“Wow. Thank you, Joe.” Cole reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash, peeling off a couple of hundreds. “Here, take this for your expenses and time.”
Joe waved the offered money away. “Keep it. Won’t be worth nothing anyway in a few days.”
“That’s probably true.” Cole tucked the money back in his pocket. “Hey, Joe? How about I go tell my brother that everything is okay? Knowing him, he’s getting a bit antsy in there.”
Joe nodded and started to turn away.
“Wait, don’t go. I want to ask you something. Just hold on a second, okay?”
* * *
Cole hurried back into the boathouse, slamming to a halt when his entrance caused Jenna to jump, her gun centering on his chest. Her eyes wide, she blinked in recognition and lowered the pistol. She blew out a deep breath. “Next time, tell us it’s you, Cole.” Piper huddled behind her, and Sean had an arm out, keeping Trent behind him. The teen’s sulky expression showed what he thought about that.
“Take it easy. Everything’s fine. That guy was a friend of Uncle John’s. He was protecting this place for him.”
“Yeah, that’s what I gathered, from what I could hear.” Sean holstered his gun.
“He said he was hoping to go to the island with Uncle John when he got here. Said he expected him any day.”
“Expected him? How could he be expecting him?” Sean shot a look out the door.
Shrugging, Cole said, “He didn’t know Uncle John died. He seemed genuinely shocked, so I believe him. I have an idea, but I want to discuss it with you all before I said anything to him. The thing is, we don’t know that island at all, but it sounds like he does. So…I have a proposal, but you all have to agree.”
“Proposal? What kind of proposal?” Jenna took a step closer to Cole but motioned for the kids to stay where they were.
“What if we ask him to come to the island with us?”
Sean’s mouth went to the side, his expression doubtful. Jenna just gave a hard shake of her head. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Are you crazy?”
Cole sighed. “Look, I know it sounds insane to invite a stranger and under normal circumstances, I never would, but this guy has been to the island a lot. He knows the boats too. And we’re going to need all the help we can get to make it through the winter.”
“But I have a daughter. I don’t want a strange man living with us.” Jenna’s eyes sparked with anger.
Cole hadn’t considered that. “I see your point. I’m also leery that he could have the disease, so that’s a consideration too.”
“I don’t want a strange man near the kids either, but didn’t Uncle John have a bunch of cabins out there?”
“The deed lists several buildings, but I don’t know how good a shape they’re in.”
“Okay, well, what if we tell him he can join us, but he has to at least be quarantined in one of those? The weather is nice now so he can fix it up to make it as comfortable as possible.” Sean jabbed a finger at Cole. “But, if he so much as looks at either of the kids cross-eyed at any time, he can swim his ass right back here.” Sean looked at Jenna then Cole. “Well?”
Cole met Jenna’s gaze. It was really her call. Jenna looked at Piper, who shrugged.
“If he can help us this winter, maybe we need to ask him, Mom. It’s not like I’m a little child, and look how tall Trent is already. I don’t think he’s in any danger, and soon Hunter will be here too. Besides, I would have gone off to school in a year anyway.”
Piper’s logic made Cole smile briefly.
Jenna reached out and drew her hand down Piper’s hair, letting the strands sift through her fingers before turning to Cole, the anger was gone, but concern lingered. “But what about food for another person?”
“Here’s the other thing. This guy, his name is Joe Miller, stocked the island in preparation, thinking Uncle John was going to arrive. The boats have gas, there’s some food, so I guess he’s taken care of his own needs already. I offered to pay him for the goods, but he refused my money. Said it would be useless and he didn’t want it to go to waste. If we leave him here, with no food, what will happen to him?”
“Why don’t we go out and meet this guy?”
“Okay, but everyone put your masks up.” Cole replaced his as well.
“I left mine in the car.” Trent shuffled his feet and gave his mom a guilty look.
Sean gave his son a hard look. “You stay here. Someone will bring your mask in. And keep it on until I tell you otherwise, got it?”
Cole led the way out, wondering if perhaps Joe would have left already. They had taken several minutes to discuss Cole’s idea. Was he making the decision? Should they just leave Joe here?
Joe was leaning against a tree looking out at the river. He didn’t move towards them but nodded at Cole. “What did you want to ask me?”
“Joe, would you like to come out to the island with us? I know it seems like an odd offer, but you know the island. I’m sure we’d manage fine after a while, but you already have your supplies out there.”
Joe’s gray bushy eyebrows went up in surprise at the offer. “You want me out there with you?” He looked at Sean and over to Jenna. “You both agree? You don’t have to, you know. I’ll be fine here. I got a little bit of stuff here that I hadn’t moved out to the island, and I can just hole up in the house.”
Sean took one step forward. “Listen, mister. I think you can help us, and we can help you, but there are some conditions. There’s more than one cabin there, right?”
Joe nodded. “Yeah. Three that aren’t too bad, and one that’s got a hole in the roof.”
“Good. You can have the one that’s farthest from us—“
Cole cut in and met Joe’s eyes. He spoke in a tone he hadn’t used since he left the Navy. “And stay quarantined for at least three weeks. That’s for all of our safety. At the first sign of illness, you’ll be put in one of the canoes listed in my documents, and off you’ll go. As far as the kids go, stay away from them unless one of us is around, and that’s after the quarantine, of course.”
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.”
Chapter Fourteen
Elly 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. Enjo
y 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!”
Sympatico Syndrome (Book 1): Infection (A Pandemic Survival Novel) Page 10