The chill night winds blew hard through the campus, rustling the bush Sarah crouched in making her shiver. Not for the first time, the young woman thought of her warm dorm bed and considered heading back, but she pushed the thought from her mind. She couldn’t give up now, not when she was so close to cracking this case! The amateur sleuth raised the binoculars to her eyes, scanning the buildings around her, once again wishing she’d just bit the bullet and shelled out the money for a set of night vision goggles. It would really make this whole: skulking in the dark looking for the culprit business much easier.
There! She grinned as she spotted movement from one of the female dorms. The side door was opening and someone was stepping out, no, make that two someones: one big vague shadow carrying another vague shadow over their shoulder against the vague shadow of the building. Sarah slipped out from the cover of her bush, hoping to get close enough to make out some more details, but as she watched the vague shadow move to one of the cars, opening the trunk and depositing the second shadow inside, she was sure she had found the culprit…
Just then, a third shadow loomed over Sarah. The sleuth had barely time to turn before something heavy hit her from behind and she dropped to the pavement, senseless…
***
“ugh...” Sarah groaned as she slowly came to. Her head throbbed where she’d been sapped. As the stars cleared from her vision, the sleuth took stock of her situation. She was in a storeroom of some sort, judging from the bottles of chemicals and boxes of protective gear on the shelves one of the ones in the science building.
She was tied up, of course, as was usual when the amateur girl sleuth gets knocked on the head by the villain’s henchmen. Tape, probably from the same storeroom wrapped her wrists and ankles and several strips covered her mouth. Not far away, standing out from the normal cardboard boxes and glass jars in the storeroom was a large canvass sack. It was all to easy to guess it contained the curled up figure of another captive coed, even if it hadn’t been wriggling and grunting in fright. Sarah grunted back, but it was plain their gags would make any sort of conversation impossible.
After a minute or so of fruitless grunting back and forth, the door to the supply closet opened. A figure, shadowed against the brightly lit room outside, bent over Sarah. A hand reached to the tape on her lips and began to peel it back, making her wince in pain.
“The building is quite empty, my dear...” A male voice warned her. “Screaming would be quite useless.” Sarah’s eyes widened. She knew that voice! The head of the chemistry department!
“Profession Phillips!” She cried in a loud voice. “I should have known! You’re the one who’s been experimenting on the students and turning them into mindless zombies to serve your bidding!”
“Wha- zombies?” The professor stammered, confused. “No...no… I’ve just got a bunch of gambling debts and I’ve been selling coeds off to the Middle East to pay them off.”
“And the hulking brute that knocked me out?”
“Oh, that’s just Chad, my grad assistant. He’s helping me to get a passing grade in Chemistry so he doesn’t get kicked off the football team.”
“So...you’re not conducting unethical mind control experiments and turning the students into mindless zombies?”
“Nope, though that does sound intriguing...”
“Then why are so many students wandering around campus in a brain-dead funk?”
“Well, it is Final’s Week...”