The Deadliest Strain

Chapter Forty

In his entire life, David had never been checked as thoroughly as he was in this hospital during the past twelve hours. Blood test after urine test after physical. All done twice by two separate teams of doctors, each checking the same things, asking the same questions. Having an endoscopy while he lay there awake, though, was a bit much. He hoped he only had to go through that once.

He ran into Craig in a waiting area. They had quarantined a section of the hospital just for the five of them. They were told the rest of the people on the boat were in this same hospital, but they were on a separate floor. David had spoken to Sally. She was allowed to join Josh. Their son was doing just fine, and his only worry was David.

"How did you make out?" Craig asked.

"Okay," he said. "I hope I don't have to do another one of those plumbing checks again… ever."

"Is it that bad?" Craig asked. "I have to go in for it next."

"No, not at all," he lied. They hadn't had time to do the proper fasting. David could feel the cramping aftereffects of that now. "But when the scope popped out of my ear, I told the doctor I thought he'd made a wrong turn somewhere."

"Great," Craig replied with a wan smile. "Well, that coffee is for us, if you want it. And we can use that computer to check e-mail or whatever."

"Did they say how long they're going to keep us here?"

"No. I really don't think they have any idea," Craig told him. "Just reading the headline news, though, it's a mess out there."

"More outbreaks?"

"They're not sure. There were so many calls to 911 in all the major cities that they're saying the emergency system is breaking down. There are some people who they think they have the disease. Others who think their neighbor has it, or their dog or cat. There's even an idiot or two out there calling and taking responsibility for it. It's total chaos."

The nurse came out to get Craig. He pointed a finger at David.

"Stay away from headline news. It's not worth it… I'm telling you."

Sally said she'd talked to Jamie and Kate. They were both doing fine. He knew where Josh was. There was no reason for David to check the headlines.

There was also no point in calling the office in the middle of the night. Knowing his secretary, she'd already answered all the calls and made whatever decisions needed to be made. He decided to check his e-mail instead.

Thank God for the Internet, he thought. The entire country could be in total disarray because of this NFI plague, but nothing slowed the Internet. Grabbing a cup of coffee, David settled into a chair in front of the computer, hoping that the doctors and nurses were done with him for a while.

He had over four hundred e-mail messages.

Browsing through the list, he deleted a ton of spam. Despite the company security filters, junk e-mail still managed to get through. Of course, some important e-mail — like family news or forwards from his daughters — never got to him.

As he started thinning out the list, David started seeing the notices.

Death in the family. Death in the family. Death in the family.

One of their sales people in Arizona was going to be out next week because of a brother's funeral. Another similar notice sent out from the Washington, D.C., office where the fiancée of a sales rep there had passed away. Two more like it. None of the e-mails mentioned the cause of death.

What Josh had told him as he'd left the boat flashed in his mind. Philip had strep. He picked up the phone next to the computer and dialed his wife's cell phone. Sally answered right away.

"Is Josh sleeping?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? He's wide-awake."

"Can I talk to him, honey?"

"Is everything okay?" she asked, sounding worried. "Do they have any of the results back?"

"Everything is fine. I just need to ask him something."

David looked at the e-mails again. He jotted down the names of the four sales reps who'd lost a family member. He read each e-mail again to make sure he'd written down the names of the deceased, in case they had a different last name.

"Hi, Dad," Josh said from the other end. "Everything okay?"

"Everything is great. How are you holding up?" David opened a new browser.

"This is easy. Hospital room, watching TV with Mom. I'm a pro at this."

"I have a question for you, Josh." He Googled Lenny Guest's name.

"What is it?"

"Did you ever use the Strep-Tester I gave you on the boat?" David asked. His heart climbed into his throat as he read the screen. Lenny was one of the victims of the NFI outbreak.

"No, I didn't," Josh said. "By the time I got back to the cabin, the tester was all dirty, and I thought it'd be worse if I…"

"It's okay that you didn't use it," David said quickly. The answer to his next search on Leo Bolender made him break out in a sweat. There was something terribly wrong here.

"What's wrong, Dad? You sound upset."

"No, I'm not," he lied. "What did you do with it?"

"I threw it in the trash in the cabin."

"Good."

The other two names on the e-mails didn't show up as NFI victims, but after doing a couple more searches, David realized not all of the victims' names had been released yet. Most of the outbreaks had occurred over this past weekend. There hadn't been enough time to notify some of the families.

"Remember when you were leaving the boat, you told me something about Philip having strep. How did you know?"

"When I went down to get the camera, I realized I still had the Strep-Tester in my pocket. It was ruined, so I threw it away. That's when I saw Philip's tester."

"But you didn't touch that one, did you?"

"Of course not."

"Good boy. What did you see?"

"The Strep-Tester he must have used was in the trash. It had turned blue. I knew that meant he had strep. Didn't you say that's what the blue meant?"

David slumped back in his chair and gazed at the monitor. He'd brought up the online ad for the Strep-Tester. He stared at the screen, watching numbly as the pink circle turned blue.

"Yes, Josh. It turned blue because he had strep."