Outbreak Chapter 4

He slid the pistol into his holster and walked back into the living room. He was sure he looked strange wearing a pistol belt with gym shorts and a t-shirt but at this point he didn't really care. The others had turned on the television and were watching a news broadcast. The front door was still shaking violently so Brendon walked over to their couch and grabbed an armrest and lifted. "Help me get this to the door," he said to Aidan. His roommate walked over and grabbed the other end of the couch and together they carried it over to the front door. They pushed one of the armrests against the doorway so that even if the locks did break the men outside would have to push against the entire length of the couch to get the door open. It wasn't the best of barricades but it would at least slow them down if the door did come loose.
Brendon and Aidan went back into the living room and both sat down with Rebecca who was fixated on the television as she flipped through the news channels. Nearly every channel was covering what was happening in their city. Apparently the first reports of violent people had been made near a hospital in the northern part of the city around ten the previous night but nobody had realized that it was actually some sort of disease. It wasn't until around midnight that the police department had realized that the behavior was spreading through contact. Over the course of the night the National Guard had been called up to quarantine the city and the President himself had ordered active duty military units to the area to assist with the quarantine but so far no troops had been ordered into the city. In the early morning the police had attempted to set up a perimeter to stop the epidemic from spreading into the southern side of the city but their attempt had failed and the police force had been decimated. With the government refusing to send the military into the city it looked as if the residents were being left to fend for themselves. The news anchors were urging people to stay in their homes and barricade their houses as well as they could manage.
Brendon retrieved his cell phone and attempted to call his parents but the lines were busy. He tried calling the numbers of a few other friends and family members in town but every attempt was the same, the phone lines in the area must have been completely tied up. He wasn't too worried about his family quite yet, they lived on a farm about thirty miles south of the city and his father owned a few rifles and a shotgun. His daughter Joanna was staying with his parents and two sisters so she would be safe down there as well.
In the meantime it was probably best that the three of them stay put in the apartment where they only had to worry about one door and they had plenty of weapons. He figured they probably had enough food to last them about a month, plus he had three cases of MREs in his closet. The military rations weren't exactly gourmet food but they could last a while off of that. He was sure the government would be able to get enough troops into the area and clear out the city or come up with a cure for these people within a couple of weeks, they just had to survive that long.
They continued to watch the news for another thirty minutes learning as much as they could about what exactly was going on. At one point the news anchor put out an update announcing that somebody had reported that headshots were the only certain way to kill these people. It made sense to Aidan and Brendon. Of the people they had encountered Aidan had crushed one with his car and Brendon had shot two of them to no avail but the man he had stabbed in the temple had died instantly. He made a mental note to fight his army training and try for head shots instead of aiming center of mass then checked to make sure the other two had caught that news.