Inspired by Community S2E6: "Epidemiology"

Frank POV

Frank doesn't get invited to parties much. Technically, he wasn't even invited to this one. It's just a little Halloween party that Mr. Brunner and the Office of Campus Activities planned.

Now that Frank thinks of it, this party is literally in the school library. Maybe this is just for the people that didn't get invited to the big blowout house party that the Amazon sorority is putting on. Frank wouldn't want to go to that party even if he was invited—binge drinking and keg stands aren't really his thing—but does he really want to make an appearance at the consolation party? Sure, he's uncool, but he isn't that uncool.

"Frank! I'm so happy you came!" Hazel says. "I love your Hawkeye costume!"

"Thanks," says Frank. "I like your costume too."

Hazel does seem like the type who would go all out for Halloween, and sure enough, her witch costume is complete with rhinestones and a matching face mask.

"Thank you so much," she beams. "I spent forever sewing the lace on the skirt." She swooshes her skirt for show.

Frank's not sure what he's supposed to do now. It's just Hazel, but he's always been kind of bad at talking to girls.

"Oh, hey guys! You didn't have to wait for me to go in." Percy pulls down his fake beard. "It's me, Percy."

Hazel giggles. "You're so funny!"

He tries not to make his jealousy obvious, but Percy's merman costume is awesome, and yeah, form-flattering. Frank has abs too, so why can't he be confident enough to wear just a shiny skirt and carry around a trident?

Percy scans his student I.D. card and holds the door open for Hazel and Frank.

The party is sort of tacky, but the school did a good job putting it together. Little paper skeletons hang from the ceiling, and a table is set up for pumpkin carving.

"Hey guys, look what I made!" Leo calls. He turns his jack-o-lantern around, revealing an elaborate design of a bat. Wow, he's talented. The last time Frank tried to carve a pumpkin, he cut a little bit of his thumb off and had to go to the emergency room to have it glued back on. Now that was a scary Halloween.

"Oh, that's nice!" says Hazel.

Leo abandons his masterpiece and joins the group. "I hear the ice cream bars are good."

"Shouldn't we grab some pizza first?" Percy asks.

Ugh, New Rome always gets that cheap pizza from the place down the street. That pizza makes Frank's stomach sing like a whale, and not in a cool way. Looks like he'll be microwaving some Ramen in his dorm room later tonight.

"Oh, there's Jason! Bro!" Percy greets his friend with a bro hug. "Love the cape, man."

"I love your trident!" Jason says. He's dressed as a blonde Superman.

"Boys, boys, you're both gorgeous," says Piper. Then, she turns to the inflatable tyrannosaurus rex. "Right, Annabeth?"

Frank can't quite make out what Annabeth's muffled voice has to say, but he's sure it's something moderately insulting that ends with 'Seaweed Brain!'

"Leo, what are you supposed to be?" Piper asks.

Leo strikes a Saturday Night Fever disco pose. "Isn't it obvious? I could ask the same of you."

Piper shrugs. "Well, you know that Tristan McLean movie where he plays the spy and-"

"Aww, man!" Leo shouts. "I dropped my ice cream."

"Do you want me to go get you more?" Percy offers.

Leo waves him off. "Nah, it was kind of bad anyway."

"Oh, they're starting a new round of bingo! Does someone want to play with me?" Hazel asks.

Frank jumps on the opportunity. "I'll play!"

"Count us in too!" Piper grabs Annabeth's hand—talon?—and pulls her along. The others follow them into the empty classroom.

Frank takes a seat next to Hazel and takes a pile of bingo chips to share between the two of them.

"C'mon, Annabeth, just back into it..." Piper tries to push Annabeth's inflatable tail through the desk chair.

"B-6..." The bingo caller looks suspiciously like Dean D.

"I have B-5..." Percy says glumly.

"That's not the same as B-6!" shouts the caller. Yup, that is definitely Dean D in drag. Good for him.

Frank puts his bingo chip on B-6 and waits for the next number.

"O-69..."

"Nice!" Leo shouts.

Dean D sighs. "Do you have bingo, Leonard?"

Leo slumps back in his seat. "This game is stupid."

"I-19-"

"BINGO! OH YEAH! BINGO!" shouts Frank's hockey teammate Clarisse. She's always been one of the more competitive players.

Frank looks at his measly numbers and sighs. Maybe he just has bad luck. Last he checked, bingo didn't require any skills.

"WOO!" Clarisse holds up her Buffalo Wild Wings gift card in triumph. Good for her; Frank remembers her mentioning that it's her favorite restaurant.

"Leo, are you alright? You're looking kind of green," Hazel says.

"I'm feeling a little 'Disco Inferno' in my stomach if I'm being honest," Leo jokes.

"Oh no!" says Hazel. "I think my brother's friend Will is here. He's a nursing major, so maybe he could help."

Leo uses the desk to hoist himself onto his feet. "I'm gonna try to poop and then maybe if that doesn't work..." He stumbles.

"Oh! Let me help you!" Hazel grabs Leo's arm and leads him out into the hallway.

Frank sits back and groans. Why does Leo have to ruin everything?

Dean D tells everyone to clear their bingo cards, but before Frank scrapes his chips back onto the pile, he notices that he has one placed in each corner of the card. Dangit. Having four corners counts as bingo, and he didn't even see he had it.

Frank reluctantly clears his and Hazel's bingo cards, ready to play the next round for both of them if she isn't finished escorting Leo in time.

"Alright, here we go..." Dean D turns the lever on the bingo cage, sending a rattling noise throughout the room.

It's almost loud enough to cover the screaming.

"Help! Somebody help!" Hazel yells. She slams the door behind her. "Quick! Barricade the entrance!"

"Hazel, what's going on?" Piper asks.

"It's Leo! He went feral on the way to the bathroom and... and he got Clarisse!" She continues to frantically shove furniture against the doorway.

Jason puts his hands on his hips. "What do you mean? I thought he was sick."

"I think he's hallucinating or something! He's all sweaty and stuff! And he bit Clarisse."

"He... he what?" Frank asks.

Hazel turns to him, eyes wide, but thankful to have someone that's listening. "He bit Clarisse on the arm. Frank, I think he's really sick. We have to do something!"

"How do you think he got sick?" Percy asks. "I mean, we were all in the same place."

Annabeth waves her talons around.

"Oh, charades!" says Piper.

Annabeth crosses her talon arms.

"Hand jive?" Piper asks. "But Leo was dressed as a disco dancer."

"You don't think it was the jack-o-lantern carving, do you?" Percy asks. "Leo was the only one of us that did that."

Annabeth smacks Percy's ankles with her tail.

"So, no?" Jason guesses. "Oh, right. Because there were people carving pumpkins that are here now. Makes sense."

"What else did Leo do tonight then?" Percy asks. "He's a hard guy to track."

Frank's got it. "I remember! He ate that ice cream bar and said it didn't taste very good."

Annabeth jumps up and down.

"Great," says Frank. "So does he have like, food poisoning or something?"

"Food poisoning isn't contagious," Piper corrects.

"How do you know that what Leo has is contagious?" Jason asks.

"Her." Piper points at the window.

Oh.

Clarisse is clawing at the window, a snarl on her face.

"Great," says Percy. "COVID and whatever this thing is?"

"I don't want to be a zombie!" Hazel cries.

More zombie-fied fists start banging on the windows. They don't have much time before one of them realizes the windows can open.

"Oh no, there's Shel," says Piper. "Talk about an ex-girlfriend creeping back into your life..."

Jason stands up on a table. "Alright, everybody, listen up! Did anyone else here eat an ice cream bar?"

A couple of their peers raise a shy hand.

"Okay," says Dean D. "Let's get our facts straight here. We got all the ice cream treats from the same distributor."

So anyone who ate ice cream tonight could be infected.

"What if we ate a Klondike bar?" Pollux asks.

Frank knows more people ate ice cream than just those who are admitting to it. For starters, he saw Travis and Katie sipping a milkshake together before the bingo game started, and Grover from hockey ate a Choco-Taco, wrapper and all.

Dean D's tacky red heels click as he makes his way across the floor and shuts himself in a supply closet.

"We've been abandoned," Hazel says.

"What's wrong, Annabeth?" Piper asks.

Annabeth crosses her t-rex arms together and shakes them.

"Oh? You're... cold?" Piper asks. "Listen, I don't really think comfort is our top priority right now."

"How are you cold in that thing?" Jason asks.

"Wait, guys, I got it!" says Percy. "Disease spreads faster when it's hot. Annabeth told me about that at Sherman's hot tub party-"

"Why the hell were you at Sherman's hot tub party with Annabeth?" Piper asks.

Percy cuts her off. "That doesn't matter. We need to get to the thermostat and turn on the air conditioning! That way, the disease will stop spreading."

"And whatever food poisoning this is will get out of everyone's systems overnight," Frank adds.

"I didn't expect my first Halloween party to turn into a lock-in," Hazel says.

Everyone spreads out, looking for the thermostat system before the other students can turn into zombie versions of themselves.

"Wait, is anybody else still wondering about what happened at Sherman's hot tub party? Like, how did Annabeth and Percy get invited, but not me?" Piper asks.

"Piper, literally nobody cares about that right now. We have to find the thermostat." It's kind of mean of Frank to say it like that, but the situation is dire. There isn't much time before the student body is turned into weird diseased zombies.

Jason pulls a bookshelf out from the wall, but it tumbles over, spilling books everywhere, and what's worse, there's no thermostat.

"It's useless!" he shouts. "The only thermostat is in our study room!"

"Jason, what the heck bro? You do realize that most buildings only have one thermostat?" Percy asks.

"Bro, what?"

"Yeah, like sometimes you can split a building into zones and have more so that the temperature is evenly dispersed, but-"

"Great, let's get to the study room!" says Hazel.

Frank looks out the window at his not-quite-undead peers. He's suddenly feeling quite popular.

Thud! A table tips over onto its side, courtesy of Annabeth.

"That's a great plan! We can use the table as a shield!" Frank says.

"Hell yeah, Dino-beth!" says Piper.

Everybody grabs onto the table, lifting it up.

"You know," says Percy. "I kind of like Anna-Saurus Rex better."

"Ow!" The end of the table drops onto Frank's foot. His toe had better not be broken or else he'll be benched for hockey.

"Oh, shoot, guys, I'm so sorry!" Piper yells. "I thought... I thought that the punch would be fine..."

Frank reaches to comfort her. "Piper, it's-"

But the face that looks up at him is not Piper's. Her eyes are wild, and not in a 'Starbucks ran out of strawberries' kind of way.

"I got this!" Percy throws his trident at Piper, effectively missing her altogether and breaking the window.

"Percy, were you going to impale Piper?" Hazel asks.

"No, I was just going to—oh, shit! Bro!"

Sweaty zombie hands grab at Jason's Superman cape and pull him against the broken window. "Bro..." he whimpers as the zombies nibble on his broad shoulders.

With Piper, Jason, and Leo gone, that just leaves a small team of uninfected people.

Annabeth is sort of helpful, but also in a giant inflatable dinosaur suit.

Percy's trident is gone, and he's more vulnerable than anyone since he isn't wearing a shirt.

Frank is just useless and clumsy. What was he thinking dressing up as Hawkeye? Hazel's the only one who recognized it, and that's just because he told her about it beforehand.

So Hazel's the one they should all try to save.

Everyone grabs an end of the table, which is difficult beyond belief considering Annabeth has tiny t-rex arms, but they pull it off. Once the table is wedged through the door, they take off running down the hallway, knocking zombies over like bowling pins.

"Sorry, Nico!" Hazel shouts to her contaminated half-brother.

"They're sneaking up on us from behind! Take cover against the wall!" Percy shouts.

It's not the smartest idea, but it's the first idea, so Frank helps Percy pull the table against the wall, shielding them and Hazel from the zombies.

Wait.

"Where's Annabeth?" Hazel asks.

Frank peers over the table, and he does not like what he sees.

Annabeth's tiny dinosaur arms flail around in the air. She's like a turtle stuck on its back, unable to regain its footing.

Hoards of zombie students crowd her, poking at the inflatable until it finally pops, and unceremoniously deflates into a pool of orange on the cheap library carpeting.

"No! Annabeth!" Percy yells.

Her face appears out of the bottom of the suit. "Screw you, Seaweed Brain!"

"I was thinking something more along the lines of, 'We'll always have Sherman's hot tub party,' but that works too!"

Annabeth glares at Percy as she's overtaken by the disease.

✎✎✎

The following tactical move, according to Hazel, is to move underground.

"Warm air rises," she had told them. With that logic, being in the library basement might not necessarily cure the diseased students, but the colder air could slow them down.

"There's something down here, guys," Percy says. "Don't you hear that?"

"Yes, Percy, we all heard the toolbox fall off the shelf," Hazel deadpans.

Percy jumps and angles his phone flashlight towards the ceiling, just in time for Frank to dodge another falling supply box.

"Aww, stuffed animals," says Hazel.

"Look, a way out!" Frank points towards a window in the ceiling, leading towards the outside. "We can climb out that window and-"

"Not now, Frank!" says Percy. "I'm going to strangle whatever's throwing things off the ceiling!"

"Percy, it's probably just a rat from the dining hall or something," says Frank. "We've got to save our friends."

"Forget our friends! This is driving me crazy!" Percy throws his fake beard on the ground.

"You need to calm down before they find us!" Hazel hisses.

"There's a door right there! I'm getting out of here!"

"Percy, no!" Frank yells.

But it's too late. Percy tears the door open, revealing a mob of hungry zombie-fied classmates, including Leo, still wearing his torn disco suit.

Leo latches onto Percy's shoulder and takes a big bite out of his flesh.

"I'm gonna barf..." Frank says.

Hazel picks up a broom that fell to the floor. "Go climb out the window! I'll hold them off!"

"Hazel, no! They'll get you sick!"

"I can take 'em! Just get to the thermostat for me, okay?"

"But Hazel-"

Much to Frank's surprise, Hazel cuts him off with a peck on the lips. He didn't think this was a 'we might die so kiss me now' situation, but he's certainly not complaining.

"You can do this, Frank," she says.

The zombies are closing in, so Frank takes the opportunity to climb up the shelves and onto the window sill. From above, he can see the zombies closing in on Hazel. She's tough spinning that broom around like a staff, and it goes great with her witch costume, but there are too many foes for her to handle on her own.

Frank can't bring himself to watch his classmates pass their disease along to Hazel, so he climbs out the window, lips still tingling from his first kiss.

✎✎✎

The library is filled with zombies and loud Abba music playing over the intercom. Dean D is nowhere to be found, but Frank isn't the least bit surprised.

Moral of the story: Frank didn't think his plan through. It shouldn't be him. It should've been Annabeth or Hazel or someone with some common sense. Frank isn't tough enough to do this.

The thermostat is just at the end of the hall.

Frank grabs a cardboard box and dumps out the leftover ice cream bars; nobody should eat those anyway. He puts the box over his head and chooses to pummel through the crowd. He does this during hockey games, so why is it so hard when it matters?

It's because he knows these people. Yes, he even feels terrible pushing Leo into the recycling bin.

"Sorry, Zombie Percy!" Frank tosses Percy over his head and into a bunch of other classmates. They topple over like bowling pins.

"Hey, Jason!" Frank grabs Jason's Superman cape and pulls it over his face. That makes it easier when Frank punches him hard enough to knock him out. Should Frank be worried about giving Jason another concussion?

Jason won't even remember this in a few hours, so he decides not to worry.

And then the box is taken off his head. "Long time, no see, Annabeth!"

Annabeth hisses in reply. At least she's not a dinosaur anymore.

Can Frank punch a girl? Annabeth would probably be disappointed if he didn't take her on in combat, so he draws back for the punch, only pausing when he sees-

"Hazel!"

Hazel groans.

"Hazel, it's me!"

She pauses as if contemplating whether or not she should bite Frank and turn him into one of them. It's like she recognizes him!

"Ah!" Frank screams a scream a little less masculine than he would like to admit. Piper materializes out of nowhere and sinks a second bite onto Frank's arm.

And he was so close to the thermostat!

No! Can't give up now!

Frank trudges over to the end of the hallway, weighed down by Annabeth, who is now gnawing on his ankle.

So, so close! If he only had longer arms he could reach the button.

What the heck is on his forehead?

Frank's vision is clouded with spots when he removes his finger from his head, seeing the dark blood that apparently came out of him. He doesn't remember getting bit in the head.

Is this even his blood?

"Agh!" Hazel screeches.

Right! The thermostat!

Frank hits the button and watches as the number on the screen changes, but he can't see what number it is, or remember what he's doing fussing with the thermostat. Why's he in the library this late? Does he have a test or something?

That must be it. Midterms are close.

Frank's tired from all this studying he's been doing. He must be working so hard! Oh, his grandmother will be so proud when she sees the grades he's about to bring home! He's going to be the best kindergarten teacher ever!

Maybe tomorrow he can find the confidence to ask out that cute girl from his Latin class.

Maybe he should ask Annabeth Chase if he can tag along to the study group she's joining.

They have a tutor after all...

✎✎✎

"Frank! Thank goodness!"

Frank groans at the loss of the coolness on his forehead.

"What do you remember?"

"Are you okay?"

"We were so worried about you!"

"Guys, guys, he just woke up! Let him breathe, okay?"

Frank sits up on his elbows. "What happened?"

Hazel sits down on the edge of the study table. "We were hoping you could tell us. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I remember... you were sending me pictures of your Halloween costume, right?"

Hazel nods. "Yes, yes, I remember that now! Oh, and it's ruined..."

"It still looks nice," Frank says. "Like a post-apocalyptic witch or something."

Hazel blushes a little. "Thank you."

Percy offers Frank some water, which he happily takes.

Annabeth pops a couple of pills.

"Bad headache?" Piper asks her.

"No, I just have this earworm stuck in my head like I've been listening to Abba for hours on end," she says. "I never listen to Abba."

"Well, I suppose I should tell you, kids, what's going on," Dean D says, barging into the room. When did he start dressing in drag? Good for him.

The dean continues. "The health department says you're all good to go home as soon as you sign this waiver and schedule a COVID test within the next forty-eight hours. This has nothing to do with COVID, but since most of you lost your masks last night, you should take a test just to be safe. There's more information on the waiver." Dean D sets a pile of waivers and some pens on the table next to Frank.

"Has anyone seen my shirt?" Percy asks.

"Wait a second," says Jason. "Annabeth, take a look at this waiver."

Annabeth squints as she tries to read the fine print. "Figures," she scoffs. "Leave it to New Rome Community College to make us promise not to sue them over some... ice cream bars? Who the hell was eating ice cream bars in October?"

Leo cracks his knuckles. "They must have been either really good or really bad ice cream bars."