Post by ROXANNA SKYLER MOXIE, on Apr 7, 2011 15:16:39 GMT -5
Well, here's something I've been writing up lately just cause I'm bored. I figured I'd throw it to you guys to look over. I'm aware it's kinda boring since it's the first clip, but I've written up other clips from it and they're much more exciting. Promise. Constructive criticism is wanted!
"The outbreak has spread to many large settlements across America, including vital cities such as New York City, Boston, Las Vegas and San Fransisco. It appears to be crawling up the West Coast at a much more rapid pace than the East Coast, but things are looking grim for the entire country. Sources say that central United States is still fairly free of the disease, but it is predicted to spread there within the month. This is Chase Theriault, signing off."
The few students huddled around the television in the Student Union at the University of Maine in Orono looked as if they'd just been struck by lightning, exchanging nervous expressions with the young adults sitting nearby. The Fresno Decomp Virus, or "Zombie Virus" as most of America had nicknamed it, was something that had only been dreamed up in horror movies and harsh fiction novels. Never before the end of time did anyone really think that there would be zombies roaming the earth. Of course, I didn't know too much about it. When you're stuck almost as far on the edge of America as you can get, it takes a little while for breaking news to reach you. It was kind of like we were watching the rest of the world be struck by this abominable plague, thinking it was never going to reach us. We lived in Maine, for Christ's sake. When I'd lived in Jersey, I'd never realized that all the jokes about things reaching Maine two months after they happened were true. Not that it really bothered me or the rest of the college student community any. We were too busy chasing our preferred gender, tipping upside down to catch beer from kegs and occasionally burying our heads in our homework when it was due the morning after. That point was that until the outbreak came into our school, we weren't gonna be too concerned about it. Of course, some people had relatives in other places. Every once in awhile, someone watching the news in a lounge would read a loved one's name on the list of the infected, and suddenly burst into tears. Yet that didn't happen very often, so to the students of UMO the outbreak was in a whole different world. Right now, all I was concerned with was stuffing my face before band practice and listening to the gossip of the day at the band table.
Ah, the band table. So it wasn't officially our table, but it certainly had our asses imprinted on each and every chair. It was a long table in a raised eating area in the food court of the student Union, home to every band geek, orchestra nerd and marching band aficionado. It was almost never empty, except when the union itself was closed. We gathered here between classes, during mealtimes and even in the mornings on the weekends when half of us were bleary eyed and the other half of us were hung over. Every person had a very distinct personality too. We were nothing like the identical platinum blonde bimbos that only wore Hollister and walked in packs of four or five. We were also dissimilar to the meathead jocks who swaggered around in their Nike sweatpants and spoke loudly of beer and bitches while making sure that their hair never moved an inch. Every single one of us was a very unique individual, and we always would be. For example, we could start with Cecelia...
"ROXANNA FALCONE, G'MORNING!" the dark skinned girl bellowed, just having put her frizzy hair up into a lopsided ponytail. She was a large girl, but it fit perfectly with her large personality and loud voice.
I jumped and nearly dropped my breakfast sandwich as she yelled my name and the entire table turned around. For six am on a saturday morning, the table was pretty lively. If we all didn't have marching band at seven sharp, we all probably would've still been hiding in our beds. Instead of lamenting my lost sleep, I waved feebly and sat down between CC and a silent, attractive blonde boy with piercing blue eyes. When he didn't say hello, I wasn't too surprised. Toulouse was a little bit more than odd. He came and went without warning, barely ever spoke and absolutely refused to touch or be touched by anybody. He was quirky and dangerously intelligent, along with being one of our own, and we appreciated all of his strange and socially inept tendencies.
"G'morning CC, Toulouse, everyone else," I stated, peering around at the rest of the tables. The usuals for a Saturday morning. "Have I missed anything at this obscene hour?"
"Well, Sara saw Jake's ex girlfriend traipsing around down tharr," CC started in her strange and hilarious way of speaking. "So she threw a grape at her. The bitch turns around and goes "Did you just throw something at me?" so Sara goes "Not just something, but a grape!"'
I chuckled and waved to the two in question, who waved back cheerily. Sara and Jake were our "token couple," always together and practically funded by the entire group. I had been a freshman the year previous when they had their second anniversary, and I was pretty sure that by now they'd been dating over three years. I could never remember the exact date. They were both skinny, brunette, blue eyed dolls with bright smiles. The five of us were the early risers at the table today.
Sipping my milk and working on an English assignment, I listened to the rest of the news from CC and wondered why Toulouse was drawing different sized squares on a piece of lined paper. Soon enough the other bandies trickled in, with or without coffee and breakfast, and slowly rubbed the sleep from their eyes. "Good morning's" and "how are you's" were exchanged until about 6:45 until we unanimously got up and trudged toward 1944, the music building nearby that was our third home outside of the union and our respective housing. It was always quite a hilarious sight, watching all the marching band kids try to get into the band closet for uniforms, since the door was very small and everyone tried to get in at once. Especially since some of us already had our instruments out and set up, it was like trying to push a herd of elephants into a very small gymnasium. Eventually after much bumping and groaning and complaining, we all assembled on the football field looking sharp and orderly in our blue and white uniforms, instruments tucked under our arms or in my case, strapped to my front with drumsticks safely in my armpit. I leaned forward to talk to CC and Frankie, a stocky italian with a short fuse that we all watched carefully, and whispered.
"Dude, it's 7:02. Mr. Pryer is NEVER late. Ever. Not once."
CC looked around first, making sure there was no sign of our strict band teacher, then turned around and lowered her trombone a bit, looking nervous. She knew I was right, and so did everyone else. Usually Pryor was standing on the field waiting for us as we sleepily strode in, not the other way around. Frankie jumped in first, being a pretty curious little freshman.
"He's gotta be late every once in awhile, right? Like, people have family emergencies and stuff," he asked more than told, looking at CC for backup.
"Honey, this is my third year. Vincent Pryor's family is band," she explained, looking dead serious and fixing the feather in her hat. "The man eats, sleeps and breathes band. Everything he does revolves around band. Band when he wakes up in the morning to band when he goes to bed, and even band when he has band dreams. He has never been late. Ever."
"Well then where is he?" one of the trumpets asked.
Our answer came in the form of a heavyset, lumbering man waddling across the field toward us. Recognizing that this was clearly not the muscular, moustached form of Vince Pryor, we all set our instruments down and relaxed a little, wondering what was going on. When the man reached us, he appeared to be out of breath, and our mouthy trumpet section leader Vikki was the first to speak.
"Out with it, bro! Who the heck are you?"
"I'm here to tell you that Mr. Pryor will not be here for the rest of the semester," the man said, only to be met by gasps from the rest of the band. Jake Jake, our drum major, stood at the front of the band with wide eyes. "His family in Houston has been affected by the outbreak, and he has left for the semester to deal with that. Therefore, I will be your professor from here on out."
I looked from CC to Frankie, from Vikki to Jake Jake, then back to CC with a thunderstruck expression. This was the first of many times that the outbreak would affect us, yet we had no idea.
"The outbreak has spread to many large settlements across America, including vital cities such as New York City, Boston, Las Vegas and San Fransisco. It appears to be crawling up the West Coast at a much more rapid pace than the East Coast, but things are looking grim for the entire country. Sources say that central United States is still fairly free of the disease, but it is predicted to spread there within the month. This is Chase Theriault, signing off."
The few students huddled around the television in the Student Union at the University of Maine in Orono looked as if they'd just been struck by lightning, exchanging nervous expressions with the young adults sitting nearby. The Fresno Decomp Virus, or "Zombie Virus" as most of America had nicknamed it, was something that had only been dreamed up in horror movies and harsh fiction novels. Never before the end of time did anyone really think that there would be zombies roaming the earth. Of course, I didn't know too much about it. When you're stuck almost as far on the edge of America as you can get, it takes a little while for breaking news to reach you. It was kind of like we were watching the rest of the world be struck by this abominable plague, thinking it was never going to reach us. We lived in Maine, for Christ's sake. When I'd lived in Jersey, I'd never realized that all the jokes about things reaching Maine two months after they happened were true. Not that it really bothered me or the rest of the college student community any. We were too busy chasing our preferred gender, tipping upside down to catch beer from kegs and occasionally burying our heads in our homework when it was due the morning after. That point was that until the outbreak came into our school, we weren't gonna be too concerned about it. Of course, some people had relatives in other places. Every once in awhile, someone watching the news in a lounge would read a loved one's name on the list of the infected, and suddenly burst into tears. Yet that didn't happen very often, so to the students of UMO the outbreak was in a whole different world. Right now, all I was concerned with was stuffing my face before band practice and listening to the gossip of the day at the band table.
Ah, the band table. So it wasn't officially our table, but it certainly had our asses imprinted on each and every chair. It was a long table in a raised eating area in the food court of the student Union, home to every band geek, orchestra nerd and marching band aficionado. It was almost never empty, except when the union itself was closed. We gathered here between classes, during mealtimes and even in the mornings on the weekends when half of us were bleary eyed and the other half of us were hung over. Every person had a very distinct personality too. We were nothing like the identical platinum blonde bimbos that only wore Hollister and walked in packs of four or five. We were also dissimilar to the meathead jocks who swaggered around in their Nike sweatpants and spoke loudly of beer and bitches while making sure that their hair never moved an inch. Every single one of us was a very unique individual, and we always would be. For example, we could start with Cecelia...
"ROXANNA FALCONE, G'MORNING!" the dark skinned girl bellowed, just having put her frizzy hair up into a lopsided ponytail. She was a large girl, but it fit perfectly with her large personality and loud voice.
I jumped and nearly dropped my breakfast sandwich as she yelled my name and the entire table turned around. For six am on a saturday morning, the table was pretty lively. If we all didn't have marching band at seven sharp, we all probably would've still been hiding in our beds. Instead of lamenting my lost sleep, I waved feebly and sat down between CC and a silent, attractive blonde boy with piercing blue eyes. When he didn't say hello, I wasn't too surprised. Toulouse was a little bit more than odd. He came and went without warning, barely ever spoke and absolutely refused to touch or be touched by anybody. He was quirky and dangerously intelligent, along with being one of our own, and we appreciated all of his strange and socially inept tendencies.
"G'morning CC, Toulouse, everyone else," I stated, peering around at the rest of the tables. The usuals for a Saturday morning. "Have I missed anything at this obscene hour?"
"Well, Sara saw Jake's ex girlfriend traipsing around down tharr," CC started in her strange and hilarious way of speaking. "So she threw a grape at her. The bitch turns around and goes "Did you just throw something at me?" so Sara goes "Not just something, but a grape!"'
I chuckled and waved to the two in question, who waved back cheerily. Sara and Jake were our "token couple," always together and practically funded by the entire group. I had been a freshman the year previous when they had their second anniversary, and I was pretty sure that by now they'd been dating over three years. I could never remember the exact date. They were both skinny, brunette, blue eyed dolls with bright smiles. The five of us were the early risers at the table today.
Sipping my milk and working on an English assignment, I listened to the rest of the news from CC and wondered why Toulouse was drawing different sized squares on a piece of lined paper. Soon enough the other bandies trickled in, with or without coffee and breakfast, and slowly rubbed the sleep from their eyes. "Good morning's" and "how are you's" were exchanged until about 6:45 until we unanimously got up and trudged toward 1944, the music building nearby that was our third home outside of the union and our respective housing. It was always quite a hilarious sight, watching all the marching band kids try to get into the band closet for uniforms, since the door was very small and everyone tried to get in at once. Especially since some of us already had our instruments out and set up, it was like trying to push a herd of elephants into a very small gymnasium. Eventually after much bumping and groaning and complaining, we all assembled on the football field looking sharp and orderly in our blue and white uniforms, instruments tucked under our arms or in my case, strapped to my front with drumsticks safely in my armpit. I leaned forward to talk to CC and Frankie, a stocky italian with a short fuse that we all watched carefully, and whispered.
"Dude, it's 7:02. Mr. Pryer is NEVER late. Ever. Not once."
CC looked around first, making sure there was no sign of our strict band teacher, then turned around and lowered her trombone a bit, looking nervous. She knew I was right, and so did everyone else. Usually Pryor was standing on the field waiting for us as we sleepily strode in, not the other way around. Frankie jumped in first, being a pretty curious little freshman.
"He's gotta be late every once in awhile, right? Like, people have family emergencies and stuff," he asked more than told, looking at CC for backup.
"Honey, this is my third year. Vincent Pryor's family is band," she explained, looking dead serious and fixing the feather in her hat. "The man eats, sleeps and breathes band. Everything he does revolves around band. Band when he wakes up in the morning to band when he goes to bed, and even band when he has band dreams. He has never been late. Ever."
"Well then where is he?" one of the trumpets asked.
Our answer came in the form of a heavyset, lumbering man waddling across the field toward us. Recognizing that this was clearly not the muscular, moustached form of Vince Pryor, we all set our instruments down and relaxed a little, wondering what was going on. When the man reached us, he appeared to be out of breath, and our mouthy trumpet section leader Vikki was the first to speak.
"Out with it, bro! Who the heck are you?"
"I'm here to tell you that Mr. Pryor will not be here for the rest of the semester," the man said, only to be met by gasps from the rest of the band. Jake Jake, our drum major, stood at the front of the band with wide eyes. "His family in Houston has been affected by the outbreak, and he has left for the semester to deal with that. Therefore, I will be your professor from here on out."
I looked from CC to Frankie, from Vikki to Jake Jake, then back to CC with a thunderstruck expression. This was the first of many times that the outbreak would affect us, yet we had no idea.
