn't help himself and broke out into laughter again. Everyone present turned to look at him with either irritation or anxiety.
"What the hell's your problem?" Simon scowled.
After a few seconds, Lucas calmed down enough to form words. "He's terrified of something he doesn't know anything about, but the zombies that we do know are out there somewhere are not a problem." Lucas snickered. Wasn't the existence of z-rays and zombies scary enough?
"Tell them." Jorge pointed to Lucas. "Explain to them how something out there did this!"
Lucas resisted the urge to laugh out loud again. "Uh- I only meant that the source of that blackout event was relatively close. I didn't mean whatever caused it to happen was right around here somewhere. Or that it could have been caused deliberately by something."
"But that has to be it!" Jorge nervously glanced outside. "Something else is out there! The army attacked it and it fought back!"
"It's definitely possible. Could be an alien invasion." Lucas smirked, resisting the urge to break out laughing again. "It could just be something natural. We don't know what really caused the blackout. So your guess is as good as mine."
"We know it's close, and that people with training and heavy weaponry are freaked out by it. That's reason enough to get the hell out of here too." Jorge motioned for Leon to open the doors. Leon looked back in awkward silence, as if unsure of whether to let him out or not.
"Running away might not help." Lucas shook his head. "Since it seems like it was partly blocked by the building, the effect probably didn't occur on the other side of the planet. But I don't think we can really know anything more than that."
"What do you mean probably?" Chloe approached Lucas as the surrounding group broke up into a separate, spontaneous argument on the merits of leaving or staying.
"Well, it could still be really far away. Without knowing the range of the effect and how it works, we can't really estimate how far away it is or even where it is. But if we travelled about a mile or so and found people who weren't knocked out by it that would tell us something we could use." Lucas shrugged as he edged slowly towards the stairs in the room. "It seems reasonable to assume for now that it came from one source and was evenly spread out over the area, but we don't even know that's true."
"But it's somewhere above us, right?" Chloe suggested a guess while walking beside Lucas to the stairs.
Pausing for a moment to consider the suggestion, Lucas nodded. "Actually, yeah. The blackout thing probably came from somewhere overhead. Otherwise the buildings might have blocked the effect for some of the people outside just like it did for people inside." Lucas stood at the edge of the stairs and looked into the lobby. Simon seemed to be convincing Jorge to stay even as others now seemed rather uneasy. "But until we know more than that, I don't think I want to just blindly try to run."
"Yeah. The infected are dangerous, but as far as we know right now, that mass blackout wasn't any more dangerous than they are." Chloe agreed.
"Just what I was thinking." Lucas shrugged, wondering if it might be a good idea for someone to go outside and take a look around. He still ached from his tumble, but didn't exactly think it was an awful idea. After all, they might be able to learn something interesting. Or useful.
