THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5

by Steven Konkoly

  “What? How do you know that? Is Jamie sick?” she asked, sounding slightly frantic.

  “No…well maybe. Matt is definitely sick with something. Sounds a lot like the flu. It could be anything really.”

  “Yeah, but with their exposure to the school systems? I wouldn’t take any chances,” she emphasized.

  “Well, it’s not like we hang out with them.”

  The phone rang, and Kate walked over to the kitchen desk to pick it up, and checked the caller ID.

  “Matthew McDaniels?” she asked.

  “That might be Jamie.”

  “Why would she be calling?”

  “I told her to give me a call. I wanted to convince her to take her husband in to be seen.”

  “Hello? Hold on, he’s right here,” she said.

  “Thanks, honey, now can you give us some privacy?” he asked, covering up the phone’s mouthpiece.

  At the frowning look from Kate, he assured her, “Just kidding,” and then, “Hey, Jamie, thanks for calling,” into the phone.

  “Sure, Alex. I’ve never seen people act like that before. I almost got into a shouting match with Mary Thompson. I wouldn’t count on getting a Christmas card from her,” she said.

  “Yeah, I saw the two of you going at it. What’s her deal?” he asked.

  Kate, who didn’t seem interested in the conversation any longer, retreated to the great room, grabbed her iPad, and sat in the leather lounge chair next to the wood-burning stove.

  “I really don’t know. She asked me if I could believe what you were saying, about not helping each other out with food. I told her I completely agreed with you, and she started into me. Really weird,” she said and broke into a cough.

  He cringed at the sound and momentarily pulled the phone away from his face, as if he could catch the flu through it. “Hey, Jamie, the reason I wanted you to call is that I’m worried about Matt, and maybe you. You said Matt was pretty sick, right?”

  “Yeah, it really hit him this morning. He woke up sweating and could barely get out of bed. He felt really hot, and I could tell he was really congested. He’s been on the couch most of the day,” she said, alarmed.

  “Is he coughing much?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what woke us up so early.”

  “Jamie, I think you need to take him to the ER and have him tested for the Jakarta flu. The hospitals aren’t slammed yet, and if he has it and you catch it early, he should be fine.”

  “Do you really think he might have it? Oh my God, I don’t…I’m not sure if I can take him in today. I have the kids home, and I’d…”

  “Jamie, you should all go in and get tested. You don’t sound so great either, and if both of you have it, there’s a good chance your kids might have been exposed. The earlier you catch this thing the better. This may sound weird, but if you’re going to get infected, then it’s better to get infected now, while the hospitals can provide the right services. Seriously, you should all hop in the car and head over to the Maine Medical Center. Pack an overnight bag for your husband.”

  “Really? I mean he was fine last night. I kind of feel like we’d be jumping the gun. Don’t you think?”

  “Jamie, you can’t be too cautious with this flu strain. It’s killing people, lots of people. Some within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. You don’t want to wait around,” he advised.

  “All right. I’ll, uh…I’ll talk to Matt about it. I don’t know about taking the kids. That might be a little too much for them. I might make an appointment with their pediatrician for tomorrow,” she said, and Alex could sense the hesitation.

  “Your pediatrician might not have the field test yet. They’ll probably send you over to Maine Med, or tell you to go home and call if symptoms develop. You’re probably better off all going together. Think about it. You really need to go sooner than later. No later than tomorrow morning. Seriously,” he said.

  Alex could hear a commotion in the background.

  “Sorry Alex, I need to get going. Thanks for the advice. I’ll think about it,” she said, and the line went dead.

  Chapter 20

  Alex pulled his brown knit cap tight over his head and pushed the rake deep into the bushes. The temperature dropped rapidly as the sun sunk lower in the sky, and a southerly wind picked up. He considered going inside for a warmer jacket, when his smartphone rang. He wasn’t familiar with the number, but could tell it was a local prefix.

  “Alex Fletcher,” he answered.

  “Hey, Alex, it’s Ed. Kate gave me your cell number.”

  Alex looked up at the Walkers’ house and saw Ed opening the sliding door to the deck. He waved to him and signaled with his hand for Ed to come over.

  “Come on over, Ed. I’m not that paranoid. Unless you don’t want to be seen in public with me, of course, which I can understand,” Alex said.

  “I don’t care what any of them think. My wife just got a call from Jamie across the street, and I don’t want her to see me scooting over to your house. Jamie just asked Sam if we’d watch the kids while she took her husband over to the ER. I guess he’s having serious trouble breathing, and she’s really freaked out. She sounded like shit too. I told Sam to tell her we’d call back in a few minutes. Alex, I really don’t want to take the risk, but I feel like a real jerk not helping her out,” he said.

  Alex paused for a moment to consider his response.

  “Ed, please don’t consider watching her kids. Odds are very high that all four of them are infected. I told her Sunday to take the entire family in to get tested, and she blew it off. She needs to take all of them to the ER. All of them. You can tell her I said so, I don’t care. I’ll call her myself if you want,” Alex said, walking over to Ed’s house.

  He hung up the phone and continued walking over to Ed’s deck. Ed put the phone back inside and stepped out again.

  “Wow, it’s cold out,” he complained, folding his arms. “No, I’ll call her back, but Sam seems to be considering the idea.”

  “The whole thing is a bad idea. If she’s sick with the flu, they’re not going to just let her drop off her husband and hang around for a while. As soon as they see she’s coughing and wheezing, they’ll put her in a hospital bed too, if they have any to spare. They certainly won’t let her hang around the hospital if she’s an infection risk.

  “According to the news, HHS just authorized active risk reduction measures, which means that they might simply detain her so she can’t go back into the community and spread the flu. You could be stuck with the kids indefinitely, which would be fine if they weren’t likely sick themselves. She needs to take them all in to be tested. I’ll call her and explain it,” Alex said.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll take care of it. This is really bad,” Ed said.

  “I agree, but this is how it spreads. It’s going to get worse around here, and the decisions are going to get tougher. Did Jamie even mention the conversation I had with her on Sunday?” Alex asked.

  “No, but she told Sam that she didn’t think you guys would help, and that we were her last hope since they don’t have any family around. Threw a guilt grenade on us.”

  “Yeah, well, that won’t be the last one. Stand by for a few tactical nuclear guilt bombs. I look at this whole situation as a military operation. The main objective is to keep the Fletchers’ safe from harm, in whatever form it takes. The flu, crazy neighbors, whatever…”

  “Is this a long speech, General Patton? I’m freezing out here,” Ed said.

  “You better get in before you freeze. Your lips are turning blue.”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know how it goes,” Ed said, walking through the sliding door.

  “Good luck, man.” Alex saluted Ed and walked back to his yard.

  ***

  Alex watched Jamie McDaniels back her Volvo station wagon down their driveway and head straight to the Bartletts’ house. Jaime probably called Nicki to check and see if there were any volunteers to watch the kids, and as one of the neighb
orhood “leaders,” Nicki would have stepped up to set the example for the rest of the neighborhood. He grabbed the phone from the desk and dialed Ed’s number.

  “Hey, Sam, it’s Alex. Is Ed there?”

  “Let me see if I can pry him away from the window. I assume that’s why you’re calling?” she asked.

  “Guilty. The McDaniels just took off. I was hoping they were all going to the hospital, but it looks like they made a stop on the other side of the block,” he said.

  “Well, I wish we could have helped them, but I’m beginning to think you’re right about all this. I’ve seen a few lawyers and staff around the office that look and sound really sick. I’m really starting to get paranoid. I’m thinking about calling in sick for next week,” she said.

  “At this point, you could probably just use the words ‘flu-like symptoms’ and nobody will question your decision to stay home. According to the evening news, absenteeism is on the rise in Maine,” he said.

  “I can imagine. Anyway, here’s the other peeping tom. Take care, Alex. Say hi to Kate.”

  “Sure thing, Sam.”

  “Hey, Alex. Did you see where Jamie went?” Ed asked.

  “I’m pretty sure it was the Bartletts’. I saw the car pass the McKinney’s, which eliminates the Green’s, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t get past the Cohens’…”

  “It didn’t. I can fully see the Bishops’ house, and she didn’t land there either,” he said.

  “Definitely disappeared behind the Cohens’, at Nicki’s house. Unbelievable. What is she thinking?”

  “Who, Jamie or Nicki?”

  “Either of them,” Alex replied.

  “Well, Jamie was pretty upset, but said that she understood why we couldn’t help…”

  “But she went ahead and pawned her kids off on another family?” Alex snorted.

  “She said they weren’t symptomatic, and she didn’t want to risk bringing them to the hospital. She thought the state might yank the kids right out of the hospital if she was infected too,” Ed said.

  “She might be right. I really didn’t think of that,” Alex conceded.

  “Me either. It’s a bad situation for them.”

  “Yeah, and it’ll probably get worse.”

  “Way worse.”

  ***

  Alex sat at the computer in the great room. He’d finally gotten an email response from Dr. Wright, almost a full week after he left him both a voicemail and an email, digging for any more inside information. According to the email, Dr. Wright had been contacted by Biosphere Pharmaceuticals to confirm Alex’s transaction, which probably explained why he hadn’t heard a word from Biosphere. The fact that he had been attacked on his own front lawn likely had something to do with Biosphere’s silence.

  Dr. Wright explained that the situation in Maine was fast approaching the breaking point, with a large percentage of available hospital beds unavailable to new cases. Local area hospitals had canceled nearly all elective and non-critical surgeries to make room for the swiftly rising number of flu cases. Alex wondered about the McDaniels, who had left for the hospital earlier in the evening. Dr. Wright’s email was terse and filled with spelling errors, giving Alex the impression that he was exhausted and overwhelmed.

  Mike Gallagher had left him an email announcing his family’s arrival in New Hampshire at Colleen’s parents’ house. He’d finally met Ted at the storage locker, two days after abandoning his Biosphere post down in Andover. Ted had arrived alone and hadn’t mentioned searching Mike’s house. Overall, Mike said that the closeout was painless and cordial.

  Alex decided to work on an idea that formed when he’d noticed Jamie’s car stop at the Bartletts’ house. He pulled a piece of white poster board from the office closet and drew a rough sketch of the Durham Road loop. The schematic representation of the loop extended from one side of the poster board to the other, and he intended to graphically represent each house with a square, which could be filled with pertinent information.

  Since the neighborhood was their primary area of operation, he wanted to gather and document as much intelligence as possible on his neighbors. Using a retractable pencil, he drew each house and labeled each with their street number and family name. He drew a line for each member of the household; he’d add individual names later. Alex wrote the letter “S” above each house that had sent kids to school, followed by the names of the McDaniel family. Next to Matt McDaniel he wrote “hospitalized with flu.”

  Beside Jamie’s name, he also wrote “hospitalized with flu.” He hadn’t seen their car return, though he admitted that she could have easily slipped back in without him noticing while they were watching the television. Next to the children, Amanda and Katherine, he wrote “direct exposure to flu.” He circled the kids’ names and drew a line to the Bartletts’ house, putting a note above the Bartletts’ house next to the “S,” “Both McDaniel kids dropped off Nov 6th.”

  Next, Alex raided Emily’s color markers, He put a red dot above the houses he strongly suspected of being hostile towards him. Green for the known “friendlies.” Any unknown households got a yellow dot. Within the span of five minutes, Alex had developed a workable threat matrix. Finally, he circled the houses that were empty, which included the Cohens’ and Murrays’. He wondered what Kate will think of his project.

  Chapter 21

  From the master bathroom, Alex heard the home phone start to ring. The ring cut off, when someone in the house had answered the call. He put on boxer shorts and stepped onto the scale, satisfied with the fact that nothing had changed since yesterday. The scale scraped the floor when he stepped off, creating a sound that could be heard in the hallway outside of the bathroom.

  “Still weigh the same?” Kate asked from the other side of the door.

  “What? Are you spying on me?” he asked, pulling on his jeans.

  “Yeah, I don’t have anything better to do. Ed’s on the line, he said that Matt McDaniel died yesterday,” she said, lowering her voice for the last part of the sentence.

  “Hold on,” he said, rushing to get dressed.

  He opened the door and saw Kate standing by the couch, talking on the phone. “What happened?”

  “Ed can fill you in,” she said, handing him the phone.

  He took the phone, and Kate left the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  “What happened, man?”

  “I just heard it from John next door. He was leaving for work when Todd flagged him down in the driveway. Todd told him that Matt died late Wednesday night,” he said, sounding exasperated.

  “What about Jamie?”

  “She’s in ICU. Confirmed Jakarta flu. From what Nicki told Todd, she’s not doing great, but they consider her to be stable. It sounds like her husband died from the acute syndrome,” Ed said.

  “Yeah, from what you told me Tuesday, he had advanced ARDS symptoms. Respiratory issues usually come later as a complication of the flu.”

  “What a mess,” Ed said.

  “Yeah, and it’s going to get messier. So, what’s going on with Jamie’s kids? Are they sick yet?” Alex asked.

  “I didn’t hear anything about that, but John said that they were over at the Bishops’ for a few days. Nobody knows when Jamie will be able to return home.”

  “It really depends on how severe her case turns out to be. If she’s in the ICU and she’s stable, she has a pretty good chance of survival. She could be home in a week, or it could be a month. Either way, she’s going to feel like hell for quite a while. This may sound weird, but she’s lucky she got into the hospital when she did. Looking at the news today, HHS officials estimate that all inpatient services will be slammed shut within two weeks. ISPAC thinks less time than that,” Alex said.

  “I saw that. Pretty unbelievable.”

  “I don’t think people are taking this seriously enough. The estimated number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is around 90,000, which doesn’t sound bad, but it’s slightly higher than CDC projections. 90,000 wi
ll be half a million next week, and then nearly three million the week after that. The case fatality rate worldwide is steady around fourteen percent, mostly from ARDS, but most experts agree that this number will climb as people start dying from complications. Fifteen percent of three million is 450,000. That’s a lot of deaths.”

  “Scary. Do you think it’s safe to get more groceries?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah, as long as you don’t touch anything with your bare hands and wear a mask. I think they’re still just plopping pre-packed bags in your car and running your credit card. Honestly, it’s probably very low risk, as long as you’re smart about it.”

  “What about the actual items?” Ed asked.

  “That’s a little trickier. I don’t think you’ll get much produce, but I’d wash it thoroughly if you do. Everything else you could wash in the sink with soap and hot water. Wear gloves and don’t touch your face. Hey, I have plenty of food and supplies over here. Seriously, we’ll take care of you. You don’t have to take any risks,” Alex offered.

  “I know. I’d just feel better doing as much as possible until it becomes a necessity.”

  “I hear you. Hey, if it comes to it, you could always go deer hunting with Charlie. He said that the conservation land back there is full of deer.”

  “We might all need to remember that,” Ed said.

  “No kidding. Hey, thanks for the call. I don’t seem to be on the neighborhood distribution list anymore,” Alex said.

  “Are your feelings hurt?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ll catch you later, Alex.”

  “Sounds good, man,” Alex said and hung up.