Desolation brian hill

Desolation Brian Hill

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Brian

Desolation

Copyright©2022byBrianHill

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Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank my Beta readers, Mike, Beth, Debbie, and Darrin, for their help in shaping this novel.

If you’d like to join my beta reader or advanced review copy (ARC) team, please join my newsletter at: http://counting-toinfinity.com/news/

Chapter 1

Will crunched his last fry in a dingy booth at a Denny’s outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, unaware that this would be one of the last normal days of his life. A thick book sat on the table by the remnants of his meal, page opened to a dense diagram. His brow was crinkled with the effort of concentration as he highlighted passages, but the din of the restaurant made it difficult. Boisterous laughter erupted behind him, and he muttered something in irritation.

Raleigh was a university town, hosting Duke, NC State, and UNC, in addition to a gaggle of smaller schools. Every time Will was sent here, he saw the same scene: young adults, college kids, enjoying that brief stretch of time between the carefree life of a child and that of an adult.

They were the source of the uproar tonight.

As Will listened, he became very conscious of what he had missed. He had grown up poor, to a rural family, and had been unable to attend college. Further, he and his wife Shae had been careless, and before you knew it, he was a father before he could legally drink.

Will was tremendously lucky that he was good at something–computers–that both paid well and didn’t require college. Now that he was nearly thirty, he made a living traveling all over the country teaching tech.

Still, Will imagined the carefree life of a college student, and pined for what he thought he had missed.

Will left a generous tip, signed the check with a frustrated scrawl, and walked out into the summer night.

You don’t have it so bad, he told himself as he drove back to the hotel. You have a good job where you get to travel for a week and then take two weeks off, you’ve got a book coming out soon, Shae still loves you despite everything, and Kai is a great little boy who is turning into a hell of a ball player. You could have done a lot worse coming from where you did.

This helped, a little, but he was still feeling a little bitterness as he entered his room and dialed Shae on his cell.

Shae picked up on the third ring.

“Hey.”

“Hey baby,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Ok. How was your trip?”

“Same as always,” Will said, his voice heavy with weariness.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing, really. You know, just…. seeing all these college kids makes me kind of wish I had gone. It’s stupid.”

“You could still go,” she said encouragingly.

His temper flared, briefly.

“No I can’t,” Will said, his voice a bit indignant. “We still can’t afford it, and I couldn’t attend classes while traveling all over in any case.”

Hurt in her voice, Shae said, “I could get a job…”

“Come on Shae, you know we can’t pay the bills on what you can make.” He sighed heavily into the silence, and then said, “Look, just forget it. It’s dumb and I know it, but it just bothers me sometimes. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I love you,” she said, still sounding hurt.

“I love you too,” he said, without much feeling.

At ten P.M., washed and dressed in his pressed slacks and a button-down polo, Will arrived with his students in the hotel lobby for a meet and greet. After a short round of introductions with the twenty students in his bootcamp, he began to go over the general rules and expectations.

“Class will be in the Crabtree conference room. We’ll begin each day at eight A.M., unless otherwise noted. We’ll end when we end,” he said seriously, holding his gaze steady as a few students winced. Then he grinned a little.

“Don’t worry. Most days that will be around six P.M., but some days, if we are behind, we’ll have to come back after supper. I’ll try to keep those days to a minimum, but I need your help. Pay close

attention and take this seriously, and we should be able to keep to a reasonable schedule.“

“One final thing: My room number is 214. If you need anything, feel free to call me. I am available after classes if you have questions, and if you are going to miss a day for any reason, please let me know as soon as possible.”

As he said this last, he made eye contact with two of the students, Nick and Ed, maybe? Will was always horrible with names, but those two looked pretty pale, and had been coughing pretty badly. Luckily, they were both from the same company, so maybe they were just getting over a bug they caught at work.

Nothing derailed a bootcamp faster than a classroom full of sick students.

Will gave a little smile and finished with: “Hope to see you all bright and early in the morning.”

As was typical, there were several students who hung around afterwards and had questions; IT bootcamps, at least when run correctly, were pretty grueling, and many students felt anxiety and insecurity. But it was sales’ job to ensure these guys had the necessary background knowledge, a job they tended to do better early in the quota cycle, and his job to make sure they made it through successfully.

Walking back to the elevator, Will felt like he was going to be ok with this class. There were a few who were going to take a lot of extra effort to get them through the last exam, but there always were. The students were mostly industry vets sent here by their companies to either update their certifications, or attain a new one for a new role. No ‘career changers,’ which could be a nightmare since they almost never had the prerequisite knowledge.

In any event, as Will slipped into his room, he felt a little better about the week than he had felt since arriving. Now if he could just keep from coming down with whatever Ned and Rick, or whatever the hell their names were, had.

The next morning, right as he was walking out the door, Will’s hotel room phone rang.

“Mr. Hale?” the incredibly stuffy, nasally voice on the other end asked.

“Yes,” Will replied.

“This is Bob, one of your students from last night.”

“Of course, I remember,” Will said, unable to place the stoppedup voice and having absolutely noidea who in the hell this was.

“Listen, Ted and I both got much worse overnight. We’re both running fevers and don’t think it’s a great idea if we come in this morning.”

Recognition hit him like a thunderbolt, and Will immediately felt thankful they wouldn’t be coming in. Fever meant contagion, and getting the entire class sick on the first day was the absolute last thing he needed.

“Of course, Bob, whatever you guys need. Please take care of yourselves. Do you need a doctor?”

“No, I think we’ll be alright. Just feels like a bad cold. Need to rest a day or two and we’ll be ok.”

“Ok, well, if you do, the front desk should be able to get you set up with a recommendation. You guys aren’t the first sick students we’ve had,” he said, smiling into the receiver. “Just take care of yourselves and don’t worry about the class. You guys are just updating the cert, so I can get you squared away after hours, no problem.”

“Great, thanks so much, Mr. Hale.”

“Call me Will. And no problem Bob.”

Hanging up the phone, Will felt thankful for dodging that bullet as he walked out of his room and toward the elevator.

Monday’s class, for the most part, went remarkably well. The students were largely attentive and had great questions. The labs were all completed with minimal fuss, and no major technical problems occurred. However, there was one troubling thing: His nose.

Around three P.M., Will’s nose began running, and steadily got worse. He also felt a bit run down. He justified this to himself by telling himself he was always tired toward the end of the first day back in front of students, but he couldn’t keep the nagging thought out of his head that he might have what Bob and what’s-his-name had.

Even more worrisome, Will noticed he wasn’t the only one. One of his older students looked worse than Bob had last night, and several more seemed to have the sniffles or a mild cough. Some were smokers, though, so that could be the cause. He would just have to wait and see.

At dinner time, he had very little appetite, which, at five-foot-ten and nearly 250 pounds, was not common. He was trying not to worry, but was getting steadily more uneasy. The only thing worse than having a classroom full of sick students was having a sick instructor. Normally, there was a backup on call for just such a contingency, but this month they were overbooked. He wouldn’t be able to get relief at all.

At the front desk, Will stocked up on antihistamines and aspirin, then headed for his room.

Back in his room, he was just checking his email on his laptop and thinking about how miserable he was feeling when his cell rang. Looking down, he saw it was Shae. Remembering his last conversation with her, and feeling simultaneously ashamed and frustrated, he hesitated, but then answered.

“Daddy!” a tiny voice on the other end exclaimed, and his face lit up involuntarily.

“Hey buddy. How’s things?”

“Good. I helped Grandaddy get the cows in today, and he gave me five dollars. So now I just need forty-five more for the new glove.”

Will laughed despite himself. “Cool buddy. How was practice today?”

“Ok,” Kai said. “We played pepper and did some double-play drills. Oh, and I almost hit one out during batting practice, but Bobby caught it. He’s such an asshole.”

“Watch your language!” both Will and Shae said simultaneously.

“Give me that and go clean your room,” Shae said testily, and Will heard Kai’s feet running down the hall.

“I don’t know what’s got into that boy with his mouth lately,” she said, still a bit exasperated.

“Can’t really blame him, when we cuss like sailors,” Will said.

Shae sighed, but didn’t argue. Will could hear Tobi, their fiveyear-old Yorkie mix, barking excitedly at Kai in the background.

“Listen hon, I’m feeling like crap and may be coming down with something, so I’m gonna let you go so I can hit the sack early tonight.”

“Ok,” she said, disappointment clear in her voice.

“Sorry, but hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow. Tell Kai I love him for me.”

“Ok,” she said, then after a brief hesitation, “I love you.”

“Love you too, baby,” Will said, meaning it this time, and ended the call.

Sleep came with difficulty and was constantly broken up by hard, phlegmy coughs that rattled his entire chest. He began shivering uncontrollably throughout the night, despite grabbing every cover in the room, and he knew that meant he had a fever. That made him worry about class tomorrow, which made it even harder to get back to sleep.

When his alarm went off, Will was already awake. He groaned and sat up. He noticed he was out of tissues, or rather, they had all been wadded up and migrated to the little overflowing trash can, so he plodded to the bathroom and blew his sore nose on a handful of toilet paper.

He looked in the mirror and was not pleased by what he saw. He was a broad shouldered, overweight man in his late twenties, with blonde hair and blue eyes. None of that had changed, but his normally pale skin looked almost ghostly, with the consistency and pallor of bread dough. Dark bags hung under his eyes, which themselves were bloodshot. He looked dead tired, which was roughly how he felt. Still, he had a classroom full of students

depending on him, and no relief in sight, so he might as well get on with it.

He reluctantly began getting ready for work.

About a half hour later, Will was buttoning his shirt when his hotel phone rang. This began a procession of at least six phone calls from sick students. Christ, this was looking worse and worse. Still, he didn’t get a call from Bob or what’s-his-name, so maybe they were over it already. If so, there was still hope for the rest of them to recover in time so that this class wasn’t a total loss. Will forced himself to think positively as he headed down.

Will walked into the classroom, and his face fell. Three students populated the room, and they all looked as bad as Will felt. Will suspected one of them, Jake something, had not even showered, and may have actually slept in his clothes.

What a clusterfuck, he thought to himself.

Will looked down at his roster sheet, where he had marked off those who had called in and those who had arrived.

“I’ve got nine of you accounted for. Anyone heard from any of the other students?” he asked the classroom.

Everyone shook their heads to the negative.

“Ok. I’m going to wait about thirty more minutes for other students to arrive before getting started, then.”

No one seemed to object, and Jake even cradled his head in his arms and seemed to go to sleep.

After forty-five minutes though, no one else had arrived, and Will was feeling worse by the minute. It was no use trying to teach the way he felt, and even at full strength, he would have to reteach all of this anyway when the rest of the class got well. This was a waste. Time to cut them loose so they could at least get some rest.

“Ok guys, looks like we’re it, and we’re all a wreck. Since most of the class isn’t here, I’m going to cancel class for today and reschedule for tomorrow. I’ll talk to head office about making the day up. Maybe we can reschedule flights and extend through Sunday, or just book you guys for a future boot camp. One way or the other, we’ll figure it out.”

Here he paused as a deep, wracking cough took over, and then leaned over and spat a wad of something thick and dark yellow into the trashcan.

“Sorry about that, guys,” Will said as he wiped his mouth with a tissue. “Anyway, go back and get some rest, let’s reconvene tomorrow at the normal time.”

Everyone seemed incredibly relieved at this news, and shuffled out without so much as a goodbye.

On the way back to his room, Will stopped by the front desk to grab some cough medicine, and noticed the clerk looked pretty badly off herself.

“Unfortunately, we don’t sell cough medicine,” she told him with a pained expression. “There’s a little convenience store a few blocks down though, and a CVS just down past the hospital.”

Will sighed heavily. “That’s ok, I’m just going to try to get some rest for now. Looks like everybody’s coming down with this bug.”

“No kidding,” she said. “It’s so bad they ran something on the news about it,” she said while nodding toward the muted TV on the far wall. “They were telling people to stay home if they could and wear masks, like COVID all over again.”

“Looks like that ship has already sailed, at least for us,” Will commented.

“Yep, looks like,” she said, smiling grimly.

“Well, hope you get to feeling better,” Will said as he made his way back to the elevator.

“You too,” her voice rang out from behind him.

Back in his room, Will sat down at his PC and composed a quick email to his boss explaining the situation. Then, after a coughing fit that made him so lightheaded he was seeing spots, he decided to take a nap and recover some energy.

He grabbed a couple of water bottles and brought them over beside his bed, then grabbed the spare box of tissues and the trash can and brought them within easy reach. As he was undressing, he remembered he had forgotten to place the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door, so he remedied that, and then bundled up and fell asleep.

As he slept, his fever ratcheted up. Coughing fits periodically overtook him, accompanied by a thick, phlegmy discharge. He drained both water bottles, and through a heroic effort, got up and dragged the case beside the bed before collapsing again into troubled sleep.

As his fever intensified, he drifted in and out of consciousness. He kept swallowing fluid and phlegm as he slept, and it made him so nauseous that he vomited during a coughing fit. At that point, Will had enough presence of mind to roll onto his stomach with his head lying off the bed and the trash can directly under him.

He faded in and out, and the hours passed in a blur. At first, he drained water bottles when semi-conscious, but as the fever drug on, those periods became more and more rare. Eventually, he lapsed into a long period where he knew nothing.

When Will finally awoke, the first thing he was aware of was an intense, all-consuming thirst. His throat felt like a desert plain: so dry that fissures had cracked open, exposing what was underneath to the elements.

Lying face down on the bed, head directly over the trash can, he took in the scene. The trash can itself looked like an abstract painting from hell. He saw droplets of dried blood, phlegm, and vomit from his ordeal sprayed in and around the bowl of the can in a chaotic shotgun pattern, occasionally gracing a dresser, carpet, or wall.

The room reeked of those smells mixed with the stench of stale sweat, urine, and feces.

Looking around, he saw his water bottle, sitting on the nightstand where he had left it last night. He immediately propped himself onto an elbow and began draining the bottle. He could feel the water invading the crevasses in his throat. As it ran over his dried skin, he felt the sting subside into cool, loving caresses. It was deliciously painful, and Will thought he had never truly appreciated how wonderful plain water tasted.

Abruptly, he retched it all back up violently, spilling the rest of the bottle.

Will gathered up his strength and hauled himself into a sitting position, then grabbed a second bottle. Steeling himself, he drank it slowly, a few sips at a time. The third bottle he drank faster, but still cautiously. By the fourth bottle, Will simply drained it in one long pull, lost in the taste and soothing feeling of it.

Will became aware that he had soiled himself during the night. With disgust, he got up and staggered to the bathroom and started the shower. He then stripped off his underwear and dropped them into the trash.

He took a long shower, cleaning himself thoroughly and enjoying the feeling of the hot water on his skin. As he did, he went back over last night in his mind. That was, by far, the worst sickness he

had ever been through. He couldn’t remember much of it, but he had a strong feeling that he had come very close to dying. Whatever he had, it wasn’t just a bad case of the flu. It was a once in a century, maybe a once in history case of the flu. His priority needed to be to check on his students; some of them may need immediate medical attention.

Will got out of the shower and quickly dressed and groomed himself, taking an obscene pleasure in brushing the furry feeling out of his mouth. He felt a little better as he got more hydrated. As he stepped back into the room and saw his bed, Will realized he needed to get housekeeping up here in a hurry, and tip well. He grabbed his phone and room key and bolted out the door.

In the elevator, he checked his phone, only to find it was completely dead. That’s odd, he thought. He knew he forgot to connect it to the charger yesterday, but one day and night shouldn’t have drained it. The elevator dinged, and he put it out of his mind; one more problem for future Will to deal with.

He stepped out of the elevator and into a ghost town. The large lobby was empty. The hotel restaurant, over to the left of the lobby, was also devoid of life. Will didn’t know what time it was, but judging from the sun shining in through the glass entryway, he guessed it was midafternoon. Someone, even if just employees, should be around.

As Will came around the corner, he saw that the front desk was vacant as well. He walked up to the desk and waited.

The front desk came up to about chest height, made of an almost burgundy hardwood topped with a black speckled granite countertop. A few flyers were in a holder and a stack of business cards rested on the right side. Will turned around to see if the TV was on and just muted, but it was off.

Eventually, Will called out: “Hello?”

There was no reply. In fact, there wasn’t even the sound of stirring behind the office door. His voice was swallowed up in the empty room.

“Hellll-ooooooo?” He said much louder.

More silence.

Will tilted his head in puzzlement. He looked for a bell, but apparently those only exist in movies.

Eventually, he looked around to make sure there was no one in sight, then feeling both silly and slightly guilty, Will went behind the reception counter and knocked softly on the office door. No response. He knocked harder, but the result was the same. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened the door, grimacing in advance of the outburst he subconsciously expected.

Instead, he was greeted with the sight of a small, tidy office. A short desk was flush against the wall beside the door, with a generic PC and monitor, a few random knick-knacks, and a framed photo of a cute little girl in pigtails on it. A set of filing cabinets was flush against the far wall, and on the wall was a white board with what looked like some kind of shift chart, listing who was covering various shifts on various days.

He looked at this with Interest. This was Wednesday afternoon, so according to the chart, Mary was supposed to be covering the front desk. Well, whoever Mary was, she was woefully delinquent. Feeling like he was snooping, Will softly closed the office door and went back around the counter.

He scratched his head, trying to think of what he should do next. He could just sit and wait; that was the ‘correct’ thing to do. Will fidgeted as he contemplated.

No, he decided. I’m going to at least try to figure out what is going on. Was the hotel evacuated, and I was just too far gone to wake up? Is everyonesick?

He needed to know.

Will walked around the corner, past the elevator. Ahead, he could see the conference room, just down the hall on the right. He could now see the table set up with the catered meals, and that struck him as odd. This had to be midafternoon, so the caterers should have already removed lunch.

He noticed that the Bunsen burners, which the caterer always lit under each tray to keep the food warm, were out. The lids to the burners were sitting on the white linen tablecloth beside the burners, just like always, but no flame came from the burners.

As he got closer, Will heard a high pitched, intermittent buzzing sound that he recognized immediately as flies. He could see a handful of the nasty little creatures buzzing around the food, which was cold, stale, and other than the flies, untouched. Their iridescent green bodies stood out prominently as they crawled all over the mashed potatoes.

Speaking of which, this looked like… dinner? He guessed they could have served fried chicken with potatoes and gravy for lunch, but he was almost positive that was on the schedule for dinner instead. Either way, it looked like no one had eaten it, and it had sat for quite some time.

Will’s felt his stomach growl intensely. He ignored the old food, but he knew his next act needed to be to find something to eat. First, though, he needed to do what he had come down here to do.

He opened the conference room door and peeked inside. No one. Everything looked exactly like he had left it yesterday, as if no one had even showed up today.

Will took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

As a child, Will had attended Southern Baptist churches. These were real ‘fire and brimstone’ affairs, where Hell was talked about a lot more than Heaven, and the rapture, which was the apocalypse by another name, was almost venerated. He had a genuine anxiety as a kid that the Lord would call all the faithful back to heaven one day and he would find himself left on Earth, alone, because he had not measured up.

This was starting to feel like that.

Will shook his head at the absurdity of the thought. It felt strange to realize that the idea of the rapture still created so much anxiety in him, despite the fact that he had ceased believing in any kind of God years ago. The shit they indoctrinated you with as a child kept a very strong purchase on your psyche.

Will shook the thought out of his mind, then turned and strode back into the lobby. He needed to find his students’ room numbers, damn it. If that meant he had to look them up himself, he was going to do it. People might be dying. He would explain that to the authorities if needed.

Will went back to the reception counter and walked around. The counter was dominated by an LCD screen and a small desktop, mouse and keyboard. A stack of keycards and a card encoder were off to the side, along with a stack of hotel business cards in a holder and a three-level inbox with various papers in it. The front desk phone, one of those big black jobs with a little LCD display and about 7000 buttons, sat beside the PC.

Under the counter was custom cabinetry, with several drawers and a large open section containing a squat gray laser printer on a slight platform. Over in the corner was the pantry area, stocked with snack food, medicines, and drinks in a small refrigerator with a clear glass front door.

Will’s stomach growled, and he went over and tore into a bag of potato chips. He jammed the chips into his maw by the handful, spilling chips out of the bag and getting crumbs everywhere. Will didn’t care. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this hungry.

Will devoured four bags of snack food before he began to feel ok. Licking his fingers clean, he looked around for a napkin, but came up empty. Fuck it, he thought, and wiped his hands on his slacks. He then turned his attention to the computer on the counter.

The LCD screen was in power saving mode, so Will smacked the spacebar to wake it. A familiar Windows 10 screen popped up with a PIN prompt. He grinned slightly. With a multi-user machine like this one, the PIN would either be really easy to remember, or more likely, written somewhere close by.

Security would take a back seat to productivity in retail establishments - the last thing in the world you want is to be unable to check a guest in because you forgot the stupid PIN.

Will looked around for any sticky notes, but didn’t see any. He began pulling open drawers one at a time and methodically sifting through the contents. He hit pay dirt in the third drawer he opened. There, on a pad of hotel stationery, was the number 928174. He typed that into the PIN box and he was in.

Chrome was up in full-screen mode, and some kind of property management cloud app was open. Will didn’t know a thing about

property management systems, but he had fudged his way through enough software that this didn’t phase him.

He looked through the top menu items. Front Desk seemed promising, so he clicked that, and then selected the Reservations item.

This brought up a screen with rows and rows of names. The total at the bottom said 223 active reservations.

Shit. That was going to take some time to look through. He needed to filter this list.

Will’s company had booked the hotel as a group, so he really just needed to find and search for the group ID. Problem was, he was horriblewith names. He remembered Bob, but he’d be damned if he knew what the guy’s last name was.

Then Will’s eyes lit up; hewas part of the group.

He found the search button and searched for his own reservation. It popped up, and he found the group ID, which was just an arbitrary number. Will then tried searching using the number. No results.

Hmm. Maybe the search function only looked in the name field?

After a little scrounging, he found an advanced search button. He clicked it, which brought up an advanced search page where he could choose a field to search on. He chose group ID, and entered the number for his group.

The results list populated with exactly twenty-one entries.

Now that Will had the student’s room numbers, he began calling each room in the order they appeared on the screen, using the front desk phone. Room by room, every single call got sent to voicemail after five rings. Not a single answer.

The tiny hairs on the back of Will’s arms stood at attention.

Will stared blankly at the screen for a moment, then, in a burst of decisiveness, he held down the CTRL key and then hit the ‘P’ key. A high-pitched whining noise, followed by some mechanical clicks and thunks, signaled that the laser printer had begun printing the page.

When it had finished, Will scanned it for first-floor rooms. Jake Evans was in room 112, so that was his first objective.

The hotel was laid out in a kind of U pattern, with the lobby, front desk, elevators, and conference rooms all at the bottom of the U. The rooms themselves were all on a long wing on the left side of the U. The restaurant was blocking the end of the wing on the right, with the hotel pool between both of the wings. So, for the first floor, you had to go to the left, past the conference rooms, to get to any of the guest rooms.

Room 112 was about sixty feet past the last conference room, on the right. Will walked up to the door, took a deep breath, and knocked hard three times. The sound reverberated down the hall.

No answer came. He placed his ear to the door and listened for a minute or so. Other than the drone of the AC, there was no sound that he could detect.

Fuck, he thought.

He pounded until his hand throbbed and then put his ear back to the door. Still, only the low rumble of the AC was discernible. Will paced back and forth, brow furrowed.

He abruptly turned and marched briskly back toward the lobby. At the front desk, he examined the key card encoder. It was a slim, gray plastic box with a swipe strip on one side, a small LCD display at the top, and a numeric keypad with an enter key, a delete key, a question mark key, and a key that looked like a small house. There were also four little arrow keys. The LCD display was showing some kind of logo.

Will hit the Enter key. The LCD read ‘Enter authorization key’. Christ, Will thought, of course it couldn’t be that simple. He began digging through the drawers again, looking for a key card that was labeled or maybe looked different. Nothing.

Will stood there for a moment, chewing his lower lip, lost in thought. Then he went into the office area and started rifling through the desk. In the top drawer there was a keycard attached to one of those wrist-band thingies that looked like it was made of old phone cord; kind of like a rubber slinky or something. He grabbed it and went back to the encoder.

He swiped the card, and the little display showed three options:

1. Guest keycard

2. Read/Verify

3. PMS mode

Guest keycard seemed like the logical choice, so he hit ‘1’ on the keypad. A new menu appeared:

1. Guest

2. Adjoining Suite

3. Common Door Suite

He hit ‘1’ again. The display now asked for the room number. Will typed 112 and hit Enter. The display then showed a lot of options he didn’t care a bit about. Will left everything at the default and hit Enter. The machine told him to swipe the key, and Will did as instructed. The machine’s display pronounced ‘Success!’, so Will guessed he had done everything right.

He then spent the next fifteen minutes programming cards for all the other student rooms, writing the room number on each card with a Sharpie. That done, he gathered the cards and walked towards the rooms.

As he moved, Will could feel his pulse increase as the seriousness of what he was planning to do sank in. He knew he was hopeless when it came to first aid. Hell, Shae even took care of tending to Kai when he got hurt. He wasn’t sure how he could help, and he was not looking forward to finding students as sick as he had been. But what choice did he have? He was responsible for these guys, and that meant he had to do something.

Outside room 112, Will steeled himself. He didn’t know what he was going to find in there, but chances were very high that it would not be pleasant. Will had of course seen gore before; it’s damn near impossible to watch TV in America without blood and guts. But he had never been exposed to a lot of real trauma.

He absently wiped a cold sweat from his brow.

Will had already forgotten the student’s name, so he looked down at the printout one last time. Jake. The guy who napped at his desk yesterday. Shit.

‘Ok, let’s do this,’ he thought. He pounded on the door again, hard, and yelled: “Jake? You in there, man?” Nothing.

“I need you to answer me, or I’m going to come on in. You there?”

Still nothing. Guess he was going to have to do this after all.

He slid the key into the reader. A little light went green and a small click came from the door, shockingly loud in the complete silence of the hotel.

He twisted the knob and slowly opened the door, calling out as he did.

“Uh, Jake? I’m coming in man, just here to check on you….”

He trailed off as he took in the room. At first blush, it looked pretty normal. Just like Will’s room, Jake’s room door opened into what Will referred to as a ‘hotel default’ room layout.

There was a short hall directly in front of the door, with the bathroom door directly to the left. Past the bathroom door was a little open storage area with the ubiquitous permanently attached hangers, along with an ironing board. Past this, the room opened up, with a combination entertainment center/mini-fridge/microwave area directly ahead flush against the right wall, and the room expanding about six or seven feet to the left. Over by the AC unit on the far wall was a plush chair and a lamp, and flush against the left wall was the bed and two adjoining night tables.

Jake was on the bed.

From where he stood, Will couldn’t see much more than the foot of the bed, but two sock covered feet were poking out from under the comforter.

“Jake?” he called again. No answer.

As he was listening for Jake to answer, Will noticed the smell. It was mostly the same smell he had woken up to earlier. Puke, piss, shit. But there was a hint of something else too, something he didn’t think he’d ever smelled, but it reminded him of roadkill. It was the faintest of the smells, but it still caused his stomach to do gymnastics.

He’s dead, Will thought.

Will’s shoulders slumped, but he still held a little hope that Jake was just sick like he himself had been.

He had to know. He couldn’t just leave because he was squeamish.

Slowly, swallowing hard and trying not to be sick, Will walked further into the room. He walked past the little closet area and got a full view of Jake.

Poor Jake.

Jake was lying on his back, with the covers thrown off of his upper body. His left hand was lying on his chest, near his neck, Around his neck were scratch marks, and dried blood was under his nails.

Jake’s right hand dangled limply off the side of the bed. His skin looked loose and was almost devoid of color, except for the tips of his fingers on his right hand, which had become the color of a plum that had just begun to rot; a deep violet color trending into black.

Jake’s face was the worst.

He was staring straight up into the ceiling. His eyes were open, and the whites were almost completely ebony. His mouth was open, and full of old vomit. Crusted vomit was on the side of his face running down to the sheets.

Will turned around and immediately regurgitated his chips. Yanking the door open, he went out into the hall and dry heaved for what felt like days, leaning hard against the far wall for support. Tears were streaming from his eyes with the effort of his stomach’s heaves.

Jake’s room door, spring loaded, slammed behind him. It echoed in the long hall, but Will barely registered it.

Will walked in a daze back to the lobby and plopped heavily into a chair. He looked at his hand, which was jittering, surprised to find the room key for Jake’s room still in it. Will let it fall to the floor. He began shivering violently as the adrenaline rush abated and his thoughts coalesced back into something resembling normalcy.

Will remembered Jake being a decent student, and a nice guy. A bit quiet and reserved, but capable. He was just an acquaintance,

like almost all of his students, but Will still found it difficult to believe that he was gone. It was surreal.

His concern for his students was out of a sense of duty, more than anything. But even when you don’t really know someone, there’s still a palpable sense of loss when they are gone.

Especially if you are the one to find them.

Will sighed. He had to think. What should he do? The answer came immediately: 911.

Still trembling, he got up and crossed the room to the front desk again. Picking up the receiver, he hit the number for an outside line. He got a busy signal. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it perplexed.

He tried again. Same result. He slammed the phone back into the receiver.

“Goddamn shitty fucking stupid phone system, do I have to fix you too? Can’t I just catch a break?!” he yelled out to the empty room.

Will struggled against the combination of despair and fear gripping him. He needed to find people. He needed help. He didn’t know how to handle this. He needed the police, he needed an ambulance, he needed to find out whatinthefuckwasgoingon.

Will sat, put his head in his hands, and tried to wrestle his emotions back under control.

What he needed, first and foremost, was emergency aid. He thought for a bit and then realized his cell phone should still work, he just needed to plug it in. He went back upstairs to his room to connect his phone.

Upon entering the room, however, he wrinkled his nose and reconsidered. Instead, he grabbed his charger and headed back to the lobby.

Will plugged his phone in and, while he waited on it to charge, rummaged around for the remote he knew he saw in one of the front desk drawers.

After rummaging for a while, he eventually found it and snapped the TV on. The channel it landed on was some kind of reality TV channel. Everything looked normal, but this wasn’t his aim. Will

wanted a news channel, so he began surfing. The HGTV’s, and Discovery’s, and HBO’s of the world looked mundane. The same show was on the channel that was advertised on the guide. But when he finally reached the news channels, it was chaos.

Several showed SMTPE color bars, kind of a weird division of equal length bands of gray and various colors over the top twothirds of the screen, followed by two thin bands chaotically arranged in more colors.

One station, it might have been CNN, showed an empty broadcast studio. No anchors. No overlays, just an empty studio. Will realized the TV was muted, and unmuted it. No change. He jacked up the volume. No real discernable sound.

Moving on, he came to CSPAN, and finally struck ore. It ran a simple text message, with a calm, confident (though if he was honest, scratchy) male voice mirroring the white words on the blue background in a loop. However, it was so loud and distorted after Will’s cranking of the volume, he couldn’t understand the voice. He muted it again.

It read:

“This is a message from the Emergency Notification System. This message was authorized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on behalf of the President of the United States. This is not a test.

A virus, similar to the seasonal flu but much more virulent, has impacted the United States. The spread of the illness seems to be much more rapid in urban areas.

We are working with all due haste to treat this illness. In the meantime, isolate at home. Stay away from large gatherings of people. Wear a mask when out. Drink plenty of fluids. Sleep lying on your stomach, with pillows under your abdomen, to help with fluid buildup. If a loved one is unresponsive, transport them to the nearest hospital. Ambulances will be in high demand. If the situation is not life threatening, personal transport is recommended.

This message will be updated once every 24 hours.

This message was recorded 6/22/2022.”

Will stared at the repeating message with a mixture of hope and despair. Despair because it verified for him that this was a nationwide, extremely contagious illness. Hope because the message specifically called out urban areas, and his hometown, with a population of roughly 1,200 souls, was clearly not an urban area.

This was the first time since he had woken that he had actually thought about home. How were Shae and Kai doing? He felt a kernel of worry growing inside him, but he didn’t give into it just yet. Instead, he knew he had to figure out what his immediate situation was before he could worry about his family. ‘Apply your own mask before applying your child’s mask’, and all that.

Will focused on the message’s date. The message said it was the twenty-second, but Will thought he had only slept for one day. It should be the twenty-first.

Did he sleep for two days? How could he verify the date?

Windows, he thought. Windows used Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize time with time servers on the Internet. If a Windows PC was connected to the Internet, it should have the correct time.

He rushed back around the counter and smacked the space bar on the PC. The PIN screen appeared again.

Will let out an exasperated sigh.

He dug through the drawers until he found the note with the code, entered it, then looked at the time display in the lower right of the screen. It read 6/24, 4:45 PM.

Will dropped hard, involuntarily, into the office chair behind the desk. His mind was a swirling mess of conflicting information. The TV said the date was the twenty-second , or at worst, the twentythird , assuming typical governmental incompetence and a failure to update the message. His memory said it should be the twenty-first . But the fucking computer, the most accurate arbiter of time, said it was the twenty-forth .

He had some understanding of NTP, the protocol Windows used to set the system time. Basically, for a stand-alone computer like this one, there was an atomic clock in Arizona or somewhere, and the PC would occasionally reach out to this server to get an updated timestamp, along with some additional data to determine the roundtrip time. As long as the box was connected to the Internet, it should have pretty accurate time. Certainly not off by days, anyhow.

Hmmm. Maybe this system was disconnected? He opened up a command line and typed ‘ping 8.8.8.8’.

He used to tell his beginner students Ping was like an instructor testing if his students were awake. You fired a data chunk into the ether at a target, kind of like a teacher throwing a softball at a sleeping student. If the target was alive, the target responded with an ‘ouch’. If not, there was a good chance the target was dead, but that meant you didn’t need to run away.

The poor taste of this joke right now was not lost on him. Will grunted and looked back to the screen.

The target responded. 8.8.8.8, one of Google’s public DNS servers, reacted nearly immediately.

‘Ok,’ Will thought, ‘There’s no major break in Internet infrastructure. I need to verify what the actual date is.’

He typed ‘today’s date’ into Google, smashing the enter key afterwards with a loud ‘clack’.

It immediately popped up Friday, June 24, 2022.

Oh shit.

He’d been asleep for at least three days. No wonder he was so thirsty. And hungry.

It also explained the horrible state of poor Jake.

Ok, he thought. This was bad, but in some ways, it was also good.

This explained why no one was around. The FEMA message had told everyone to stay home, and by God, they were doing it, unlike the COVID pandemic. At least that was a positive for humanity. People learned from their mistakes; supersurprising.

On the downside, it meant that he was likely the only person left in this hotel to help his students. So, as horrifying as it might be, he

needed to get after it.

There was the added benefit that a hospital was literally across the street from the hotel. As long as he could get the sick students to the car, he should be able to get them to help.

He checked to make sure the stack of key cards was still in his back pocket along with the paper printout, and made his way back down the hall to the rooms.

The next student was right down the hall from Jake’s room, in room 119. Frank something. Will repeated the routine from Jake’s room, pounding on the door and yelling, then steeling himself and entering.

Frank was curled up in the fetal position on his side, but otherwise, the result was the same. He must have lasted a little longer, because the smell wasn’t nearly as bad, and the side of his face touching the bed was only a darkish blue, the color of an angry thundercloud. He still had the same eerie black sclera, and the same speckles of mixed snot and blood were all over the bedspread and far wall.

Will left, softly closing the door behind him. He pondered for a second, and finally dropped the key on the floor in front of the room door. This way, if he ever got a hold of 911, he wouldn’t have to dig through a pile of cards to get them into the rooms.

He moved onwards. Room 122 was empty. All the student’s books and things seemed to still be there, but there was no sign of the student. There was also an absence of blood and vomit, which was a good sign. Maybe he was up wandering around the hotel, just like Will was?

Will checked his paper, and saw this room was registered to… oh. Ted Harris. The first student to get sick. No chance he’s wandering around. Probably he and whatever the other guy’s name was both went to the hospital after calling in sick. Hopefully, they got help in time.

The next two rooms fit the pattern that was beginning to emerge with his students. Lying in bed, blackened eyes, blackened appendages where they were near the ground, same infernal artwork on the beds and walls.

Will felt the beginnings of something drag at him from deep in his stomach.

He thought he understood a little now of how rescue dogs feel when they face a scene of complete destruction, like the twin towers collapse on 9/11. He wanted to find someone, to help someone, so badly. Finding only dead people, over and over? He was beginning to expect death. To lose hope.

The thought that was in his head was: Why go on? Why continue if it’s just more of this horror show?

The answer that came back, immediately if reluctantly, was: Because there’s no one else.

He went on.

Three rooms later he came upon something different. Entering the room, Mark Thomas’s, according to his sheet, Will couldn’t smell the now normal smells of vomit and rotting meat. Getting a bit excited, he rushed into the bedroom area, calling Mark’s name. No one was there, but the sheets were messed up. He retraced his steps to the bathroom, where the door was almost shut.

Knocking, he called ‘Mark?’

No response.

Will gently pushed the door in, which bumped up against something and stopped after opening about a foot. Will took an exploratory sniff and cursed under his breath.

He pushed harder on the door, forcing whatever was obstructing it to the side, and wedged his way into the bathroom. There, lying sprawled on the floor with his head to the left of the bowl and his feet wedged between the door and the sink cabinets, was Mark. The bowl was cracked, and there was a slight spray of blood on the edge. Mark’s head was laying with the left cheek to the floor. His right eye, not blackened like the others, was staring blankly at the bottom of the toilet. An impressive pool of dried blood was under him, filling the last three feet of the bathroom with a tacky puddle. Will sighed and silently backed out of the room, dropping the key in front of the door.

The next seven rooms held more of the typical ‘dead student in the bed’ scene that he was beginning to classify as ‘normal’. There

was no anticipation of maybe finding someone he could help now. Just a kind of building dread about what he was going to find, and a grim determination to push on.

Will had begun counting down. Fifteen down, five to go. The next room was Bob Collins’s, the other patient zero from his class. Like Ted’s room, Bob’s was empty, though it was a bit more of a mess and had vomit in the trash can. Hopefully, those two got to the hospital in time and were ok. Four to go.

In the seventeenth room, Will finally found something different. Taking a breath, he smelled the same suite of odors that had now become normal, but without the rotting smell. He walked in, calling out, to find the student tangled in a pile of covers on the floor beside the bed.

Expecting the worst, Will walked over to see the student’s face. The student was lying on his left side, back to the wall, facing the bed. His eyes were shut. His face was pale, but uniformly so. There were pebbles of sweat on his skin, and God in heaven, he was breathing! Will stuck his hand under the student’s nose to check, and there was no doubt. Soft and shallow, but he was breathing.

Will whooped in triumph. He checked the student’s name on his sheet: Nathan Adkins. Will gently called his name, then louder. Nothing. Will repeated this and gently slapped Nathan’s clammy cheek.

Jesus, he’s burning up, Will thought. He had never felt a human being so warm. Waves of heat were radiating off of him.

Will immediately began trying to untangle Nathan from the covers. Will was trying to get Nathan’s legs untangled, and was already breaking a sweat, grunting with effort. Nathan’s legs didn’t want to cooperate; they flopped around like they had a mind of their own, going whatever direction gravity and joint mechanics dictated, like one of those old articulated toy snakes.

Eventually, Will got him unwrapped. He stood by Nathan, panting and wiping sweat from his brow, thinking. What else could he do to get Nathan cooler?

He could get some cold rags and drape those on him. Or even better, he could put Nathan in the tub and run cold water.

Will went around to pull Nathan up by his arms, but the way Nathan was wedged meant that he couldn’t really get any leverage. So Will backed up, grabbed Nathan by the ankles, and pulled him into the room itself. This took a few minutes, and Will was huffing like a lifelong smoker at the end, but he got it done. Nathan’s shirt was now rolled up under his armpits where the friction from the carpeting had pulled it up.

Still breathing heavily, Will went around and pulled the shirt over Nathan’s head, then got his arms out one by one, discarding the inside out garment on the floor. Taking a deep breath, Will bent down, reached up under Nathan’s armpits, and grabbed him in a kind of bear hug from behind.

Once Will felt like he had a good hold on Nathan, he slowly stood up with him. Nathan stunk, and his greasy hair was rubbing on Will’s cheek disgustingly, but Will persisted. Nathan’s skin was slippery with sweat, but Will found he could drag him a foot or so before he needed to set him down and reestablish his grip.

Lift, drag, ease down, re-grip, repeat.

After what seemed like an hour, Will got Nathan into the bathroom. Will sat himself on the edge of the tub to rest, with Nathan between Will’s knees, leaning against him and the tub wall.

Sweat was stinging Will’s eyes, and his heart was pounding like a speed metal drummer: hard and fast. This was the most physical labor he’d done in years, and he was clearly very out of shape. But he was making progress. If Will could just get Nathan over the lip of this tub, he would be home free.

He realized now he had no chance of getting Nathan to his car and to the hospital. Getting him into the bathroom had been a herculean task. Will wasn’t sure he could even get him in the tub. No, he would need to get Nathan cooled off, then he could run to the hospital himself and see if he could find help. Besides, he had three more rooms he had to check.

Will mentally prepared himself, then got his arms around Nathan and lifted him again. He stepped into the tub with Nathan’s upper body, but couldn’t seem to get Nathan’s hips over the lip of the tub.

There just wasn’t room to go straight back with him, and Will wasn’t strong enough to lift him any higher.

Thinking quickly, Will backed away from the faucet, trying to pivot Nathan’s body more lengthwise into the tub.

It didn’t work. Instead of pivoting, Nathan’s hips just slid closer to him. As Will struggled, Nathan slipped, and instead of holding him under the armpits, Will was now holding him above the shoulders. Then Nathan’s arms and head plunged through Will’s clutched arms, and dropped into the tub with a series of dull thumps.

Nathan was now lying with his torso in the tub, his hips on the lip of the tub, and his legs as the balancing weight out into the floor. His back was bent concave, with his hips at the highest point and his legs and torso sloping down on either side. It looked painful and possibly injurious.

Will quickly exited the tub. Grabbing Nathan’s legs he pulled them around towards the faucet, which had the side effect of sliding Nathan’s hips toward the tub. With a heavy, hollow thunk, Nathan’s hips slid off of the lip and into the tub. Will arranged Nathan in a drawn-out fetal position, then examined his head positioning. It was too low to run a bath; too much chance of drowning. However, if he left the drain open and ran a cold shower, Nathan should be fine.

Will cut on the shower and adjusted the spray so that it was out of Nathan’s face. He didn’t remember how much water it took to drown you, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Nathan’s clothes were getting soaked now, but it didn’t matter. Will had to reduce Nathan’s fever, and this was all he had to do it with.

Will checked to make sure Nathan was still breathing, then propped the room door open and took off after the rest of the students.

Fifteen minutes later, Will walked back to Nathan’s room, shoulders slumped and eyes downcast. All three of the rooms contained the same dismal scene. Out of twenty students, seventeen were dead, one was hanging on to life by a thread, and two were status unknown, presumably in the hospital.

Will went into the bathroom to check on Nathan. His color was still bad, but he had stopped sweating. Will felt Nathan’s head; it