Sympatico Syndrome (Book 1): Infection (A Pandemic Survival Novel)

C
opyright © 2016 by M.P
. McDonald

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

F
or my beautiful
, sweet, kind and talented daughter, Maggie. Happy Sweet 16th Birthday.

“
C
ole
, you need to put on the news.”

Cole Evans dropped his spoon into his bowl of cereal and strode to the living room, phone pressed to his ear. He didn’t bother asking why he needed to watch the news. If Elly Jackson told him he had to watch the news, then that is what he had to do. Unflappable Elly never panicked, and if her tone wasn’t quite panic stricken, it was teetering on the edge and close to plunging over.

He shifted the phone to his other ear and reached for the remote on the coffee table. Clicking from the all sports network over to a morning national news show, he stopped on a station known for national news. The program was showing a split screen with the news anchor on the left and a correspondent on location on the right side of his screen.

“Okay. It’s on. Any specific channel?”

The last few days there had been mentions on the news about an outbreak of ‘flu’ on Aislado Island, but most media outlets played it down. They said the rash of deaths was limited to those who had been in poor health anyway, but Cole had felt uneasy about the explanation. He feared Elly was going to confirm his worst suspicions.

“The WHO has issued a travel advisory to the Aislado Islands. It’s just a precaution, but this virus, Sympatico Syndrome, named for the unusual socially outgoing behavior displayed by victims, has already killed more than a dozen young sailors stationed here.”

“
What do you mean by ‘socially outgoing behavior’
?”

The correspondent held his hand to his ear, adjusting the feed. “Good question. I asked the same thing. In most cases, when people become ill, they take to their bed, but in this case, the virus does something one of the scientists explained takes place in the brain on a chemical level. The victims actually feel great. Their brains are flooded with feel-good chemicals that induce a euphoric state.”

“So they die happy?” The anchor smirked, then looked off-camera, the smirk vanishing as he put a serious face back on. “I’m sorry to make light of the situation, it just seems like it’s not such a bad disease if it makes you feel good.”

“If it wasn’t deadly, it might not be a bad thing, but with the mortality rate, currently sitting around ninety-eight percent, this disease can’t be taken lightly.”

The anchorman gave a quick nod. “Absolutely.” His expression turned grim as he watched the feed from a tropical beach. “Jim, how have the locals been taking it? Have you noticed anyone panicking?”

Jim shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. The camera panned to a beach dotted with people stretched out on towels, kids shrieking as they played in the surf, and sailboats in the distance. His serious demeanor cracked as he took in the benign scene. “No, Bob, most consider it a problem confined to the naval base. And, as you can imagine, this isn’t exactly a bad place to be stranded.”

Bob chuckled. “No, I guess not. Thank you for the update, Jim. We’ll check back with you at the top of the hour.”

“Will do. And maybe I’ll check out the local food until then.” Jim grinned and added, “It’s a tough job…”

His gut churning, Cole switched to another station—then another. With each channel, his stomach twisted tighter and tighter. Each program showed similar news. Ordinary people probably wouldn’t be too worried. After the Ebola threat and the Zika virus, people had learned to tune out even the direst of reports. Yes, the diseases were real, but in faraway lands and too remote to worry over.

But most ordinary people weren’t epidemiologists. Even the few who were hadn’t worked on Aislado Island in the level four bio-labs. Sure, it had been three years ago, but he had warned them not to mess with the virus. It was innocuous in its natural state, but when manipulated, it had properties which had provoked nightmares. He hadn’t been in favor of biological warfare and cited Geneva Convention. He’d been assured it wasn’t for that purpose. Intelligence hinted that some enemies of the U.S. may have it and if they didn’t study it, they’d be in great danger. A vaccine or cure needed to be found and the project was fast-tracked. He understood the need but the risk posed by just having the virus around had him butting heads with his commanding officer.

If the illness being reported had started anywhere else, Cole wouldn’t be worried yet, attributing it to so some exotic and isolated disease, but Aislado was the only bio-lab controlled by the U.S. that had the necessary security and facilities to study the virus. Only it wasn’t as secure as everyone thought.

Was its release into the wild accidental? Or had there been an attack? Attack didn’t seem likely because intentional dispersal of the virus would take place in an urban setting where the virus could spread quickly. It didn’t make sense for the epicenter to be a remote island in the South Pacific. No matter how it started, it was out there, and unless they had come up with a vaccine or cure in the year since he’d left the Navy, then everyone was in grave danger.

He also knew how tight-lipped the government was, especially the military. If this was hitting the news media, chances were, it wasn’t a new situation, just one that had finally escaped the stranglehold of information released to the public.

“Elly…is this what I think it is?” He’d worked closely with Elly before even though she worked for the CDC. They had been in West Africa together helping to contain the Ebola outbreak. He trusted her to tell him the truth. Cole’s first worry was for his son. He had to get him back home if Elly’s suspicions were accurate.

“I’m almost certain it’s the same only they’re calling it Sympatico Syndrome. I’m in Chicago right now trying to track down the people who flew in from Aislado over the last month. This is a hot spot because of the proximity of the naval base just north of here. We don’t know how or when it escaped the containment lab, so not only am I searching for passengers who traveled from Aislado, but I’m also investigating unexplained deaths. So far, the news isn’t good. The numbers the media has are probably only a small fraction of the actual deaths.” She paused. “Do you remember how it killed the mice?”

Cole swallowed hard. “Yes.”
So much blood
. Even for little mice. One minute they were running around in a frenzy in their cages, squeaking at each other through the glass, the next, they dropped dead, usually after vomiting a massive amount of blood. “It wasn’t something I’d ever forget.”

He knew the properties of the virus. It destroyed blood vessels from the inside out. Everything would be just fine until they suddenly burst throughout the body, causing instant death. Not that he’d seen it happen in a human, but he’d seen it in mice. It had made his blood run cold. Back then, the only mode of transmission had been blood and body fluids, but for it to spread so quickly, it had to have either been modified, or it mutated on its own. In all likelihood, it was now airborne. It was as if the Spanish Flu and Ebola virus had a baby and Sympatico Syndrome was the offspring.

“Me neither, but the difficulty I’m having in identifying cases is that doctors are attributing the cause of death as stroke and drug overdose. You know how festive this virus made the mice? Well, now plug that scenario into a twenty-year-old with access to drugs. Their urge to party skyrockets, so yes, they often do drugs just before death, but I would bet my last dollar that they aren’t dying from a drug overdose.”

Cole remembered the odd behavior of the rodents very well. The mice had practically been dancing in their cages. He tried to wrap his mind around the same behavior on a massive human scale. “What’s the government doing to contain it?”

Elly sighed, her breath blowing over the mouthpiece and making it sound like she was in a wind tunnel for a moment. “That’s why I’m here in Chicago. Some of my colleagues from the CDC are in San Diego, New York, Houston, Miami, L.A…I don’t even know where all, but there aren’t enough of us and the way this seems to be spreading.” She paused, and he could picture her on the other end, her hand on top of her head, a fistful of hair pulled away from her face before she’d let it fall and sigh with frustration.“It’s going to make it next to impossible to contain. Cole, I wanted to warn you. I know it’s against protocol. I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this to prevent fear-mongering, but I think it’s only a matter of days before we have a full-blown panic anyway. This thing is spreading faster than anything we’ve ever seen.”

She didn’t say she was afraid, but he heard the fear in her voice. “Thanks for the warning, Elly.” Cole stood, but then immediately sat again, restless but with no direction yet.

“Hey, no thanks necessary. You’d do the same for me. I got your back here just like you had mine in Africa.”

Cole didn’t think what he’d done in Africa was a big deal. He’d merely sided with her when she’d refused to compromise on a proposal to cut some measures taken in regards to personal protective equipment. “You were right, they were wrong. It was easy to have your back in that one.”

“Still, you stuck your neck out for me. We had each other’s backs.”

“We did.” They had grown close during the humanitarian trip. “I owe you.”

“Yeah. I hope I get a chance to collect on that debt someday.” The doom in her voice drove the danger home. He had to make plans.

“I hope to god you do too. Listen, Elly…I have to call my son…” His mind raced as he wondered what to tell him.

“How’s Hunter been doing?”

“He’s good. Away at college now.” He’d kept in touch with Elly via occasional emails, but she had a home in Atlanta, and he lived in southern Wisconsin. The spark of attraction they’d felt for each other on their trip to Africa had never had a chance to ignite. Any romantic feelings had to be stifled while there was still a chance one of them could have contracted the deadly Ebola virus, and then they had gone their separate ways. He’d thought about her often since then.

“Hey, Elly, if you need anything, let me know. I’m not that far away. I can be in Chicago in a couple of hours.”

“Thanks. Right now, I’m working out of my hotel room, and I’m checking to see about catching a flight back to Atlanta. When the shit hits the fan, I want to be home. I have supplies stockpiled.”

Cole rubbed his forehead with his thumb and first two fingers. “I don’t.
Damn it
. I should have been prepared.”

“There’s still time if you hurry.”

“Yeah. I’ll get what I can. How long do you think we’ll have to stay isolated?”

“I wish I knew. A month? Two? Maybe as many as six.”

“Shit!” Cole paced his living room and peered out his front window at the neatly kept homes lining his street. “I need to warn my neighbors…” He spoke the thought aloud as he made a mental list of everyone he needed to inform.

“
No!
You can’t tell
anyone
!”

“What?” Cole sank to the couch, circling the heel of his hand against his forehead as he tried to stave off the sharp stabs of a headache. “They’ll need to prepare.”

“Don’t tell anyone until you have your own survival plan in place. Get supplies. Food, shelter, weapons. Whatever you can. If you tell anyone—even close neighbors— they’ll tell others, and before you know it, the stores will be ransacked, and you can kiss your survival good-bye.”

Cole understood her rationale, but it felt wrong. “But, there must be something I can do.”

“What you need to do is save yourself and your son. Don’t you have a brother?”

“Yes. Sean. He’s married, and they have a boy and girl, both teenagers.”

“Okay, well tell them. A small group will have a greater chance of surviving if this virus is the doomsday virus I think it is. You’ll have to take extreme measures.”

“Extreme measures?
Jesus, Elly
.” He knew what that meant, and he thought he might vomit. Cole couldn’t imagine killing another person. His job had been to try to prevent as many deaths as possible, not contribute to mortality rates.

“You’ll have to do what you have to do, Cole. Now, listen, my best estimate is you have a few days at most before all hell breaks loose. If you want to stay alive, you need to get supplies, and then go into seclusion. Don’t interact with anyone for at least a month. By then, we’ll know how bad it’ll be, and you can adjust your plans, but I’m telling you, Cole. This could be
it
. This could be the infection that wipes mankind off the face of the earth.”