I plan to creep down to street level with my gun and fire a single shot, just to make sure I’ve got this down. Should I ever have to use the gun, I want to make sure that I’m competent doing so before it’s a do-or-die type situation.
But first, breakfast! I’m having some canned ham and toaster pastries. Not too exciting I know, but hey, considering the circumstances, I’d say it’s not too shabby either.
I need to replenish my water supply. Later, I’d like to bring down one of those big water cooler jugs from the finance department. Then I’ll have a good supply here from which to refill my smaller water bottles.
8:15 a.m.
I successfully fired my first shot from a gun! I did it down on the street level. No one was around, thankfully, because the sound was loud as hell. I mean, I expected it to be loud, but not THAT loud. I guess it didn’t help that I went inside one of the burned out stores to fire the shot. The enclosed space made the sound even louder. Anyway, I fired the gun and then beat it the heck out of there. I wasn’t about to stick around to find out if the noise drew any curious onlookers. I hope that if anything, it keeps them away. But I wasn’t willing to chance it.
So now I know how to load, handle, and fire a gun. I wouldn’t say I feel confident in my abilities or even that competent, but at least I’ve done it. And in an emergency situation, I think I could probably do it again…at least I HOPE.
11:43 a.m.
I’m back from chore number two. I managed to haul the water cooler tank (that’s a little more than three-quarters full) back downstairs with me from the finance department. I plan to haul the one in housekeeping down to the guest room that I chose to stay in later tonight. Then I’ll have larger water reserves in multiple spots.
Everything seems quiet around the hotel, both inside and out, but I’ve learned not to take that at face value. This is a big place, and there are plenty of spots for people to sneak into. Therefore, I have to remain vigilant at all times.
For now however, I’m going to make an early lunch and try to grab a nap so that I’m fresh and ready for tonight. I don’t want to blow it again by falling asleep at the critical moment. It’s starting to get kind of stuffy down here in the basement too. But more than anything, I’m looking forward to a real bed. I’d like to take another bath too, but I’m extremely leery of the pool water at this point. It’s been stagnate for so long that I’m not sure exactly what I’d be swimming in. I think I’m going to have to be satisfied with a wet-washcloth-rubdown, some fresh deodorant, and a good brushing of my teeth for the time being. I need to steal a few more personal-size deodorant sticks and tubes of toothpaste from housekeeping tonight too. I’ll add that to my shopping list:
Toothpaste
Deodorant
Lighter
Water cooler jug
Looks like I’ll have quite a haul if all goes as planned.
I wish I had some anti-fungal cream or spray too. I think I picked up some athlete’s foot when I was down at the pool area, and I’ve got some jock itch going on too. It’s got to be this heat. I feel sweaty and sticky all the time. God, the itch is driving me nuts!
11:23 p.m.
All did not go as expected tonight, but I don’t have time to write about it right now. As a quick note however, I will say that I got absolutely no radio reception up on the roof. It was all static. But I did relocate to one of the guest rooms. But I’m not the only one. Yeah, I have company. But for now, I’m going to enjoy sprawling out on this king-size bed and try to get a good night’s sleep with the room window open to allow a cool breeze inside, something I’ve sorely missed.
Oh, and by the way, once it got dark, I made my way across the street to a neighboring drug store. Most of the stuff there was already picked clean, but guess what wasn’t? Yep, you got it, the anti-fungal spray. Guess that wasn’t a big item for the looters. Thankfully for me, it was still there. That itching was driving me absolutely crazy! Much better now. A couple more applications and I should be good as new.
September 16th
5:50 a.m.
I’m up early this morning. After my nap yesterday afternoon and my great night’s sleep, I feel fully rested for the first time in weeks. It was wonderful to sleep in a real bed again. I never thought that lying on a mattress could feel so good. I felt like a hard pad of butter melting into a soft white piece of warm bread. And with the window open, I had a super-nice breeze coming in. It was probably one of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years, if not ever!
So as I mentioned in my last post from yesterday, I’m no longer alone in the hotel. And it’s not more looters who have joined me – it’s my old boss MANNY and his FAMILY!
When I went upstairs last night, I was in Manny’s office looking for stuff when I noticed that it looked like someone had been in there. Some of his things had been moved around. It instantly had me on guard and worried that looters had somehow found their way up to the housekeeping department.
Concerned that someone may have taken the water cooler bottle I was planning to retrieve, or worse yet, gotten into my stash, I quietly headed out to inspect the rest of the floor. Flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, I first made my way to the housekeeping offices. There, everything appeared in order. I thought the water level inside the cooler tank looked a little lower, but I couldn’t be sure. I hadn’t taken exact measurements when I’d checked it before.
I then checked various office doors, which were all still secured. It didn’t surprise me. Why would anyone want to break into the housekeeping offices? But if that was the case, why would someone break into Manny’s office? At least that was my train of thought at the time. It had me wondering if I might be going a bit crazy and had just imagined that things in Manny’s office had been moved. That is until I decided to check on my stash in the housekeeping attic closet.
That’s where, much to my astonishment, and apparently much to theirs as well, I found Manny and his family huddled together. And by the amount of my supplies they’d consumed, it looked as though they’d been there for at least several days.
After our greetings and introductions (since I’d never met his kids), we exchanged stories about the paths of both sides from the closing of the hotel up to the point of our meeting.
From what I can recall, Manny’s story goes something like this. After the hotel closed, he was looking forward to some quality days off with the family. His wife, Sandra, is a stay-at-home mom. I guess now she is a “stay-at-hotel” mom. Currently – or at least until the flu hit – she’d been going back to school online to get her teaching degree since both the kids (now ages 15 and 12) are in school full time. Benjamin or “Ben” would have been starting tenth grade this year. Emma would have been starting seventh grade. Neither had begun the new school year due to flu-related closings, but both were ecstatic about the extended summer break they’d been granted by the Su flu…at least at first.
Manny went on to relate that the first few days at home with the family were kind of fun. They hunkered down, watched a lot of the news coverage of the flu, played games, watched movies, ate pizza and popcorn, and generally made the best of what Manny termed a family “staycation”.
This went on for about three days before the kids began to go a little stir crazy. They had their phones and tablets to keep them occupied, but even the most in-tune tech kid eventually needs to get outside and burn a little energy. To assist them in this effort, Manny had rigged up a sort of obstacle course in their condo, and he timed the kids, urging them to beat their previous records on each successive attempt. But that drew noise complaints from the neighbors and they had to stop. They then did some pushup, sit up, and similar low-volume callisthenic challenges. But that only went so far to help kill time.
To keep the kids occupied, and focus their attention on something other than the disintegrating situation in the city around them, they watched movies and even played some old board games Manny dug out of the closet.
That worked fairly well
, Manny said, until the situation in their building began to break down.
Things built slowly at first. Posted requests in the building’s lobby seemed reasonable considering the circumstances surrounding the widespread influx of flu carriers across the city. These notices informed them that concierge service and regularly scheduled maintenance on the building would temporarily be halted until the flu subsided. There were also requests that tenants do their best to limit deliveries as well as guests to the building in an effort to reduce the chances of contamination from outside sources. This wasn’t much of a hardship since many delivery services had already halted operations due to lack of drivers or because orders were backlogged with flu-related logistics issues.
The same posted notice also requested that residents stay inside the building – and preferably in their own units – as much as possible until the “all clear” on the flu was given. Again, this was to minimize chance of exposing themselves or others to the flu.
Manny said that since most people were already off from work or school, this request wasn’t much of an imposition either, at least in the initial days of the flu “lockdown” as he termed it.
But then things got worse.
For right now, though, my hand is cramping up from all this writing, and my stomach is starting to rumble. It’s time for a nice breakfast in front of my open room window overlooking the city skyline. While it’s far from the old Chicago, from up here, things almost appear normal.
10:19 a.m.
I just checked in on Manny and the family. I unlocked the room next door (I’m in 1503, they’re in 1504) for them with my master key so that they could sleep in real beds last night. It was so late when I found them in the housekeeping closet that we didn’t have time for much more than introductions, the relation of their tale about how they got here, and moving them downstairs. Therefore, we took about half an hour this morning and relocated most of the remaining supplies from the housekeeping attic closet downstairs to 1504. That way they have some food to keep them fed for the time being. They seem relatively content for the moment, so I’m going to finish relating their tale.
I was at the point in Manny’s story where they, alongside many of the other residents of their high-rise condo building, were willingly confined to their units. This confinement appeared to be working at first, but according to Manny, the residents’ self-restraint didn’t last long.
Soon, residents began getting sick, and then they started to infect other residents. And as food began to run out, residents increasingly started to interact with one another in search of supplies. Sometimes this interaction was cordial, coming in the form of a simple request for any extra food that might be spared. Other times, it came in the way of threats or force. Since police response at that point was virtually non-existent, residents realized that they could rob one another with impunity.
No matter how the interaction came, it only furthered the spread of the flu. In a matter of days, entire floors of the condo building became quarantined sick units. Soon, the dead and dying were everywhere.
At one point, Manny said that several residents tried to force their way into his unit. He managed to dissuade them by telling them that he had a gun and was willing to use it. This experience however, shook Sandra and the kids, not to mention Manny himself he confided to me later. And things were about to get worse.
As the building internally succumbed to the flu over the next week, it then became susceptible to outside forces. Just as with the hotel, looters from the outside began infiltrating the building. Manny said that his own family’s saving grace was when the power grid failed. While the loss of electric services meant further hardship for Manny and his family, it was also a sort of blessing in disguise. It meant that the building’s elevators weren’t in service, and those looking to traverse the structure’s many levels were forced to take the stairs. Looters, preferring easier pickings, kept much of their ransacking to the condo building’s lower levels. Living on the 19th floor is what Manny felt saved his family from the looters’ wrath. Few looters apparently had the fortitude to haul themselves up 18 flights of stairs in search of food.
But the loss of city utility services was a wakeup call. And after nearly another week sheltering under such circumstances, Manny and his family decided to call it quits. The hotel was the only option they could think of as a potential safe harbor. Therefore, they decided to make a break for it.
They packed up what little supplies they had left and waited for night to fall. Then they hauled ass downstairs to the condo building’s basement parking garage. One thing they hadn’t considered however was that the garage’s metal roll-down exit gates, which were down, were inoperable due to the electricity being out. But Manny said that even if he’d wanted to go crashing through the gates, he couldn’t. The family vehicles had both been vandalized, their fuel having been siphoned, their tires slashed, their windows smashed.
Therefore, the family was faced with a tough decision – head back upstairs and try holding out in what was becoming (due largely to the smell) an intolerable situation in their condo, or make a break for the hotel (several miles away) on foot.
After a quick family vote, they decided on the latter.
It was then that they set out on a harrowing, multi-mile, multi-hour trek on foot. Along the way, they met up with some less than respectable fellows who freed them from their remaining supplies at gunpoint. Manny told me he was just happy that he and his family escaped with their lives. Eventually, they made it to the hotel, exhausted, frightened, and unsure as to where their next meal might come from.
Entering through the street level and coming up through the lobby, and seeing the destruction that had been wrought in these areas, Manny assumed that the hotel had been picked pretty well clean of any supplies that might have been left upon the staff’s departure. He found himself pondering why they had even made the trip. But he did his best to appear unperturbed in front of his family. Knowing that he had some granola bars stashed in his desk, and understanding the benefits of being up high in such a structure, he decided to haul his family along with him on the arduous journey up to his 18th floor office.
Shortly into their trip upstairs however, they heard the sound of someone else in the stairwell with them.
I wonder if it wasn’t me.
Anyway, they waited until the unknown person or persons left, and then they continued up to the housekeeping department. Once there, Manny said he was worried there might be other looters around. So before checking his office, he thought he’d better find a spot to stash his family to keep them safe and out of the way. That’s when he thought of the housekeeping attic closet. But once they worked their way back there, he discovered that it was stocked full of supplies. Seeing all this loot, he decided it was as good a place as any to hold out for a while. At the same time, he was worried that whoever had stocked the place (not knowing that it was me) might come back and be less than thrilled with his having taken over the spot. But after several days, he assumed that whoever it was wasn’t coming back.
It was somewhat comical. Manny said to me when I first found him, “Can you believe it?! Someone stashed all this good stuff up here!”
“Yeah, and who do you think that was?” I smiled my response.
It was then that he made the connection. He was at first surprised and then grateful at my revelation.
It was funny, though. When we were talking, he told me not to go in the housekeeping bathrooms. He said that he and his family had used up all the water in their toilets flushing them on the first full day they were there. The commodes had been filling up with their waste ever since. It’s “pretty disgusting in there” to use Manny’s exact words.
I then related my own tale of survival since the flu to Manny, minus many of the more monotonous details. He was both amazed and somewhat envious of the plan I had carried out, saying that he wished he’d thought of doing something like that. I felt kind of bad about not inviting him to join me
early on, but who knew that this flu thing was going to get as bad as it has.
I relieved some of my guilt by telling him that it hasn’t been all rainbows and butterflies here. I explained about sleeping down in the basement. I told him about the looter invasion and the death of the security guards. And I quickly related the story about the encounter at the pool with the armed looters.
Seeing as how it was late at night when I discovered Manny and his family, we ended our already lengthy conversation there. That’s when I invited them downstairs with me and opened the room next door for them. Manny asked me if I had another guest-room master key, but I explained that I didn’t and that the only reason I had one was that I obtained it from the dead security guard.
He understood and said that he didn’t think that he and his family would be coming or going much, so it was of little concern. Still, he was worried that the single toilet in the room could prove problematic. After hearing about the housekeeping bathrooms, I agreed that his concerns were justified. Therefore, I also unlocked the room next to theirs, 1502, so that they could use that toilet, reminding them to use it wisely since the water in the tank would only accommodate one flush. I figure we’ll have to go a room at a time in this manner. I don’t want to unlock a bunch of rooms and have to leave the doors propped open for access. It could invite problems from wandering looters if they’re still lurking inside the building.
While the unexpected arrival of Manny and his family was a shock to say the least, I look at it as a sort of pleasant burden. Sure it means they will consume more supplies than if it was just me here on my own, but I have to admit that it’s nice to finally have some companions in this whacked-out situation. Not only was I lonely, but I felt so abandoned. And as silly as it might be to say, I feel safer now too. It’s not as if Manny and his wife and kids add much more security to the situation; I guess it’s just more of that human presence (humans other than looters that is) that makes me feel better.
The Dystopian Diaries Page 23