By JESSE DUNSMORE

Senior Reporter

    The following article is a satirical rendition and should not be mistaken for actual news.

To clarify: Do NOT ask your biology professors why you haven’t ever heard of this happening.

ROCHESTER — Police have blocked off Walton Boulevard in preparation for cleanup efforts following what local medical officials are calling one of the worst and most contagious outbreaks of viral marketing ever seen in Oakland County.

“We’ve mobilized our HAZMAT team,” said an officer who wished to remain anonymous, standing well outside the quarantine zone encompassing the entire OU campus and the stretch of Walton in front of the university.

“In the meantime, I’m staying the hell out of there.”

According to initial reports, the outbreak started when Kevin Wagner, a resident of West Vandenberg Hall, accessed a secret page on the Web site of local apocalyptic rock band Metal Horde.

“Kevin was just staring at his screen all wide-eyed,” said Wagner’s roommate Tom Meldrum. “All of a sudden he sneezed. Then he looked kind of confused. That’s when the screaming started.”

According to witnesses, Wagner was only the first of over 100 residents to begin involuntarily yelling the band’s slogans while running uncontrollably throughout the building, infecting everyone they touched.

Among the statements vocalized by the infected and visibly terrified crowd: “Fight the machine,” “Flee the reformatting” and “Have you been replicated?”

All of these have appeared on stickers applied to light poles across campus in the previous weeks.

The students also compulsively destroyed all computers and most other technology, while yelling lyrics to the band’s single, “Kill the Signal.”

Meldrum managed to avoid being infected by the viral marketing.

“I jumped out the freaking window,” he told The Post via telephone from his room at Crittendon Hospital. “My cousin was all into the new ‘Batman’ movie, and checked out some Joker site.

“The doctors say he should be able to stop grinning and giggling in a couple weeks, but I’ve got too much homework to give up time like that.”

After the infection spread through both East and West Vandenberg, affected residents sprinted across the parking lot toward Walton, shouting “Fall back!” and “Retreat!” while pantomiming firing guns over their shoulders and making laser sound effects with their mouths.

Traffic was disrupted when the students reached the street and simultaneously projectile-vomited approximately 12,000 demo CDs into the eastbound lanes.

The mass infection is only the latest strain in the rash of viral marketing campaigns plaguing the nation.

Nonprofit organizations have gotten in on the game as well. As part of an awareness campaign in fall of 2007, the American Red Cross began airdropping bags of blood to form a large red cross that NASA said was visible from orbit.

Hummer last year stole 3,000 H2s from their own customers and returned them in the form of compacted lumps of scrap metal to advertise their new H3 model.

Following Cartoon Network’s use of a tractor beam to hold the moon in place over the U.S. for 12 hours last January to promote the film “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters,” mass flooding along coastal regions cost the country an estimated $7 billion in repairs.

“Though the damage was considerable [with the moon incident],” said FEMA spokesperson Gus Spencer, “the human cost of these viral campaigns is arguably greater. At least most people swam to safety then, and no one, say, developed a permanent rash in the image of Meatwad.”

Virologist Nadine Smith says the real damage began once marketers gained access to bioweaponry.

“Before Warner Bros. hired all those rogue government scientists, the worst thing any of us were prepared for was a repeat of the ‘Die Hard’ incident,” she said, referring to the mid-2007 blackout of the entire eastern seaboard in preparation for the release of “Live Free or Die Hard.” “But now, we’ve got to deal with annoying cryptic commercials, staged interviews for stars to tout their latest crappy movie, and entire districts of New York being transformed into ravenous photosensitive cannibal-vampire … things.”

Smith added that the completion of the vaccine for the “I Am Legend” virus was “close, very close.”

At press time, police estimated all but a few of the infected had been hospitalized and treated for “severe and uncontrollable rocking out,” and most had stopped trying to destroy the medical equipment in their rooms.

The casualties are the worst OU has seen since Jan. 17, the eve of the release of “Cloverfield,” when a student canceled classes for the day by unexpectedly mutating into a 50-story-tall monster and consuming Meadowbrook Hall. Authorities are working with major movie studios and advertising agencies to help contain viral marketing outbursts.

“Typically, a few weeks of rest with absolutely no media exposure is all it takes for the body to fight these types of infection off,” said Smith. “At least for now. I’ve heard George Romero is working on a new film. I’m stockpiling ammo.”