Z Poc: The Lodge

by catt dahman

  “I told him he was a jerk, actually. No idea what it is, and I don’t think we’re going to be told. Maybe they don’t know. It all sounds suspicious to me, however,” Peri said. “He said over and over about being quarantined which means his main objective is in this not spreading if it is contagious. What he never said was anything about medication, or advice on treatment, or anything related to helping anyone.”

  “That’s very smart of you to notice,” Norman smiled and said, “I agree.”

  “If you get something simple, maybe I can help, but I don’t know how the hotel would see that, not that I care really,” Dana said.

  “I sent word for the mother of that girl and the little girl to come by,” Susan said, “I mean the child who bit Nina. She must be sick. They sent someone to their room to check on them. That is not normal, whatever germs she has in her mouth.”

  “Right after the bite, the saliva smelled rancid. I noticed the strong smell immediately,” Dana said.

  Hank said he would stay with Dana in case she needed him, but the rest should go and enjoy themselves.

  “We could go tell the rest at the hot spring what’s going on. If you want to go, I mean if you want me to go,” Norman said.

  Peri smiled. He really was a nice, polite, good-looking guy. He was thoughtful and intelligent.

  Before they got far, Shan and Jerry by-passed families and couples walking around the halls to wave at Peri and Norman. Most of the families were heading upstairs to bed, but the couples were going to the small country dance hall or to one of the bars. Some went to sit outside and enjoy the outdoor scents and view. All round the back porch, couples found rocking chairs, some bringing out colorful, soft blankets or steaming cups of coffee or hot chocolate.

  “We’ve been looking for you. Lisa is sick.” Shan said.

  Peri said Dana was busy but offered to help out, following the pair upstairs. For some reason, Peri felt a terrible dread set in. Shan and Jerry both looked concerned and fearful. It couldn’t be serious so quickly, Peri told herself. By the time they got upstairs, Peri felt her stomach knot.

  Lisa was in her room with Mira acting as a makeshift nurse. Mira’s face was drawn in tight lines, her eyes slightly glassy with worry, and her hands trembling as they fluttered nervously adjusting covers and opening and closing the drapes. Every time Lisa made a sound, Mira seemed to jump.

  They heard Lisa moaning and complaining as soon as they got to the room.

  “She said she doesn’t want anyone to see her like this,” Shan said.

  Peri nodded and went in alone. Lisa did a lot of modeling jobs and was as vain as anyone could be, but the woman had a huge heart and was always the first to help someone in need. What on earth was worrying her if she were just ill? Maybe it was a rash? Lisa was not the type to hide in her room; she was the type to be out and socializing unless this were something terrible.

  Lisa’s face was erupted in yellow blisters in the shape of a small hand print, and her skin was beginning to look bruised as it took on a faint purple hue in places. Lisa held out her hands so Peri could see them. Each was horribly swollen, purplish, erupted in the same yellow blisters, and in spots, the skin had popped open to leak pus. They were like fat sausages bursting open. Her beautiful skin was tearing with the pressure of the infection; it was as painful as it was horrific to see.

  Peri struggled to retain a neutral look on her face. She knew her eyes had gone wide. Dana looked stricken.

  Mira handed Lisa a clean towel to wrap her hands in, “Let this soak up the infection.” She motioned to the trashcan where three towels were covered in the pus and smelled of the same death-dead mouse-roach odor as the little girl had smelled. The stench seemed to settle all over the room. Mira had already called for more towels that lay stacked, waiting. How that much infection could pour from one person seemed impossible to fathom; a body couldn’t produce that much, and yet, Lisa’s was.

  Peri clenched her jaw closed to stop from showing shock. “What…umm. Did you touch your face, Lisa?”

  Lisa’s eyes went wide, “Why? Oh, my God. Is it there? On my face? I knew it hurt there, but I can’t touch anything….”

  “Only a little,” Peri lied, “don’t touch. What…can you think of what might have gotten on your hands? Did you cut yourself?”

  Lisa glared, “I know what it was. That son of a bitch must have syphilis or gonorrhea. Oh, just figure this would happen.”

  “Huh?”

  Mira made a sexual gesture with her hand, “She didn’t have regular sex…she…yanno…some guy she met. We think it had to be that ‘cause what else could it be? She got his…stuff on her hand and wiped it, she said, but she touched her face and…anyway…it has to be him that caused it.”

  “Oh,” Peri bit her lip, “Lisa, why didn’t you go to the nurse?”

  “Can you not see me? I can’t go out looking this way.” Her eyes filled with tears, “What am I gonna do? My, God, I can’t have a sexual disease. Asshole. He has to know he has some VD if it causes this.”

  “There’s no reason to think that for sure,” Peri said.

  “What else could it be?” Mira asked.

  “Well, there’s a little girl with this same rash. Another child bit her. It’s contagious.”

  “The guy I was with didn’t bite me. Jeez. What is it? Syphilis? Dana, how long am I going to need antibiotics, and when will this be better?”

  “No, Nothing like that. It’s something, but the hotel people said we are under quarantine for it. It’s contagious, like I said. I guess it was body fluids,” Peri said.

  “Oh that’s disgusting.”

  Peri held back, adding that body fluids, even uninfected, from someone Lisa had just met, was also disgusting. Now wasn’t the time to preach, and besides, warning Lisa had never been of any help, not even in college. Lisa always attracted the most handsome, sexy men who wanted a sexy, pretty woman for fun, but always married the nice, plain girls. No amount of explaining ever helped convince Lisa to hold back.

  “Quarantine? Mi, Dios.” Mira looked confused. “What should we do?”

  Peri suggested they cover or drape Lisa so she wouldn’t be embarrassed, but that they had to go down to where Dana was. Shan said she had seen the man Lisa had fooled around with, and if he were still awake and around, maybe they could find him in the bar or something, “I know what he looks like. I want to hear what he has to say about this, and maybe we can find out what the idiot has to save time.”

  “We need to find him for sure.”

  “Oh Peri, Girl, I am gonna find him for sure, and he ain’t gonna like me,” Shan said.

  “I know this isn’t how you want to spend a vacation. Don’t feel you have to stick around if you want to have fun with your friends,” Peri told Norman. She was embarrassed that he heard all the information.

  He shrugged, “I’ll stick around. I’m not one to bail out if things go south.”

  “Really? I mean, this is not much fun….” Peri wavered between wanting his help and company and wishing he would leave the women alone.

  “I’ll stay, Peri. I might need to beat the hell outta the fellow who caused Lisa to get sick. Bastard had to know. What a low life.”

  “Thank you. Let’s go find that man.”

  It took them an hour to find the man that infected Lisa.

  Chapter 4

  Infection Spreads…Lisa Loses Her Looks…Unprotected Sex Is Deadly…Nick Hoyt Tells All…

  After eating, Darlene Jeffries automatically straightened the plates, stacking them neatly, and then gathered the silverware, and set it on the top plate. Next, she picked up their napkins, empty sugar packets, and toothpicks to put them in a bowl. “There. All neat,” she said. Her husband and son chuckled, used to her obsessive organizing.

  She didn’t know that one of the napkins hadn’t come from their table but that the waiter had unthinkingly set it down when he refilled their iced tea glasses and had forgotten to pick it up. He had found it left at a
table and grabbed it to throw away. He was messy and not a good waiter, but more than that, he had caused a deadly situation.

  The person who left the napkin was one who had the inoculation, had blown her nose on the napkin after dinner, and left it sitting on her table.

  Normally, events wouldn’t dare line up so dangerously. If anything, the worst that would have happened was that a common cold would be spread. But the mucus was still damp, and Darlene had a paper cut from the paper napkin ring she had slid off her napkin thirty minutes earlier. Later and the cut would have been sealed. Earlier, the little bit of blood would have caused her to wipe her finger, and thus wipe the contagion away. But instead, the infection was exposed to her blood in the tiny cut.

  Darlene, her husband, and son went to their rooms on the third floor to relax and then sleep. They would have walked around and looked at everything the lodge offered, but Darlene was a little queasy and thought maybe something she ate disagreed with her or perhaps she ate too much. The contagion was replicating in her system at a break-neck speed.

  They passed a drunken man who staggered but kept his self-satisfied grin.

  Mike was drunk. He stumbled out of the room and giggled to himself as he tried to figure out which way led to the stairs. Finally turned correctly, he staggered down two sets of stairs and wandered to the bottom floor until, almost by chance, he again, found the bar.

  He numbly wondered again what that girl’s name was that he had fooled around with; he thought she looked somewhat like his wife but dismissed her other than to nod to himself. She was a wild one in bed, he recalled dimly, and she was loud. Shelly-Shelby-Sheena-Sheila something. He liked the vocal ones. The other girl, the one who was gorgeous, maybe a model, with big breasts and a perfect rear, she had been exciting. Two in one night. He was cruising.

  They had just fooled around a lot. She hadn’t wanted to go to her room with him. Lita. Leena. Lisa. That was the other one. She was hot. He wanted to do her again this week.

  It was her loss that they didn’t do the deed. The doctors who had warned him to stay celibate were insane. Not only could he not do that, but also nothing was wrong with him either. He ordered another rum and coke.

  In the first aid room, Dana snapped gloves on and dismissed concerns about infection when she saw Mira bring Lisa in. Mira explained quickly, and Dana went to work. She didn’t know what to think when she saw her friend and heard the possible explanation, because nothing in medical knowledge fit this scenario; this infection was way too fast and voracious to be real.

  In the sink, hydrogen peroxide bubbled furiously down the sink. Dana said, “Lisa, squeeze your hands into fists, and release a few times. We need to drain the infection in the blisters.” Dana felt sick seeing her beautiful friend like this; not only was it a horrible infection that caused Dana to feel horrible for Lisa, but also it was hard to see such a pretty girl in this state. Other than draining the pus to give Lisa relief, Dane was flummoxed as to what to do immediately.

  Lisa did as Dana ordered, moaning with the pain. Dana rubbed at the skin, draining away the infection. It released some of the pressure and stopped the throbbing pressure. To Dana’s horror, the nail on Lisa’s pointer finger slid and plinked into the sink. The flesh beneath it was a big blister. Skin slid away.

  It upset Dana to see her friend like this and to know she was helpless to do anything because she didn’t know what this was. Dana felt sick and scared.

  “My nail,” Lisa stared.

  “It’s ok. It’s fine. Better to let it go so it won’t hurt as much without the pressure,” Dana made that up but was secretly scared by seeing Lisa lose a nail. Lisa nodded, saying that it indeed felt better, without the nail and as the pus drained away; Lisa even looked a little more hopeful.

  Dana thought maybe Lisa should keep her hands in the sink but that wasn’t possible, so she used a lot of gauze and wrapped Lisa’s hands, telling her to make fists often to drain the blisters so the pain wouldn’t get too bad and her hands wouldn’t throb.

  Lisa wept to see her reflection in the mirror. “Look at me. I’m a monster.”

  “No. It looks bad, but it’s just a rash,” Dana said. She knew it was bad but didn’t want to scare Lisa. “Does it hurt?”

  “No. Yes. Cover me up?”

  Dana nodded, “Let me clean the area well, and then we can cover it with medicine, okay? I’ll be gentle.” She rubbed the yellow slime away, spread ointment, and gently wrapped Lisa’s face. Lisa’s skin had peeled away with the gauze pads Dana used. The blisters sloughed away and left raw flesh ready to re-blister; the scars would be horrendous, and it was spreading into the purple parts, across Lisa’s nose, eyes, and lips. Lisa would be scarred badly enough that even plastic surgery would be a challenge.

  Dana didn’t let her go back to the mirror.

  Lisa kept moaning about being a monster and crying until Dana gave her a shot to shut her up so she would stop scaring everyone in the room. Meanwhile, she was trying her best to see how a bite and semen both could transmit this strange infection immediately. What bacteria or virus spread that fast?

  The nurse, Susan, had painkillers, and while Lisa and the little girl, Nina, didn’t complain about pain, they loaded them up on the pills or shots. Both claimed they had headaches, were dizzy, nauseated, and suffered painful joints. Strangely they also claimed they were hungry. Dana changed gloves after cleaning up and cleaned her hands again before viewing the patients. They were very ill.

  “I can’t believe all the drugs here. I mean, you aren’t a doctor, so….”

  Susan nodded, “It’s weird, isn’t it. I’m glad I have all this stuff, but no, I can’t prescribe this, but it’s here, so I’m using it. Weird. Very strange that we’re stocked this way.”

  A flurry of activity was by the door. Dana felt the creeping dread returning.

  “Oh, my God,” Susan said, forgetting professionalism, “Ummm…come in here and lie down.” She helped a woman stumble into the room and helped her lie down.

  Her patient was named Sheila; she was one of the hotel managers that Nick Hoyt and the woman’s friend had brought down the elevator wrapped in a sheet and in a wheelchair. Sheila had called to her friend who then called the front desk for help.

  Nick Hoyt looked ready to jump out of his skin.

  Pulling the sheet back, Susan and Dana saw that a white towel between Sheila’s legs was soaked yellow and red. There was no doubt from the musty, dead-flesh scent, that this was the same infection. The sheer amount of pus and smaller amount of blood were staggering,

  Determined to keep from gagging, Dana asked what had happened.

  “I thought it was my lady stuff…my biscuits…my personals being sore after doing it ‘cause he was fairly rough when we did it. I may kill his ass now.”

  Dana held a hand up, “Your vagina and pubic area is what you mean. You had sex, and you became sore?”

  “Right. That’s what I said. Then, I thought bladder infection ‘cause when I peed, oh, my God, it was like someone lit gasoline on me down there, not that I exactly know how that feels but yanno, then I thought again, and then I decided yeast infection ‘cause it burned, and it was stinging down there. I’ve had infections before but not like this. But…but then I knew it wasn’t right. My stuff is hurting. Like it aches and burns, but I never hurt like this before. Like a knife and hot, burning gasoline, and it…throbs…like with my heartbeat down there.”

  “On the outside or internally, too?”

  Sheila winced as she rolled a little on the bed, “Inside really bad like I wanna cry. Outside. I hurt so badly. It hurts all over and a lot. I don’t know. I tried a warm bath and….” She began crying. “There was…it’s yellowish green and bloody and was all in the water, so I started screaming, and my friend heard me yelling and saw the tub where I was sitting, and she called the front desk. Do I have a bad infection?”

  “Probably so. It’s possible. Let’s just see, okay? Then we can get you fixed up once we know what
’s wrong.”

  Susan steeled herself and did a simple examine, just looking at the woman’s privates under the towel. She couldn’t imagine what Sheila must be suffering way up inside because what she saw was nightmarish: flesh bruised purple, blistered yellow, swollen, breaking open and bleeding. She thought again it was like flesh eating bacteria, but the pus didn’t fit. She didn’t dare try a closer inspection or touch Sheila; the pain of an examination would be too much.

  How this could be treated, she had no idea. Susan used a menstrual pad and a bunched up towel to hold them in place and towels beneath the poor woman’s bottom. She told Sheila to keep everything between her legs and take a pain pill and rest. “We need to get you a little relief, and then I can see what the best treatment is.” Susan said, unsure what to say, really.

  “You had recent intercourse? Right before this?” Dana asked.

  “Yes. About ten minutes after, I tossed him outta my room ‘cause he was drunk and couldn’t do it no more. Idiot named Mike. I just met the dirty bum, and this is what he gives me? I’m gonna kill his ass. Dammit, is this some weird STD? Can you give me a shot?” Sheila whined.

  “Mike? Oh hell, no,” Lisa muttered, “Dana…Mike…he’s the one I was with.”

  “Cheatin’ bastard. He gets around,” Sheila said.

  Dana asked Hank to find Peri and Norman and tell them the name and what they had learned. She turned to Nick Hoyt, pulled him to the side, and demanded to know what was going on with quarantine. “Look, we have an infected bite and infection passed along in seminal fluid. I’m guessing if we tracked it back, that man, Mike sure as heck didn’t have a thing to do with the bitten child. Or maybe he did and he’s a pervert. We need to know either way.”

  “We are setting up beds right now in the Rec room for you to have as triage. David and I will help with security or patients, as you need. I mean, if you choose to help.” Nick told her. He knew he should be headed out of the lodge by now and evacuating, but he was putting it off as long as he could. He could help a little before he bugged out. To be honest, he had figured he could turn his back and never think twice, but seeing people suffering got to him; they weren’t in a lab, and this wasn’t an experiment as much as it felt real, with real people in misery, scared, and confused.