Last Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

lounge.
    Her name was ‘J. Cooke’, and I found a decent pair of sneakers in her locker. There were shoes in other lockers, some work shoes, but hers fit me. I thanked her.
    A back storage closet gave me not only a better flashlight, but a pillow and blanket.
    I didn’t need to go up to the rooms after all.
    I noted that the pool area had a hot tub, still filled with water not clouded over and I’d probably use that for clean up the next day. Who knew the next time I’d get to do that.
    I returned one more time to the kitchen for water and cereal, then I settled for the remainder of the day and night in the corner of the first floor lounge.
    A private set up, probably for parties, it had three couches and a set of ‘pull close’ doors for privacy. I gathered every little table lantern I could find. The tiny ones with a single wick, oil based that were used more for decoration. I got them from the lounge and two restaurants. Alone they were a mere flicker, but thirty of them together, lit the room.
    At least, that night, wouldn’t be spent in the dark. If I didn’t catch on fire.
    There were no windows in that corner, so I couldn’t see what was going on outside. That helped with me not being scared.
    Following my criminal behavior of breaking into the locked liquor cabinet under the bar, I settled for the night with my bottle of whiskey, MRE spaghetti, fruit ring cereal and Newsweek Magazine .
     

11. ERDS
     
    I’d rest easy that night knowing that neither the magazine nor paper made mention of the rising dead, cannibalistic creatures or rage monsters. They wouldn’t jump at me from a corner. Neither would crazed survivors.
    While I fell to what was probably more than likely an alcohol induced coma, the world had ended.
    The nice thing about journalism was the recap of news just in case someone missed it. Yeah, someone did.
    Me.
    The Newsweek had plenty of articles; the entire magazine was dedicated to it.
    ERDS.
    European Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
    It started in Europe in February. I didn’t know, nor paid attention, because my own world was ending. No one knew where it came from or what started it.
    One article suggested that Mother Nature just said, ‘Enough’. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about viruses to know what sounded right or wrong, I didn’t follow the story, obviously, so I had to rely on the magazine as if it were some sort of history book. My only source of education.
    In February, in the middle of cold and flu season, it began as a different strain. ‘H’ Something, ‘N’ Something. Those who fell victim died from complications. It showed no prejudice. The ill didn’t need to be old, young or have any serious health problems. To quote one of the doctors, interviewed, ‘If you get it, you die.’
    A one hundred percent kill rate.
    But the people weren’t getting it as easily as the ordinary flu. I think I read that in the beginning it was one in a thousand that caught the flu, caught that particular strain. Then it moved to one in a thousand people caught ERDS, whether they had a case of the flu or not, or even a shot. Then...
    One in five hundred.
    One in a hundred.
    By the middle of April, one in two.
    By the time the article was printed, Europe was done and the new flu, called ERDS, was spreading like wildfire.
    The early phase of communicability rate made it easy to cross continents.
    What started as a sniffle, cascaded to full blown pneumonia symptoms, and people choked and drowned on their own overproduction of phlegm. That was if the fever didn’t kill them.
    In was inhumane, people suffered at first for nearly a week. Then as healthcare facilities were unable to handle the ill, as medicine, antiviral, and fever reducer stockpiles plummeted, the ill weren’t getting their symptoms treated and the symptoms killed them faster.
    That was at the end. What I gathered from that last newspaper article.
    My city was done. Officials told families to place their dead out like