“We’re good,” I said, moving to take a seat on the side of the bed. “You seem fine also.”
“Yeah. Bug repellant and not getting bit by one of the turned,” she said, going to the table next to the window, tugging off her jacket, and taking a seat.
“Bug repellent?” I asked.
“Yep, can’t you smell me?”
I couldn’t smell anything but our dirty room. Our only saving grace was that I’d been able to set our empty food containers out on the balcony. Though, that was only a temporary fix. The food was starting to draw bugs.
Maddie and I both shook our heads when Sadie gave us a questioning look, then sniffed herself.
“Good. Anyway, rumor has it that mosquitoes carry the initial virus. I’ve been dousing myself in anything I can find that will repel those bastards. So far, it has worked. The only other way I know how to catch the virus is by getting bit by someone who has turned, though in most cases I’ve seen if one of them gets close enough to bite you, you’re dead. They don’t stop eating you until they’ve consumed all of you that they can.”
I felt my stomach flip at her words. Maddie made a few gagging sounds, but when I started to hand her a trash can, she shook her head.
“Yeah, it’s as disgusting to watch as it is to hear about,” Sadie said.
“You’ve been out there?” I asked, nodding my head toward the window.
“Yep, but I’ve seen just as much in the hotel. That’s why I’m here. I need help. I can’t survive this by myself, and you two aren’t going to survive much longer. The power is going out all over the island, and your food won’t last.”
“You want us to go out there?” Maddie asked, looking toward the door to our room.
“I do. But don’t worry, I’ve been clearing out the hotel. We’ll need to get rid of the bodies and clean up if we hope to avoid getting infected or bringing in more diseases. I don’t think there are any more alive in the hotel.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“Honestly, I can’t be, but with your help, I can fortify this place from the infected and looters. Too many were sick for us to have to worry too much about the latter right now, but if more people survive this than I think, we’ll be one of the first places people will go for food.”
“I don’t…” Maddie started.
“Okay,” I said, cutting off my sister. “What do you want us to do?”
Chapter 7
~~~Jason~~~
—Inside the decontamination room.—
“She isn’t eating,” I said to the air.
I’d prepared the instant noodles Kayla brought us, tried to wake her, ate a few bites of my food, tried to wake her, ate a couple more bites, and so on, but she wouldn’t stir. She was breathing regularly. Her eyes fluttered a time or two, but she wouldn’t wake. I wish that I had some other way to give her antibiotics, aside from the bottle of pills Tera brought. Her wound didn’t look good, and she hadn’t woke long enough to swallow one.
“I don’t know what to tell you other than to let her sleep. You should get some rest as well,” my uncle said.
“How? There’s only one bed.”
“So, crawl up with her or sleep in a chair. Either way, the next few days are going to take forever, and once you’re out of there, you should get back out on the street. Russ and Kayla are refusing to go on tomorrow’s run with just Tera. I need you out of that room and kicking their asses into gear.”
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t brought him back here. I bet he has Kayla all riled up, making her hard for Tera to deal with. Tera won’t go on her own?” I inquired though I would never want her to do such a thing.
“She would if we asked, but I won’t.”
“Don’t. We have plenty of supplies, and there probably aren’t any people still alive out there anyway. I fear we’ll have to leave the island if you want us to bring in any more survivors.”
“Have you found another way off the island aside from the East Harbor Bridge?”
“No, but we haven’t checked the entire edge of the island. Russ and Kayla clam up when I bring up the subject of leaving. I wish the other bridges were still intact. I can’t believe our government left us to die like this. Any word on how far this plague has spread out there and if it is spreading as fast as it did in here?”
“It’s spread far and fast. I’m only getting spotty radio messages from some of the larger cities, but they are reporting that it’s nearly reached both coasts, Canada and Mexico. If it was mosquitos, they are traveling quickly. The gap between Mexico and South America should stop it from getting too far, and I don’t think it has made it across the pond. Flights were shut down quickly enough.”
My uncle paused in an odd way that told me he had something else to say.
“What is it?”
“There are rumors that the Germans are talking about bombing us to wipe out the virus completely.”
“You think they’ll do it?”
“Maybe. If their people get scared enough, they will.”
“Shit. This place won’t survive a bomb, will it?”
“Only if we move underground, but we’ll need more supplies to survive a nuclear winter, if the Europeans go that route, and…”
“And what?”
“I’d hate for it to be just us that survives that blast. That wouldn’t be a life for Kayla.”
“It isn’t. Do we have a timeframe?”
“Nope. As I said, I don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Just in case, have the others start moving things to the lower levels. Find out how many people it will house and how much more we’ll need to last at least, what…six months to a year depending on how many they send our way and for how long they plan to continue to bomb the continent. We’ll mostly need starting over stuff, which I know is already down there. What about a cure or vaccine? Is anyone working on those?”
“More rumors, theories, and speculation; nothing I feel confident is true.”
“Any word from the C.D.C. labs?” I asked.
“No. After their people left here, the lab I was in contact with went silent. The doctors that came here confiscated as many of the bodies and patients that they could and went dark.”
“Of course they did. Okay. I’m going to try to wake Samantha again to see if she’ll eat then I’m crashing. It’s been a long day.”
“Just hit the call button if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
Samantha mumbled a bit when I tried to rouse her to eat but didn’t wake. I put her food in the small fridge before crawling into bed with her. I was not sleeping in a chair. The bed was only a full, so we’d have to cuddle. I wasn’t coming away from a three-day containment more exhausted than I was before our confinement.
She mumbled again, and that time, I could make out her sister’s name. I wondered what she was dreaming. Probably the same thing we’d all been dreaming about—the outbreak and its aftermath.
~~~~~~~
— The beginning of the outbreak.—
“You’re home early,” I said, looking up at Keisha as she paused by my office door to let me know she was home from school. I leaped from the chair when I saw her. She looked weak and sickly. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t think so, Uncle Jason. I think I need to go to bed.”
“Do you need me to do anything?” I asked as I started toward her. I didn’t like how pale she was.
“No. I want to sleep. You go back to work. Check on me in a few hours, will you?”
“Yeah. Should I make a doctor’s appointment?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure it’s just a cold. I’m tired, achy, and feel like poop, but not coughing, and my fever is low grade.”
“Okay, but if you still aren’t feeling well tomorrow, will go see Dr. Monroe.”
Keisha nodded and backed out of the room. I called my Uncle to let him know that Keisha wasn’t feeling well.
“What are her symptoms?” he asked be
fore I could say too much.
I told him what I knew.
“Bring her to Shore Haven, now,” he demanded.
“She just laid down. Is something wrong?”
His tone had me scared, but I was reluctant to disturb her rest.
“I’m not sure. The doctors here have reported a similar illness among their family and at the hospital. I’ve heard other rumors from around the island. I’d prefer to have her here with the doctors than out there. You too, for that matter. Pack to stay here for about a week. If it’s nothing, it’ll be over in a few days. If not, you’ll be here where it’s safe.”
Jasper sounded so worried and sincere that I agreed. The crazy people in some of those chat rooms he’s always in—what he calls his other sources—probably have him paranoid over something. A bunch of conspiracy theory nutjobs, who on occasion stumble on something concrete.
We’d done this before when one of us was sick, or when he thought for sure the government or some other country was about to do something sinister. He’d gotten worse since Shore Haven went into production. I knew he planned for us to be the building’s first residents once we’d finalized everything, which was soon. He wouldn’t open to the public for another year, but he already had people, like the doctors that were currently there, touring the place, or well, in the current rounds’ case, spending a few days inside the compound. He also had other staff working inside the building from time-to-time keeping the furnished rooms clean, the gardens tended, and the like.
I packed quickly and quietly while Keisha slept.
She was right, she wasn’t running much of a fever, but I could barely get her to wake up long enough to walk to the car. We had just reached the porch when she collapsed in my arms. I had to carry her to the vehicle and inside Shore Haven.
Uncle Jasper set us up in one of the hospital rooms on the fourth floor. Keisha slept for four days. On the rare chance she woke, she complained of being achy and foggy-headed. She was so weak that she could barely move. The doctors ran test after test, but couldn’t find a cause for what was wrong with her.
Over those four days, the doctors brought in family members who were sick instead of taking them to the hospital, which was full of patients. All of them had the same symptoms but were of different age groups, races, sexes, etc. None of them had a commonality that the doctors could pinpoint.
When Keisha died, everything changed. Her death was one of four that happened that day. I was with her, holding her hand, when she went still for a second, then lunged at me. I was stronger than her, so I was able to keep her off me, but our closeness allowed me to see the creature into which she’d turned.
Her eyes lost their color. Her skin was cold. Her mouth opened and closed in a chewing motion the entire time she groped for me. She only moved her upper body, which I found odd. We discovered later during her autopsy that she’d had a tumor pressing on her spine and nervous system that showed rapid growth. The tumor kept her lower body from moving. The doctors were also sure that that was what killed her in less than a minute after she turned.
One other patient died seconds after turning, but the other two didn’t. The doctors were able to secure them, sedate them, and with reluctance, as the bodies were family, study them.
The following morning, a group of people in black hazmat suits came into Shore Haven, took our doctors and all of the patients with symptoms, and the two zombies. They lined the rest of us up, took blood, told those of us they said weren’t infected to stay indoors. The others they took they said had the virus, though they weren’t showing any symptoms.
We were all too shocked to argue. When I asked Uncle Jasper, he said that they were from the C.D.C. and that we could trust them. We didn’t have a facility on Liberty Island, and Jasper didn’t know where that particular group was located, which made me glad they didn’t take Keisha’s body. I didn’t think I would have been able to handle losing her in that way.
Kayla showed up on our doorstep a few days later. By then, everyone who wasn’t part of our family had left. I understood their want to be with their families or to find out where the people from the C.D.C. took their family instead of staying inside the safe walls of Shore Haven.
Uncle Jasper and I stuck predominantly to the second-floor housing area of the south wing of the building. We’d decontaminated the section of the medical floor that we’d occupied, found some notes left by one of the doctors that we couldn’t make sense of, then left it, praying we’d never have to go back up there.
The sound of the buzzer to the main door startled us.
“Are you expecting anyone?” I asked my uncle. We were all the family we had left. I didn’t have anyone on the outside wondering where I was.
“Nope,” he said not looking up from the bank of television and computer screens he’d been watching since Keisha died.
“How do I answer the door?” I asked. I’d helped design the building but didn’t know how all of the electronic stuff worked.
“There’s a monitor in the room next to the door. It’ll show you who’s out there. Press the button by the door to let them in if you want.”
He could have pulled up the image on one of his monitors, but I didn’t bother pointing that out to him.
We still had electricity, and everything was automated. If the building ever lost power, those things that were on the grid would disconnect, so we still had to be sure we locked the doors, windows, and the like manually. Shore Haven had its own source of energy, and it was underground, so the chances of us losing power were slim.
I went to the small security room and saw through the monitors that Keisha’s friend Kayla was standing there looking scared, dressed in black pants and a black hoody. She was alone. I rushed to the door and hit the button to let her in the building.
My first instinct was to pull her to me and hug her, but common sense stopped me. I held the door open and pointed to the hallway behind me. Without a weapon, I wouldn’t be able to fend her off if she attacked me for some reason, but by that point, I decided that my time on the planet was short anyway.
Locking the door behind us without taking my eyes off her wasn’t easy, but I managed.
“Are you sick?” I asked the girl.
I didn’t approach her.
“No.”
“Have you been bitten by one of them?”
“No.”
“Why are you here?”
“My dad’s sick. He told me to come here. He said you’d take care of me.”
“She should go into quarantine.” My uncle’s disembodied voice came from out of nowhere. “Since you’ve been exposed to her, you should as well, Jason.”
I looked toward one of the cameras and glared, but if Kayla’s dad was sick and she came straight here from his sick bed, my uncle was right.
Sighing heavily, I pointed her toward the wing of the first floor that housed the decontamination and quarantine rooms.
“Is Keisha…?” she asked as she followed me.
“Yeah.”
She sniffled but didn’t burst into tears or say another word.
In the decontamination room, I showed her how to use the showers and how to lay out her clothes to clean them. Any other time, we’d disintegrate the items, but I didn’t have anything in Shore Haven for her to wear besides a few things of Keisha’s. I had no plans to leave until the outbreak was over, so she needed all of the clothes she could get.
Wrapped in white towels, she waited for me outside the showers when she finished. I should have checked her for bites, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. I didn’t like entering the quarantine rooms with her with the two of us only wearing towels either. The sooner we had on clothes the better.
She stood in front of the door leading out of the quarantine zone and watched as my uncle ambled our way carrying clothing and food. He slid them through the slot, shut his end, and hit a button that sent the stuff to our window. I handed Kayla a jumpsuit and told her to go into the bathroom to cha
nge while I talked to my uncle.
Kayla gave us both worried looks as if we were going to leave her in the quarantine rooms alone, but she did as I suggested.
“How long do you want us in here?” I asked my uncle.
“I think three days is long enough. That’ll give any virus Kayla brought in time to die in the hallways and you guys time to show signs of getting sick if you’re going to get sick.”
“That sounds fair. Are there any weapons in here to aid us if one of us turns?”
“No. I’ll get you a gun, but I don’t think you’ll want more than that in there. Things could get dangerous. She could get scared or too depressed and do something stupid.”
If that happened, we’d still have the gun, I thought, but only nodded my head. I could put the weapon up for safe keeping. We’d have plenty of warning if one of us were about to turn.
“I’m dressed, Mr. Masters,” Kayla said, coming back to the door. She picked at the jumpsuit that nearly swallowed her.
“Call me, Jason, Kayla. We’ve known each other too long for you to be formal.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to avoid looking at my uncle and his freedom behind the door.
“Thank you, uncle,” I said.
“You’re welcome. I’ll check on the two of you in the morning,” Jasper said, then turned and walked away.
I shut the door and went into the other room to change. When I re-emerged, Kayla was boiling noodles.
Chapter 8
~~Samantha~~
—Inside the decontamination room.—
I woke once during that first night. Jason had wrapped himself around me, and for a minute, I forgot where I was, who he was, and what was happening. I had a mini freak out, but the shushing noises Jason made calmed me and had me falling back to sleep in seconds. Unfortunately, for the rest of the night, my sleep was fitful due to dreams I had about those days we spent living in the hotel.
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