LITMIR.BIZ

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an older couple from Albany, were sitting directly in front of Jim Henderson on his flight to New York. They were on their way down to Florida to look for a new home for their retirement. They were sick of the harsh winters of northern New York State and, now they were both retired, it was time to prepare for their escape to the sun. The Browns’ close contact with Jim Henderson on the flight down to New York ensured they both became infected with the SDC virus.

      From New York, they flew to Fort Lauderdale and picked up their rental car on Monday afternoon. They had plenty of time to drive north to the hotel in Vero Beach they had booked as their base for their Florida house search. By Tuesday morning, when the Browns met their real estate agent, their infection had progressed to the point where the mild cold symptoms were making their appearance. The infection was now very contagious and most of the people whom they met in Vero Beach became infected.

      On Wednesday night, the Browns died in their hotel bed. Their bodies were not discovered until Thursday afternoon. The hotel manager had finally used his passkey to get into their room after the housekeeping staff got no response to their repeated knocks on the door.

      On Friday morning, ten SDC deaths were reported to the local health authorities. The news from New York and other large cities was the main item on radio and TV. As soon as the news of the deaths in Vero Beach was made public, a panicky attempt to flee from the area began, ensuring the contagion would be spread farther and faster than ever.

      On Friday night, nearly two hundred of the remaining residents died in their sleep. By the end of the day on Saturday, Vero Beach’s streets were deserted. Most people either had left town or were already dead. The only living people remaining in the town were family members of those who had died the previous night. Their devastating grief would not allow them to leave their loved ones without a proper burial. They also assumed they would be next. They preferred to die in their own beds, as opposed to going through the fruitless panic and stress of a doomed attempt to escape.

      Jane Wood, a forty-year-old kindergarten teacher, was one of these people. Her husband, John and her four-year-old daughter, Lizzie, had died on Friday night. She had discovered that John had died in his sleep when she woke up early on Saturday morning to find his body cold and lifeless in bed next to her. She was devastated when she ran to Lizzie’s bedroom, only to find her beloved child had met the same fate.

      Her call to the hospital had been finally answered after a long wait. The hospital had already been swamped with similar calls and more were coming in every minute. She was informed an ambulance would be dispatched as soon as one was available.

      It did not come and, as Jane listened to the extraordinary news on the local radio, she realized it never would. She decided to stay with her family until she joined them in heaven. After taking three sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet, she lay down in her bed with her husband on one side and little Lizzie on the other. She did not expect to awaken.

      The drugs put Jane into a deep, long sleep. She did not wake up until ten Sunday morning, after almost twenty hours of sleep. She was one of the few who were immune to the fatal consequences of SDC. It only took a few moments for her to remember the tragedy of the previous day. The lifeless bodies beside her brought her to quick consciousness and despair.

      She was going to have to face the rest of her life without John and Lizzie.

      Kenya: The Survivors

      Voi was a town of about twenty thousand people in the southeastern part of Kenya, about a hundred miles northwest of the Indian Ocean coast. It is located on both the main road and the mainline railway from the coastal town of Mombasa to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

      Simon Kanaku was the sixteen-year-old son of a town bus driver. He lived with his parents and four younger sisters in a small house on the outskirts of the town. He had recently left school to take a job as a kitchen helper in the local Voi Safari Lodge.

      He was sorry to leave his school and his friends but very proud to be earning his own living and making an important contribution to his struggling family. Most of his wages went directly to his mother, but she did allow him to keep a small amount of pocket money to spend on himself. His adult life was just beginning.

      SDC took some time to reach Voi. An engineering student at Manchester University in England had caught one of the last flights out of Heathrow Airport on Saturday, July 18, 2015. He was returning to his home in Nairobi for the summer vacation. He did not realize that, during his short stay in London, prior to the flight home, he had been infected with the deadly SDC virus. By the end of the nine-hour flight from Heathrow to Nairobi, he was just beginning to have the running nose and mild headache associated with the contagion.

      After his arrival in Nairobi late on Saturday night, he immediately went home. His family warmly welcomed him. Feeling tired from the flight and a bit out of sorts because of his cold like symptoms, he went to bed while trying not to think too much about the dreadful news from North America and Europe.

      He slept in late on Sunday and, after a happy meal with his family; he went out to see old friends whom he had not seen for about ten months. The renewal of old friendships was a very happy time and he hardly noticed his cold symptoms. He and his friends would have been horrified to know he had brought the now-much-discussed and feared SDC from England with him. In their happy partying, he was passing it on to them all.

      One of the unlucky friends who were infected was taking the bus early the next day to visit his family in Mombasa. He intended to take a stopover in Voi on Monday evening to visit some close friends who lived there. He arrived in Voi late in the afternoon and went directly to his friends’ house. After greetings and a hurried exchange of news, they decided to indulge themselves by going out to dinner at a new restaurant that had just opened in the Voi Safari Lodge.

      They spent a long time over their dinner, catching up with the latest news and gossip about their family and friends. They also discussed the SDC crisis at length. They felt relatively safe, because no deaths had been reported in Africa yet. They would not have felt so safe if they had realized the deadly SDC virus was with them at the table, multiplying inside their bodies as they ate and talked.

      Traces of the virus were left on their plates and cutlery when they finished their meal. As the table was cleared and taken into the kitchen for washing up, the virus was carried there also. As a result, Simon Kanaku, who was loading dirty dishes into the dishwasher that night, became infected with SDC as he worked his evening shift in the Voi Safari Lodge kitchen. When he went home at the end of his evening shift, he carried the virus with him and infected his own family.

      On Monday night, the Manchester University student who had brought the SDC virus to Nairobi died in his sleep. The doctor at the Nairobi hospital where his body was taken on Tuesday afternoon suspected the worst. He was not able to persuade his supervisor at the hospital to initiate a full emergency response and recommend a total quarantine. It would not have made much difference, because the contagion had already spread well beyond the Nairobi region.

      On Wednesday morning, more than twenty sleeping deaths were reported at the same hospital. As the news broke, panic spread in the town and then quickly across the whole country. At noon, the government declared a full state of emergency, with a ban on all travel.

      When Simon reported for work at the hotel that afternoon, he was told to return home; the hotel was closed until further notice due to the government’s emergency-measures proclamation. When he returned home, he found all his family and neighbors gathered around the radio. They were all worried about the news from Nairobi and the rest of the world. Most of them were suffering from cold symptoms and, although they had no idea how they might have been infected, they were now worried about their personal safety. When Simon went to bed, he had no idea he would be the only member of his family who would survive the night.

      In a pattern being repeated around the world, he woke late in an eerily quiet house. With mounting panic and despair, he discovered his parents and his sisters were all dead in their beds. He went next door to get help from his neighbors.

      Simon did not realize just how alone he really was. After three days, he was the only

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