Sympatico Syndrome (Book 1): Infection (A Pandemic Survival Novel) (10 page)

Joe nodded. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I had a daughter.”

Cole waited for him to explain what happened to her, but Joe cleared his throat and only said, “I’d be happy to stay there and share whatever I got with you folks. Times like this, decent folks have to stick together.”

E
lly looked
down on the street. More bodies than she could count littered the sidewalks and cars blocked the streets, either crashed into other cars or just stopped for no apparent reason. Emergency services had tried to keep up. At first, it had seemed like a giant street party. Music had blared and even up in her room, she’d heard laughter and singing down on the street. But now, it looked like the aftermath of a riot. Windows at street level were broken, and she hadn’t left her hotel room in three days. Water hadn’t been an issue; it still came from the tap and electricity functioned.

The last two days, she had watched them collect bodies and put them into large trucks, having given up on trying to revive anyone after the first day. The workers, what few who were left, now wore biohazard suits, but some of them must have caught the disease before they took proper precautions because she saw several bodies wearing the suits as well.

Among the dead had been police and rescue workers, and when they fell, the others, in the throes of their illness induced euphoria, desecrated the bodies. Elly had stopped watching then. She’d tried calling her office at the CDC for the last twenty-four hours, but nobody answered anymore, and she didn’t know what that meant. Were they all dead? Or were they just so busy they were unable to answer the phone?

She barricaded her door with the bed and had stuffed a blanket beneath her door. She’d closed the air ducts, and covered them with pillowcases as well. She wished she could create a negative pressure in the room to make the flow head out of the room instead of in, but she couldn’t think of a way to do it. She contemplated breaking a window but thought the pressure from the air conditioning in the building would probably have the opposite effect.

Elly sat on the bed and tried not to think about the gnawing hunger in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten anything for two days, having cleaned out the mini-fridge.

The first two days, she’d heard doors slamming and loud voices in the hallway and adjacent rooms. The last twenty-four hours, her floor had been silent. Did she dare leave her room and try to scrounge up some food?

Standing, she dug through her suitcase. At least she had some protective gear with her. She had a small box of gloves and one of the masks. She had learned from her past missions to not take anything for granted. The one thing she hadn’t packed due to space constraints was a biohazard suit.

She sorted through her clothing trying to find anything she could use, but all of it would have to go on over her head, and she didn’t want to take that risk. She wanted something she could wear over her clothing, like a long coat. Her eye fell on the bathroom door, and she had an idea. She’d ignored the hotel robes, preferring sweats to lounge in, but now a robe could be exactly what she needed. She held one up and decided it would work. It was long on her and overlapped in front. She could easily wear it backward, to protect her better and keep her regular clothes from getting contaminated.

Tossing it on the bed, she dug into the pocket of her suitcase, pulling out her sneakers. She always packed a pair for comfort but hadn’t worn them out of the hotel. They would be her ‘clean’ shoes. The loafers she wore and left just inside the door when she’d last entered her room would be her ‘dirty’ shoes. After this, they would be left outside the room.

Suddenly, the television that she’d left on to provide news and sadly, the sound of another voice, turned off as the bathroom light flickered. Elly gasped. Was this it? Had so many people died that nobody was left to work the power plants? Worried about a blackout, she filled the tub, sink, the ice bucket and every empty bottle she had in the room. She also plugged her cell phone in. She wanted power for the flashlight if she needed it. She had an extra power bank already charged. At least she wouldn’t be completely in the dark if she had to leave the hotel down the fire stairs.

Slipping the robe on backward and her mask in place, she pilfered a shower cap from the bathroom amenities, Gloves on, she found the plastic grocery bag in her suitcase. She’d intended to transport dirty socks and underwear back home in it, but she wouldn’t be going home anytime soon.

Her next dilemma was how to get into the other rooms? She didn’t have any tools. She’d seen doors opened with credit cards in movies, but had only attempted the feat once, and that was on her mom’s door when she’d been a teen and had been locked out accidentally. Only she’d used her school identification instead of a credit card. Flipping her wallet open, Elly pulled out her license and a credit card so she’d have a couple of options. Those she stuck in the pocket of the robe. With the robe on backward, the pocket wasn’t quite as handy, but she had no trouble reaching it.

As she opened the door, she debated locking it. If the power went out, would she be stuck out in the hallway with no way to get back in? Or would the locks all release? Unsure, she decided to try to prevent the door from latching, without it being obvious that it was open. A sock laid across the latch prevented it from engaging, but still allowed the door to close almost all the way. She tried it a few times from inside to make sure she would be able to push the door open, and then left the relative safety of her room.

Elly’s room was near the elevator, but she wasn’t about to venture very far from her room yet. Not until she had a feel for what was going on. She looked at the lights and noted that both elevators were on the lower level. Was that just a coincidence or was it because nobody had used them for a while?

Her hope was to find a few unoccupied rooms that still had food in the mini-fridge. She had heard a lot of noise coming from the room adjacent to hers, so she avoided it, knocking on the door across the hallway, instead.

With her ear almost against the door, Elly listened, hoping on one hand to hear a friendly voice, but on the other, if the room was unoccupied, she had a chance of finding food.

Nobody answered her second knock either. She tried the door handle, but it was locked. It was worth a try. She tried the credit card. No matter how much she wiggled it, she couldn’t wedge it between the door and the frame so she could slide it down. Maybe it was too thick. Sighing, she tried her license. The edge was a bit thinner than the card. On her third attempt, she managed to squeeze it and then slid it down. The door popped open.  Startled at how easy it was, she vowed to always use the chain lock also.

With one hand on the door, and the other clutching the neck of a vase, she peeked behind the door first. Even through her thick mask, she smelled the unforgettable stench of a dead body. Elly wasn’t squeamish but worried about contamination. There was too much she didn’t know about this disease. Ebola victims were extremely contagious after death. Did victims of Sympatico Syndrome also become reservoirs for the virus after death? Uncertain, she almost backed out but changed her mind. There could still be food in here that was safe to eat if it was packaged and unopened. She had disinfectant wipes to clean any packaging.

The room was trashed. The beds not just unmade, but the sheets and blankets stripped off. She found one body in the bathroom, and another on the floor between the two double beds. Giving them a wide berth, she opened the fridge. All the miniature bottles of alcohol were gone, but she found a package of jumbo roasted almonds intact. She snatched it and tucked it into the bag. There was an orange, and she debated. Was it safe? The skin was unblemished, and unless the victims had injected it with a syringe, there should be no way they could have contaminated the edible portion. Her stomach growled. Into the bag it went.

The can of Pringles was opened with only two broken chip in the bottom. She sighed. The salty crispiness of a chip would have been heaven right about now.

That was all that was in the fridge, but she took a look around the room and saw a suitcase shoved into a corner. Guilt nudged her conscience as she rummaged through the luggage, but she tamped it down. The owner wasn’t going to claim this luggage ever again. All guilt was forgotten when she scored an unopened box of chocolate mint truffles. The shrink wrap was still in place! Her mouth watered.

That was all she found in the room so she headed down the hall to the next room. This time, it only took her a couple of tries to pop the lock and the room, other than a faint stale scent, didn’t assault her with the smell of death. “Hello?”

Nothing. She entered and found the room unoccupied. Wanting to shriek for joy, she darted to the fridge and laughed aloud. Everything was there. She cleaned it out. Every bottle of alcohol, every candy bar and a package of M&Ms found their way into her bag.

Buoyed by the find, she ran into the hallway hoping to find another empty room, but she couldn’t get the door open. Her license opened the latch, but the occupants had used the heavy chain. From the lack of response inside, she guessed they were dead.

Elly only had one more room to try on her side of the floor. She wedged the license in the door, and it popped open like the others had. This entrance wasn’t secured with the chain, so she crept in as she had the previous two rooms, only to come face to face with a woman. When she spotted Elly, instead of being alarmed, she grinned.

“Come on in! I was just about to have a drink! Want one?”

Elly hesitated. “Um, sorry. I guess I have the wrong room.” She tried to pass off breaking into the room as a mistake. The woman waved off the apology.

“No worries. Things have been crazy, am I right? I just feel so good to have survived the apocalypse that I was going to celebrate with a drink or two. Screw the hotel and their minibar rates. Just let them try to make me pay.” She laughed and waved for Elly to come in, not even commenting on Elly’s unusual attire.

“I should be getting back to my room. Enjoy your drink.”

“Hey, don’t leave me here to drink alone.” The woman’s smile faded, and an angry gleam came to her eye. “Get in here.”

Elly turned and bolted for her room. Dashing inside and slamming the door an instant before the woman pounded on it. Sliding the chain into place, Elly leaned her forehead against the wood, she gasped in relief. It took a moment, but with a groan, she realized she still wore all of her now contaminated gear. “Shit!”

At least she hadn’t gone beyond leaning on the door. She’d left her wipes by the door and so used them to wipe all the surfaces she had touched, then wiped off her shoes, taking them off and setting them in the corner behind the door. She still considered them contaminated, but she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep with them in the room and not wiped down.

Next, she wiped down the bag and all the contents, tossing them onto the bed to keep them from coming into contact with anything near the door. An orange rolled off the bed, but that wasn’t a big deal. The bottles, she had to set as far away as possible, not risking the glass breaking on her bed and losing the contents. Even beer had precious calories.

When the food was decontaminated, she removed her robe, hanging it on the hook on the back of the door, the contaminated side facing the hallway. She would be able to just slide her arms into it without touching it next time she wore it.

Pounding on the door made her jump away from the door.

“Hey, bitch! Are you too good to have a drink with me? What’s your problem?”

Elly called out, “I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I think I might be coming down with something.”

“You’re sick? You got that disease? Ew! Stay away from me! You better not have contaminated me, you dirty slut!”

Elly’s eyes widened. Where had that insult come from? She would have smiled if the circumstances hadn’t been so dangerous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date. The accusation would have been hilarious on any other day.

A door slammed down the hall, and Elly sagged in relief. She was almost certain the woman was showing symptoms of the syndrome.

The power flickered again, but didn’t go off, and so she took the orange into the bathroom and washed it to be on the safe side. Then she peeled it and ate it with a handful of almonds and a few peanut M&Ms. She wanted to consume everything she’d acquired but decided to save it.

At least her stomach wasn’t knotted in hunger, and she could think of something besides food. She couldn’t stay in the hotel much longer. She needed to leave and get out of the city without getting sick. She turned on the television, but the once slick TV news was reduced to a couple of channels showing reporters in full biohazard suits and bodies piling up in cities across the country. There was mention of other countries starting to feel the effects of the disease as well. Chicago had been in the first wave, and the local news channel showed only a test pattern. She hadn’t seen one of those in years. She switched back to the station still on the air.

The only thing good about the news was that maybe so many people had died that she’d stand a chance of getting out without meeting anyone else.

Elly took one more almond and chewed it while she devised a plan, such as it was. If she were home, she would have been safely ensconced in her bugout cabin. Her friends had all thought she was nuts, but working in war-torn areas, she’d come across too much suffering and starvation. She had the means to stock provisions, so why wouldn’t she?

She wondered how Cole was doing. Was he still alive? Had he made it to a safe place?

Elly scanned the pile of bodies the camera panned over. Out of habit, she noted the measures taken by officials—what was left of the officials, anyway. She imagined they were being decimated at a rate similar to the general population.

She had no doubt that the higher brass would have bugged out some top secret location, their close family all safe and provided for. Elly shook her head. Had the scientists been protected too? They should have been because they were the key to finding a cure or treatment but would the bureaucrats care as long as they were safe?  

One thing puzzled her. Why hadn’t the scientists at Aislado Island created some kind of vaccine, or at least a treatment before making the disease so deadly? Of course, officially, the disease had an unknown origin, but she knew in her gut that it was manufactured. It was too deadly to have never been seen before. Diseases didn’t work like that. You could always go back and dig around and discover a few scattered cases of a mysterious disease that had only affected a handful of people at first. It had been that way with both AIDS and Ebola. Sympatico had come from nowhere. She’d been spending most of her time while holed up researching everything she could find. As long as the internet still functioned, she was going to use it to investigate what might have happened. She’d been able to connect with some other researchers in other countries, and none had ever seen anything like this, nor had come across it in research.