Worst day of work EVER

3:25pm

I knew something was up when it took way longer than usual to get into work today. spazzkat was unusually uncommunicative on the whole thing--and what the hell was up with him sniffing my head, anyway? Not to mention the ungodly bus funk, even more ghastly than usual.

Once we got downtown, the weirdness continued. Backups like you would not believe. And at first our whole news department blamed it on the streetcar work downtown, but we soon found out otherwise when we discovered half the news staff responsible for collecting this morning's stories had shambled in off the streets looking suspiciously pasty-faced and moaning incoherently, and Advertising seemed strangely more lucid than usual (with new action items all about growing the BRAAAAAAINS aspect of the company). What reporters we had still able to string coherent sentences together promptly barricaded themselves inside the IT department and, last I checked, were valiantly trying to keep our servers up and running so we can get updates out to the city. This is exactly the scenario our disaster plan is made for, but the servers in Bothell aren't answering. So if our primaries go down, we're fucked.

We were okay in my department for a few hours. The infected aren't too solid on the whole elevator concept, and they couldn't seem to organize themselves well enough to make it up the stairs in single or double file, so we had time to barricade all the entrances with as many conference room tables and chairs as we could find. Problem was, somebody infected must have still gotten in. By lunchtime all the designers were gnawing on the heads of the engineers. QA, knowing a sev 1 pri 0 situation when we see it, seized every sharp object we could find in the kitchen and took off through the emergency stairwell to get out. We jumped into my lead's car, since she was the only one of us who hadn't come in by bus, and that way we made it as far as Ballard. We had to split up then, though. She had to get back to her family; I still had to make it to Kenmore. Last I saw our contractor guy, unfortunately, he was running like hell towards Fremont. I hope he makes it.

I'm posting this from just outside a cafe that still has its wireless up. I didn't go in--the place was pretty jammed full of zombies already, all in a line, like they were still going to get their cappucinos or something. Pretty fucking creepy in general, but at least it let me get this out.

And I just realized I totally left spazzkat behind. Shit. I suck. :( Sorry, man. If you see this, I hope to gods you're okay. But I've got to make it back to solarbird. I hope you understand!

ETA 6:37pm

I barely made it back to Kenmore alive, people.

Traffic through the U-district is fucked, so I had to catch one of the last running busses. They were actually fleeing north for the border, but I got 'em to drop me off in Shoreline and I went overland to try to get home. I've never stolen a damn thing in my life, but today I made an exception and took a ten-speed out of somebody's abandoned bike locker. I don't think the owner wanted it anymore anyway. She was wandering off down the Interurban trail, her helmet all crooked and her face very, very green.

I heard gunfire in Lake Forest Park. I spotted a bunch of people on the roof of the Lake Forest Park Town Centre, taking potshots at all the zombies in biking gear coming up off the Burke Gilman trail. For the love of god, folks, whatever you do, stay off 522. You'll make it faster over the side roads.

Posting this over the Third Place wireless before I try to make that last stretch home. Wish me luck. I have to ditch the bike, there's no way I'm going to ride it up the hill. But under the circumstances, I think I'll be able to run up the whole way if I have to.

ETA 6:50pm

Power's out along half our hill but we still have net and oh thank god, solarbird and risu are okay.

But something's wrong with Zoe. She's looking really... wasted. And molting right and left. Since when were her eyes all runny and black?

ETA 6:54pm

spazzkat just came up the basement stairs. He looks....

SHIT.