2 A Case of Mass Hysteria

After a few hours, Lynn was woken up by the noises coming from the street. Still half asleep, he reached for his phone on the nightstand to see what time was.

12:12 PM. The clock in his phone showed. Lynn had fallen asleep for another two hours or so.

"Why is the street so noisy, it isn't the end of the world you know, there is no need to honk your car as if your life depends on it…" Lynn muttered as he rolled out of bed while scratching his head.

Yawning, he opened his curtain to see from the second floor in his bedroom what was happening outside. He lived in a quite silent residential area. It was rare to hear so many sirens and cars honking in the middle of the afternoon. People were mostly in their nine to five works working their arses off, not running like crazy in the streets.

Lynn could not believe what he was seeing. What was in front of Lynn's eyes was a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. There were people running out of their cars, since the traffic was stuck, some were screaming that it was the end of the world, while others were trying to barge into the houses around the area. It was total mayhem everywhere.

"What in the bloody hell is happening?" Lynn thought as quickly closed back the curtain and stumbled through the stairs to make sure his front and back door was locked.

He also pushed one of the armchairs that was in the living room to the front door since he did not want people barging in.

"I hope those bloody lunatics aren't going to start climbing up the walls," Lynn muttered as he made sure that all his curtains were down. Since he was relatively poor, his house looked dilapidated in comparison to the other houses, so Lynn thought that if he made sure his curtains were down, people were going to think that his house was an abandoned one.

Lynn then returned to the living room and turned on the television, making sure to lower the volume the most he can, so that the sound could not be heard from outside. He then turned into the news channel to see if he could know why the people were going rampant.

"There have been reports, that in several parts of London there have been sightings of people attacking viciously trying to eat each other. This is not a fake alert. I repeat this is not a fake alert. It has been described as cannibalism caused by mass hysteria. All victims are being sent to the closest hospital facility in their area. We are still not aware of what is causing this. Scientists suspect it's a case of mass hysteria. Please stay home and lock your doors. This is Mariela Walters, and you are watching..."

Before the news reporter could finish, the channel went dead. To be more precise, Lynn could not access any channel on the television. Lynn then went running back upstairs to grab his phone and check on social media if there were any more concrete ideas of what in the bloody world was happening.

He could find nothing on social media, but finally, on a video streaming site, he found one live stream that was having a lot of views. The title of it was: "A zombie apocalypse is upon us". Lynn could not believe that to be true, but it was live stream, so he opened it. The user doing the live stream was called @thegreatandonly.

@thegreatandonly was a fat guy. He may have seventeen or eighteen years old. His face was full of pimples and acne. Lynn was starting to be skeptical and was starting to think that maybe this boy was just trying to garner views by taking advantage of the situation.

Lynn then wanted to laugh at himself since he was not a good-looking guy either. Yet, there he was judgmental of another guy who was not blessed with good looks either. He rolled his eyes and decided to just get out of the stream.

Just as Lynn was about to close the live stream, the camera shifted from the boy to the street.

"I'm telling you! They are zombies! Look! I have sent my drone to see what was happening outside my apartment," said @thegreatandonly.

This made Lynn stop and see what kind of funny thing the guy was going to show. The live stream was then switched to the drone's camera, and in the street in front of the apartment building were a group of people. As the drone zoomed in and the image became clearer, Lynn saw that there were some of these people who started to look decomposed.

Suddenly, the decomposed people started viciously attacking the other group that looked healthy. The stream was later turned back into @thegreatandonly.

"This is the evidence! We are all doomed! This is not a case of mass hysteria! We are in a bloody zombie apocalypse! Remember my friends, zombies can only be killed by smashing their heads. Now may the luck be with you!" @thegreatandonly said as the live stream was cut off.

Lynn knew that if what @thegreatandonly had said was true, then not only he, but all of humanity was really in great trouble. He then tried to go and barricaded the back door with whatever boxes he could find. His next plan was turning off anything that made a sound, hoping that these zombies were as dumb as movies portrayed them. Now he not only had to take care of crazy people barging into his house but also human-eating zombies.

"What a great way to start my afternoon!" Lynn thought for himself.

Just as he was disconnecting the washing and drying machine in the basement, he hears a hard thump on his front door.

"Oh, shite..." Lynn said.

Lynn quickly grabbed some old boxes that were from his late grandfather to barricade the basement door. He then noticed that an old-looking brush had fallen from one of the boxes.

As he did not have time to see on which box the brush was dropped, he put it inside his tracksuit jacket.

After a few more thumping sounds, Lynn heard the sound of broken wood.