23
I.D. MINUS 72 HOURS
GILSTRAP HALL
HAWKINS UNIVERSITY
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
Corey felt fine when they arrived back in St. Louis just before dawn, but by the time he and Jeannie went out for breakfast at the Perch Cafe, he’d developed a case of the sniffles.
A cold, he thought, probably brought on by his lack of sleep and exposure to the freezing night air in Chicago. A couple cold tablets plus a few hours in bed and he should be fine.
At eleven a.m. he woke with a jolt, overcome by a coughing fit. He tried to get out of bed to get some water, but the room began spinning the moment he rose to his feet, causing him to drop back to the mattress. He closed his eyes, willing the dizziness to go away. It didn’t work.
Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe this wasn’t a common cold after all. After three tries, he was able to grab his phone off the nightstand. He stared at it for a moment, not remembering who he’d wanted to call.
He spent longer than usual looking for her name at the top of his favorites list before calling.
“Hey,” she said. “Thought you were sleeping.”
“I…I…”
“Corey?”
“Not…I think…doctor…”
“Corey, are you all right?”
Her words faded away as the phone slipped from his ear, and he fell back on the bed.
Jeannie pounded on the door. “Corey?”
She gave it five seconds, then tried again. When there was still no response from inside, she went in search of Corey’s resident advisor, Barry Kellerman. Barry wasn’t in his room, so she ran downstairs to the lounge.
The RA was on the couch with two other guys, watching SportsCenter on TV.
“Corey’s sick,” she said, running up to him. “He’s not answering his door.”
Barry pushed himself up. He was a good RA, and knew when to take things seriously and when not to. “Come on.”
They ran up the stairs side by side, with Barry’s buddies tagging along behind them. When they reached Corey’s door, Barry knocked.
“I already did that,” Jeannie said. “Just open it.”
He hesitated a second before shoving the master key into the lock.
Corey was lying across the bed on top of the covers, his phone next to him.
Jeannie rushed over. “Corey? Hey, Corey. Can you hear me?”
She put her hand on his shoulder to wake him, but immediately pulled it back in surprise. He was burning up. She grabbed him again and shook him.
“Corey. Wake up. Corey!”
It was no use. He was completely out.
She looked back at Barry. “Call an ambulance!”
It took twelve minutes for the EMTs to arrive. In that time, over half a dozen other residents of Gilstrap Hall poked their heads into Corey’s room to see what was wrong.
At the hospital, he was put on fluids and anti-viral medication within two minutes of arrival. One of the upshots of the Sage Flu outbreak earlier that year was improved isolation protocol across the nation. Because of this, Corey was placed in a quarantined room. In addition, one of the nurses gathered all the names of people who might have come in contact with him.
Another improvement was the development of the Sage Test, a blood test that had an 85 % accuracy at diagnosing Sage Flu. Several in the medical community thought this was overkill, their opinions gaining strength as months went by without any new Sage cases springing up, but after the outbreak, the public demanded its enforced use. That was the only reason the test was run on Corey.
Marcie Hayward was the doctor on duty. While Corey was in obvious distress, the doctor assumed it was just a particularly severe case of the flu. That in itself was disturbing, of course. The last thing they needed was a flu bug spreading through the school, but if there was one case now, there were bound to be others later. He told Nancy Batista, the senior RN on duty, that they should be sure they had enough supplies for a sudden influx of patients. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but knew the hospital couldn’t afford to be caught off guard.
He then moved on to a broken arm suffered during an intramural game of flag football.
It was over an hour before Corey’s preliminary lab results came in. Dr. Hayward was in the middle of a nasty case of road rash on the thigh of a girl who’d fallen from her bike when Nurse Batista rushed over.
“Sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I need to see you for a moment.”
Dr. Hayward smiled at his patient, and unintentionally lied. “I’ll be right back.”
Once they were outside the exam room, Nurse Batista showed the doctor the lab results. He read them twice, and looked at her in surprise.
“Are we sure?”
“I’ve drawn a new sample, so they can run it again.”
That was also protocol if a positive result for Sage Flu was ever returned.
“Okay,” he said. “But until we learn different, we need to assume this is correct. I want everyone who’s been in contact with him isolated, including everyone on this floor. I’ll inform the administration and the state health department.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
There was fear in her eyes as she ran off, the same fear that was probably in his. Both he and the nurse knew that the Sage Flu in its most virulent form meant one thing.
Death.
Matt Hamilton was in the Bunker cafeteria watching the video Tamara and Bobby had just emailed him. It wasn’t the full WC report, just what they’d already completed over the previous months.
Tamara’s voiceover-for the first time unfiltered so that it would be recognizable-had been done in an even, sure tone. There were no hysterics, just facts of the story. Even then, he couldn’t help but frown. It played more like an over-the-top Hollywood thriller than something that could actually happen. But it was what it was. Besides, if they ever did need to play this video, it would mean the pandemic had started, and chances were people would be more keen on listening and believing.
Jordan was watching alongside him. With Pax gone, the younger man had assumed the role of Matt’s top assistant. It was a job that would have normally fallen to Michael, but he was still watching over Janice, whose illness had turned into pneumonia after spending too much time on the freezing roof of the Bluff.
As Matt jotted down a few notes, he heard someone running through the hall toward the cafeteria.
“Matt!” Rachel’s voice.
Forewarned by her tone, both he and Jordan jumped up and rushed into the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Matt asked.
“Come! Come! I think it might have started.”
With a feeling of dread, the three of them raced to the communications room. Nearly a dozen people were already there, including Billy. The TVs on the table were still tuned to the different networks, but only the volume on the PCN broadcast was turned up.
The image was a night shot of a multistory building. The graphic at the bottom identified it as Hawkins Medical Center, Hawkins University, St. Louis, Missouri. The voice speaking belonged to Catherine Minor, one of the
