Sympatico Syndrome (Book 1): Infection (A Pandemic Survival Novel) (15 page)

True, the sick people weren’t zombies but what he’d heard on the radio before the stations had cut out, was that the sick sought out the healthy. They probably didn’t mean to infect others, but the disease seemed to force them to become overtly friendly and helpful. Was that why his cellphone had blown up with texts from friends the day his dad had told him to head home? A lot the invites to parties had come from students he barely knew and only shared a class or two with. He’d thought it odd he was suddenly popular and realized that spilling soda on his computer might have been the luckiest thing he’d ever done. It had forced him to actually crack open the books and read them instead of just going over his notes. That meant no time for partying.

His dad would have a theory about why the disease caused people to act weirdly outgoing he was sure, but whatever the reason, he didn’t want to encounter it firsthand ever again. The mob in the street on the first morning, then the cop at the accident, had been enough for him.

He hitched the horses to a speed limit sign a few feet behind the car and popped open the trunk. Rummaging around, he dug out the tire iron, a basic tool kit, some flares, and a first aid kit. The kits went into one of the large saddlebags he’d found in the tack room, and he slid the tire iron into the saddle bag on the right side of the mare. It would be within easy reach if he needed it.

Hunter had lashed the tent behind his saddle with extra straps he’d found in the tack room. In addition to the straps, he’d found two long lead lines for the horses’ halters and hoped he’d be able to stake the animals out at night. He tied his sleeping bag and an extra tarp he’d found lying in the hayloft behind the saddle he’d put on Red, his name for the chestnut horse. The second horse and saddle would be nice to have on the island if he could transport the animals out to it somehow. Maybe he could teach Trent and Piper how to ride. With some careful planning, he was able to fit everything onto the two horses.

With the bow tied on top of the tent, the quiver tied onto the side of his saddle, and a baseball cap shading his face, he was ready to leave. Hunter shoved the keys in his pocket, not really sure why he even bothered because he doubted he’d ever see his car again, but on the outside hope that things weren’t really as bad as he thought they were, maybe he and his dad could return to pick up his car.

Taking Red’s lead rope, and wrapping it around his hand, he mounted the mare, took a last look at his car, and then urged his mount forward.

“
D
ad
, can’t I just take it out a little ways?” Trent stood on the pier holding a fishing rod and tackle box. “
Please
…? I helped plant the garden all day yesterday, and today, I,” he motioned to the fish cleaning shed that Cole had just left, “even scrubbed out the fish shed. It was beyond disgusting.” He made a face.

“Kid’s got a point. He’s been working hard.” Cole nodded. “You’ve done a great job, Trent.”

Trent beamed.

Sean sighed and looked at Cole. “Do you mind?”

Cole held his brother’s gaze. “First of all, from here on out, everything here belongs to all of us. You don’t need to ask permission for you or your family to use anything here so if you’re okay with him out in the boat, it’s fine with me.” He turned his attention to his nephew. “However, unfortunately, you need to stay close to the island, Trent. Gas is precious now.”

“I know, Uncle Cole. I will. I just want to fish a little. Relax. ”

It sounded tempting to Cole as well, but there was still so much work to do. One of their biggest chores over the next several months would be to chop enough wood to last the winter. Cole thought about taking the pontoon and seeing if he could find any abandoned houses along the coast that had wood stacked in their yards but he wasn’t sure if it would be worth the gas without concrete knowledge of where the wood piles were located. But Trent was just a fourteen-year old kid. He’d worked as hard as the rest of them without complaint. He deserved some time to have fun.

“Let me show you how to work the engine.” Cole started down the pier, but Trent scrambled into the boat and said, “I already know how. My friend, Scott, has a boat just like this and his parents let us take it out on the lake all the time.”

Cole looked back at Sean, who confirmed, “They do.” Then Sean pointed at Trent. “You got a life jacket in there?”

Trent glanced around and spotted the jacket Cole had left in it earlier. He held it up. “Right here, Dad.”

H
unger finally forced Elly
to leave the hotel. For the last few days, she had rationed her food in the hope that things would get better. Despite her education and experience, she had thought that somehow the government would come through. At the very least, the National Guard would have shown up to help clear the streets and enforce the curfew, but nobody ever came.

Before the power went out, the internet and television had shown the virus active across the world. Some places weren’t as hard hit, but those places were remote. As she had broken out the window to ventilate the room the day before, she had stared at the hundreds of buildings in sight. Her location was anything but remote.

Since she was on the eighteenth floor, there was a good breeze, and she was high enough that the stench of decaying bodies on the street was diluted by lake breezes, but at night, the sounds from street level terrified her. The yowling of cats, snarling of dogs, and incessant squeaking of what she guessed were rats, filled the night as they feasted on the bodies below. During the day, the constant sound of birds reminded her of the old Hitchcock movie. Worried they would fly into her room, she had tacked the shower curtain over the window. It was loose enough to let in air but would deter most birds. Fortunately, most were only interested in the banquet lying on the pavement.

She stripped the bed, rolling the bedding up and securing it with belts from the guest robes in the room. She considered leaving her computer, but if she made it to Cole’s and he had electricity, all of her notes and data about the disease was on the hard drive. If nothing else, she wanted to transcribe it onto paper for future historians. It sounded like a silly reason to lug the computer, but when she thought of all the prior scientists who had created notes of deadly diseases like the plague and cholera, she knew she had to try. Maybe in a thousand years, they would help someone figure out what had happened here.

She ditched her makeup, kept her sunscreen, and left the paperbacks she’d brought along to read on the plane. Her expensive heels were tossed aside. She kept her ‘clean’ shoes but packed them in her bag. On her way out, when she was in her gear, she’d slip on the dirty shoes in the hallway.

Elly surveyed the items of clothing lying on the bed. She hadn’t expected to be in Chicago for more than three days, so had packed lightly. Thankfully, she had tossed in a pair of jeans to wear on the flight for comfort. It was a compromise between the sweatpants she wanted to wear and the dress slacks she should wear. She changed into them. It would be easier to wear the jeans instead of toting their weight around in a bag, and tucked the sweats she’d been wearing the last few days into her suitcase.

The case had a retractable handle and rolled, but she didn’t know how long the wheels would last on the pavement. They were meant for smooth tile inside of airports, not miles of rough streets and sidewalks.

With her jeans and a t-shirt on, she made her way down to the first floor, the bedroll strapped to the handle of the case and a pillowcase, fashioned into a bag. She had taken the cords from the drapes and cut slits around the open end of two pillow cases and threaded the belt through them. The double thickness added strength to the bag. She added a few towels from the room and her plastic bottles of water to the bag. She only had two full bottles left.

Settling her mask over her face, she opened the door. The halls were dark and abandoned. She located the stairs and headed for them. She paused before pushing the bar to open the heavy door. What if there were dead bodies on the stairs? She looked back at her hotel room door, tempted to return, but she had no choice, she had to leave or die of thirst.

Bracing herself for whatever she would find, she entered the stairwell. The steps were clear and she lifted the case down, worried that thumping it against every stair would break the wheels off, but by the tenth floor, her arms were burning. She stopped to rest. Breathing through the heavy mask was difficult when she was exerting herself. She leaned against the wall and fought the urge to raise the mask. The moment she thought of lifting it, she was hit with the urge to take a drink of water, but not only did she have to conserve it, but she also didn't want to risk lifting the mask even for that brief moment it would take for her to take a drink.

Her goal was to reach some area of the city that wasn’t littered with dead bodies. All the streets could be as bad as this one. Pushing away from the wall, she continued her journey, finding only one body in the stairwell, slumped into the corner of a landing, and she was able to avoid it easily.

Finally, after only one more rest on the fifth floor landing, she made it to the first floor. There was a door right there to the outside, and she started to open it, but something blocked her from pushing it open more than a few inches. She tried to peek around the edge but recoiled when she saw a part of a bare foot lying on the ground. It looked like some animal had gotten to the body. Gagging, Elly stumbled back and found the door to the first floor hallway. She opened it, thankful that whatever automatic locks would normally prevent the door from opening, must have been deactivated when the power went out.

The stench in the hallway slammed into her and made her remember an old trick she should have done before she’d left her room. A little smear of toothpaste inside of the mask would have cut most of the odor, and she’d have just smelled spearmint. More bodies in varying states of decomposition were strewn down the dark hallway, and she grimaced at the dark stains on the carpet beneath the bodies. Some of it was no doubt blood but some also much of it was various other body fluids. Trying not to look directly at the victims, she picked her way to the front lobby with the same care she’d use if she were crossing a minefield.

The poor lady at the reception desk lay dead at her desk. Elly hurried to the front door, but the gift shop by the entrance caught her eye. She wondered if any food had survived. There might be something else in there that she could use as well. The glass display had been broken, all the jewelry missing, and most of the snack food was gone or destroyed. She spotted a door behind a toppled rack of designer cocktail dresses. Moving the rack out of the way, she tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. After opening it a crack, she listened for any sounds from within, but it was silent. The silence in the building was unnerving. She almost welcomed the cawing of the crows outside over the dead quiet within the building.

The first thing she did was carefully remove her gloves, making sure her bare hands never touched the outside of them, and set them on an empty spot on a shelf. Normally, she would just toss contaminated gloves, but she had a finite supply now. She fished a new pair from her back pocket, having stuck them there before leaving her room. She slipped them on.

This room looked like it hadn’t been touched by anyone sick, so while she didn’t consider it safe, she felt that whatever was in the boxes would be and didn’t want to contaminate any of it with ‘dirty’ gloves.

The room wasn’t big, but shelves stacked with boxes lined the walls, forming a narrow corridor for her to walk through. She propped the door open so she could see what was in the boxes. A box cutter sat on a shelf, and she grabbed it and looked for another one. It wasn’t much as far as weapons went, but it was better than nothing.

The first few boxes she cut open contained t-shirts, sandals, and scented candles. She didn’t want the weight of the heavy jar candles but stuffed all the votive candles in her suitcase. Hopefully, she’d find matches too. She held up a t-shirt, emblazoned with the hotel logo, and cocked her head. It should fit, and it was a good, heavy cotton mix. Most of what she had in the way of clothing was business attire. Dumping a skirt, she replaced it with three t-shirts. When she found a hoodie that fit her, she took that too, tossing aside the dress slacks in her suitcase to make room. Tying the arms of a second hoodie around her waist, she moved on to another box.

As soon as the cardboard parted and she saw the familiar dark blue bags with the yellow lettering, she let out a squeal of delight. Peanuts! The packages claimed they were perfect for snacking. She stuffed a few packs in her pockets and fit the rest into every crevice of her case. Her mouth watered at the thought of eating them even though she had never been overly fond of peanuts before.

Another box, already opened, held a few bags of dried mixed slices of dried fruit. So, she had protein and fruits covered. Grinning, she shoved them in to her case as well, sacrificing a silk blouse in the process. It had cost her over a hundred dollars a month ago. She shook her head. What a waste of money.

The rest of the boxes held nothing of value to her, just postcards, souvenirs, and stuffed animals.

She put the box cutter in her back pocket and removed her gloves, sticking those in the pocket as well. Replacing the gloves with the dirty pair, she returned to the gift shop to get a better look around. The small shop had three victims on the floor, so everything around them was off limits. Elly frowned when she saw three bags of potato chips sitting in a dark stain beside one body.
Damn.

Spotting a bottle of soda beneath a rack of swim suits, she bent to retrieve it then pulled back at the smear of brown on the label. It looked like dried blood. She backed away, checking to make sure she wasn’t standing in any blood. Navigating the small shop was like crossing a minefield. If it was this hard here, how would it be outside? She drew a deep breath to steady her nerves.

A revolving rack of sunglasses caught her eye. It appeared intact and untouched. They weren’t the expensive brands that had probably been in the jewelry case, but she took several pairs, knowing they would come in handy.

A cloth bag emblazoned with a trendy fashion logo and sporting shoulder straps made of thick string, hung by one strap from a hook. She grabbed it. While it wasn’t quite a backpack, she could wear it as one. She dropped the sunglasses inside and scoured the shop for anything more. A sealed travel sized box of toothpaste joined the sunglasses, along with a couple of toothbrushes.

She found five packs of pain relievers, a sealed lip balm and a tube of hand lotion. She almost left that, deeming it too frivolous but changed her mind. Dry and cracked skin was a bad thing when a deadly virus lurked about. She needed her skin intact.

Tucked back on a shelf at the rear of the store, apparently untouched by looters or whatever the victims became with infected with the virus, she found a baseball cap—a white cap with a Chicago Cubs logo. She supposed it was the boutique version of the cap. She plopped it on.

A rack beside the caps held silk scarves. Deciding a scarf could double as a rope or belt, she took several, stuffing them in her bag. Besides, they were light and easy to carry. Elly took one more and tossed it around her neck, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror beside the display. With her hands on her hips, she twisted like a model on a catwalk, chuckling at her behavior. In light of all the death around her, she welcomed the brief interlude when she had forgotten her circumstances. As if it really mattered what she looked like? Then she shrugged at her image. If she had to survive the end of the world, at least she could apocalypse in style.

C
ole dragged the wheelbarrow
, loaded with cut wood, to the small but growing stack near the house. He’d discarded his t-shirt earlier and gazed out at the bay, enjoying the refreshing breeze. The water looked inviting. It wasn’t a hot day, but the exertion had him certain that he wouldn’t miss his gym membership in the least. Maybe a quick splash or two would cool him off enough to get one more load of wood in before he had to go see how Sean was doing working on an old windmill set behind the houses. Joe said it had probably pumped the water before the island was connected to the mainland via buried cables. It was a priority.

He thought of all the things they needed to make it through the winter. Hell, everything was a priority. But in the winter, water above ground would freeze. The well went down far enough to where the earth was a stable temperature year round, but the water had to move, or it would become ice.