The Virus Read Online Free PDF Page A

Biblical
proportions, would deprive her of something she wanted. She picked
up the phone to call her father—she’d give him an earful and he’d
do something about all this—but before she could finish dialing the
numbers, a chilling realization presented itself. If the people
around her were somehow infected with a terrible disease, then she
was vulnerable as well.
    What if the hotel receptionists who
had handed her the card key to her room were infected? What if the
guys who had brought up her luggage were infected? What if the
hotel’s entire staff was infected? Suddenly, the rumored crisis
became very real to the spoiled socialite. In the process, she had
forgotten that she was still holding the phone receiver. She let it
fall from her hands, now. How could she know that it, too, wasn’t
infected? Panic welled up in her breast, and it didn’t matter that
she didn’t know what this possible infection was. It also didn’t
matter that she as yet hadn’t heard any real news at all about its
existence, or lack thereof. All that mattered was that she could
potentially be affected by it. Her blind panic mounting by the
second, she stripped off her clothes and rushed to the bathroom for
a hot, purging shower. She scrubbed the shower head, the water
dials, and most of the shower’s walls, with one of the new loofah
sponges that had been stocked in the bathroom. To watch her scour
things to a glistening shine as she was doing, one might not have
guessed that this young woman had never scrubbed a single thing in
her life.
    Then, she snatched up another brand
new loofah and commenced to showering. Once that was finished, she
threw on some fresh designer clothes and undergarments, rushed out
of the room and to one of the hotel’s elevators. Her intention was
to head straight for the reception desk and demand that someone
report to her room post haste to sanitize the entire place
immediately. The phone in her room had a specially dedicated line
to the reception’s desk for such things, but Delilah was loath to
touch anything in her room just now. In fact, she had rigged up a
series of gloves made from the new towels left in her room, which
she fastened to her wrists by strips of bath rags that she had torn
to pieces for the purpose. She left one bath cloth whole to hold to
her mouth as protection from possible airborne infection. She truly
looked a mess, all rigged up as she was, but right now, it didn’t
matter to her how she looked, which was another first.
    She hit the necessary buttons on the
elevator with her unsightly towel-gloved hands and soon descended
to the ground floor. She had nearly reached the desk, all but
hysterical by this time, when a new and terrifying thought gripped
her. If the hotel staff was indeed infected with this nameless
pandemic, wasn’t she putting herself at further risk by being in
such close proximity to them? And if that was the case, how could
she possibly expect them to sanitize her room, as they would
certainly bring the infection with them in the first place?
Everything was so confusing and Delilah began to fancy that it was
becoming more difficult to breath, what with all the pathogens
entering her lungs. She struggled to hold her breath, even beneath
the cloth, and of course, that didn’t work. She looked down at her
exposed arms. Certainly, the horrid disease was attacking her
unprotected flesh at that very moment!
    She screamed aloud from the crushing
frustration and everyone in the lobby, including the receptionist,
stared on, bewildered. She screamed again at the people to stop
staring at her and pounded on a nearby chair for
obedience.
    “Please calm down, Ma’am.” Advised the
receptionist. “What seems to be the problem?” Delilah looked at the
women in simultaneous fear and disgust. Part of her was looking for
signs of decay that she was sure would be the result of the
spreading disease. Much to her alarm she noticed that the whites of
the woman’s eyes were, indeed,