<strong>CAL SNYDER<br/><em>en route from Rockford City College to the Mission Street emergency shelter</em></strong><br/><br/>Cal was pleased to discover that he was far from being the only RCC undergrad capable of improvising creative responses to the present crisis.  A number of students who had joined the caravan-on-foot had brought with them various items scavenged from different places on campus -- random things they thought might come in handy, in case shit kept getting stranger that day.  The hastily-looted supplies were distributed at random among crowd members, especially those with backpacks or other ways of carrying things.  It was kind of like a community potluck before World War Three.<br/><br/>For example, one nurse from the campus infirmary had drafted a pair of helpers and filled two garbage bags with sundry medical supplies.  With the help of other volunteers, the items were sorted and handed out inside little plastic grocery bags, each containing the basic items of any emergency first-aid kit.  Cafeteria workers had raided all the nonperishable foodstuffs and bottled drinks and were giving them out in case people needed them later.<br/><br/>Members of various RCC sports teams had come up with even stranger things to share with other walkers.  Basically anything that could be turned into an offensive or defensive tool got distributed for those purposes, from sticks, clubs, and racquets of all shapes and sizes (golf, tennis, lacrosse, etc.), to a full range of protective headgear (football and lax helmets, hockey masks, even wrestling headgear).  Cal ended up with a set of football pads, an old baseball bat, and a good sharp javelin, of all things.  His personal favorite handout, however, came from a resourceful science major, who had gone through all the toxic substances at the campus labs and constructed a high-tech sort of Molotov cocktail:  corked glass flasks and bottles containing god-knows-what substances of various colors, each guaranteed to do some nasty damage to somebody.  Most of the walkers were too unnerved to want to handle these home-made bioweapons, but Cal and Paul went for the blue and the green gook, respectively.<br/><br/>Despite his odd sartorial habits, Paul's nonstop talking soon put Cal at ease.  His loquaciousness seemed to be overcompensating for the level of anxiety they were both feeling, just the same as everyone else on the trip.  The atmosphere during the short trek was incredibly tense but not altogether unpleasant.  There was no getting around the comical appearance of the marchers, with all their mismatched sporting gear and bags of random supplies, and that combined with the freakish news of the day put everyone in a talkative, even slightly giddy mood.  The sense of collective purpose was evident:  people could tell they may need to depend on each other to face the unpredictable dangers ahead.  Many sudden, new friendships were formed out of mutual apprehension during the journey to the shelter, and Cal hoped for one between him and Paul, since he had no other friends at hand -- Cynthia, his actor pal, was nowhere in sight.<br/><br/>No amount of wariness, forethought, or comradery, however, could prepare the travelers for the nightmare they would face when they reached their destination and got their first upclose look at the victims of the rioters' madness.