30 May 2012
Hi Tom, I trust you're doing well. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the epidemic I wrote to you about earlier have escalated. I'm told similar cases are starting to show up at other remote places, at least that's what’s on the tube here. I'm a bit out of the loop, there's no mobile reception here and the internet is dial-up only, so yeah, you know. This is why I’m calling you from this landline, and I do realize I’m just speaking to your voice mail. Still, this is something that seems to be spreading fast and it needs to be documented right away. Make what you will of it and let me know your thoughts when you and I both get the chance. Sorry for filling up your tape.
So... It all began with headaches, mostly old people complaining living deep in forests or other non-civilized areas, if you’ll excuse my bluntness. While that might not be anything to react to really, it was a bit weird that these people, living far from each other, showed symptoms of a pretty serious flu without having any connection. My colleague and I traveled up here to see if there was anything to this, and if we could learn something.
Then people started dying. That was scary. I’ve seen dead people before but these have died in considerable pain. At first I thought this was a strand of a flu virus that hit the elderly hard, but then a teenager and a father of three fell victim to the disease and it was all over the local news. Maybe you saw the segment on TV, I think it went national? Anyway, that's when we started digging hard.
Brian Williams, my colleague, tracked down what we believe was the first victim, Ana Leibowitz, 67 years old. She lived in a cottage seven miles from town and was doing well, really well actually. Most people thought of her as a nice lady, she looked healthy they said, although when we autopsied her body it was in an almost chocking state of decay so we can't really verify anything about that. Anyway, the fact that she just recently had remodeled parts of her cottage, rewiring everything and putting in new windows corraborated the story. She just wasn't dying of old age and weakness anytime soon.
But she died, and Brian found the contractors. They weren't sick, well one of them had a dry cough but it was nothing really. There were two carpenters, locals both, and a plumber as well as the electrics guy who were both here on temporary jobs. None were ill, but the electrician was a bit weird. Like, new age weird, he'd just been in the Brasilian rain forest so we figured he'd brought back something, but none of the tests showed anything and besides, well, he wasn't sick at all. If he’d been he’d hardly been able to sort out all the wiring and the mess of cables and telephone poles and so on. Then again maybe it’s just me, you know how I am with electronics.
Sorry, I digress a bit, we’re all pretty shook up here.
So... Most of the victims didn't have kids, but we did look into the daycare situation. Nothing to report there, nor from the hospitals. The local postal office on the other hand, their employees suffered from a light flu, but it soon became clear that it was a different disease.
We were at a loss for a while, but then another death occurred that surprised us. A traveling salesman, selling bags for vacuum cleaners I believe, became sick and we got to follow the decline of his health, and watch as he died in front of us. It took less than three days, and at the end he was in horrible agony, head and joint pains that forced us to keep him on a maximum dose of morphine at all times. I’ll send the photos tomorrow, the case is well documented, obviously.
We managed to track his goings, and he had been to several of the victims in the past so that could be it. We're not sure where he got the disease, he was staying at a local hotel and did all his business from the lobby, not really fraternizing according to the staff. They are all scared now by the way, and we're running tests to see if anyone there have caught it, but so far we've found nothing and aside from the hypocondria that is common in these situations, I don't think we're going to see any symptoms.
The town is scared, people are on an edge and there's been talks of leaving as well as fistfights. Do you remember Dan, my boss? He wants to know if we should quarantine this region but I've told him no so far. The replies I've gotten from the labs tells me almost nothing. It is almost as if this virus or bacteria doesn't exist, but people are surely getting ill and I...
“Susan, you there?”
“Yes, so you’re home, good. I have recorded everything...”
“Nevermind that, I got your letter and followed up. It’s not a virus, it's a very small parasite that travels through the landline’s wiring for some reason, and they’re swarming right now.”
“What?”
“Hang up the phone immediately!”
CLICK.
"What the... Huh. My head hurts.”
Epidemic • Opuss № I