The departure of the Doctor got me back to reality. I had to banish the shade of death from my mind. What hit me the hardest was the fact that my daughter had gotten involved. After she had arrived into my life 27 years ago, more or less accidentally, I still found her to be my life’s greatest achievement as of yet. Sure, you can write books and build monuments, but you cannot create LIFE! Nothing else mattered to me more than her. Especially after my wife had passed away, my entire life had taken on a different twist, with my entire schedule being dragged on onto an unexplored path, so I had to make sure that my daughter got the best of it. I hoped that she would be strong enough to overcome the virus just as I had done, even at my 60 years of age, with her youth providing a good enough buffer for the disease to not flare up into the lethal territory. She had been a professional swimmer for almost 10 years when younger, so she was a pretty tough cookie, especially with the virus targeting the lungs and everything. This, of course, did not avail my uncertainties. Still I did not want it to show on my face. Yeey...all happy and smiles...Ok, too much, she’ll notice if you are cringing like an idiot, I slapped myself.

I proceeded to the kitchen, and then I began to scour the pantry, creating an inventory of all of the edible items already available. The Chief of Staff had already told me that the pandemic is going to hit our country as well, and that it is going to hit it hard, since our infrastructure was crap compared to the western countries. Food shortages would most certainly show up, especially with everybody being forced to stay cooped up inside of their own homes for extended periods of time. I agreed with the Chief, and knew in my heart that the next months would be a “war of attrition” between shoppers, that would raid and pillage all of the available supermarkets for non-perishables. I made a general calculation in my mind as to how much food we would need to have around in the pantry to survive with only the items inside for the next half of the year. I stayed up all night calculating water intake, water cooking needs, how much rice, flower or pasta, salt, sugar or cooking oil we would need, how well some of the more volatile stuff could be preserved by “canning” or “pickling” them into sauces, and how well would potatoes or onions hold over time, since they would begin to sprout “eyes” or “shoots” after a few months if left alone. Already canned goods might be a good investment, but I had to check which of the stuff would last, since most canned goods nowadays are not made with the “war philosophy” of having it last for a few years inside a warehouse. Money was not a problem, but having money when not enough supplies are available would be pointless, so I had to make haste with my purchases. I readied myself for some back ache, since I knew I would be hauling to the pantry quite a few dozens of Kilograms of goods in the near future.

I opened my mail, and saw Wu had messaged me again. Besides the usual “death by the hundreds” that was going on every day, his wife had also caught the virus, and was already in quarantine. She had the cough, and could barely breathe anymore. I told him that we were all in the same bucket, since the Chief of Staff had come by and had delivered our test results. I told him about Elias and his wife as well, but also pointed out to him that if an old fart like myself was able to beat the sickness, then other, healthier people should be able to overcome the problem much easier. I also told him that my daughter and my mother in law seemed to have the virus, but were not displaying any symptoms as of yet. He told me that not all of the people who get the virus develop symptoms, and that a large portion of the infected just shrug it off like it’s nothing, with barely a dripping nose to show for it. He said that the virus was more akin to a multiplier of already existing problems, rather than a threat in by itself. If you did not have pre-existing issues, then your body would fight off the infection much more rapidly and efficiently, since all of the “war resources” would be directed to combating this singular problem, instead of being stretched all over the chains of chronical problems that the victims usually had. I wished him and his family good luck, and that they may overcome this tribulation.

After that, I went and perused through the headlines of the foreign press. Life in Italy had become terrible, because the whole situation over there was following in the footsteps of China, and sometimes even surpassing it. The little macarony-munchers were dying by the hundreds each day as well. I had visited Italy quite a few times during my life, and I always thought to myself that even with all its splendor, today’s Italy is only a pale shadow of the mighty Empire that it used to be during the Roman conquests. With the exception of the northern region, the rest of the country was “below European standards” from an economical point of view. Italy, being the second country in the world with the most aged population after japan, was bearing the whole brunt of the virus, since the plague’s favorite “pray” seemed to be the weakened old folk.

The most “amusing” thing though, if you could call it that, was that the north of the country had been the most infected, even though it was the most economically developed. It showed that good transportation routes, airplane flights and airports or other means of transit were now working against the population, and had become veritable vectors of disease multiplication. Since Italy had slightly more contracts with China than the rest of the EU, the little yellow folk had probably brought along with them a few unknown “viral investments” besides the financial ones. For the little Italians, I foresaw hard times ahead.

Of course, the virus had hopped borders and had jumped to Spain and France. I was convinced that it was only a matter of waiting a few more days, and the world would become fully contaminated. This even reminded me of a plague simulator game app that I had played on my smartphone, where the purpose was to kill off the entire world, and how fast diseases tend to spread around in civilised countries. Nowadays, in a fully globalised world, there wasn't any viable way to live in isolation anymore. Still, some countries were going to be much better at handling this virus issue than others, because the treatment and care of the sick patients depended a lot on the quality of the healthcare infrastructure in said countries. For example, Germany had a lot more pulmonary respirators readily available than the rest of the world, for those that went into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It was also the reason that I knew that my country was going to be totally crap at treating anyone, because our healthcare system was barely standing up on its legs even before the killer virus came to burden it down.

Wu had told me that the new virus was related to the old S.A.R.S. and that a similar strand had been found in bats and pangolins. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an anteater-like critter with scales all over, which looks like it has escaped from a Pokemon game. It feeds on termites, and it’s the only mammal known with keratin plating. It also does not help that it’s considered a delicacy by the locals, being sold to the rich folk that could afford it, since it’s a critically endangered species. My general bet was that the virus had hopped species from the little Chinamen eating critters that they should have kept their mouths away from.

But blaming bats or pangolins for my family’s situation was pointless. I had to find some way to save my daughter, and if possible, even my mother-in-law. In the morning, I printed out a list of “stuff to buy” that I had made the previous evening, and then proceeded to the closest supermarket. People in my country did not seem to be affected by the virus situation as of yet, so there was no significant mass of people crowding the shelves. Our government was walking around blindly, and had no idea what it was doing. I hauled all of the stuff I wanted into an overfilled shopping cart, then I paid the teller. I had not found even ten percent of the stuff I wanted from the list. Therefore, I repeated “Operation Cart Overload” three more times, at three different supermarkets. I had filled the carts with only “basic” ingredients and preserved vegetables and canned meat.

After I drove back home, my daughter was looking unsure at me, seeing as I was hauling loads of stuff from the back of my trunk to the insides of the pantry. I had even been forced to put some of the larger stuff like the water bottles inside of the balcony.

-What in blue blazes happened to you, dad? Did the virus fry some of your circuits? What the hell is all of this stuff? I swear on Gandalf’s white beard, you and everyone at work has gone crazy, all that you think or talk about is the god damn virus. Did you also join the “end of the world” cult?

-Dear Daughter, I have no idea if the end is near, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. You’ll see how all of the stores are going to become barren in the next few weeks.

-What-eeever! Did you at least have the decency to buy something for the furry bastards as well? Or is the end of the world not scheduled to come for them?

-I bought enough cans for them to last for a whole friggin year! As long as they remain healthy, food won’t be an issue.

Around the evening time, my daughter had begun to cough. It was a dry cough, which had left her throat parched. By the next day, she had developed a fever, and was also getting the shivers, so I was standing beside her bed and changing the wet towels I was using to lower her fever. Big mama had caught on immediately what the issue was all about, since she was a retired medical staff. Luckily, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. The day after that, I called Mariah, our family doctor.

-God damnit Greek! Even my son, “The Zeppelin” as you call him, has the fever and the cough! I don’t know what to do with him, he’s been bedridden for three days now.

-Don’t worry about it. Even my daughter has come down with the same thing, and is currently in bed. I had the same bug and I got over it without any problem. It’s just some ordinary flu. Is why I called. Write me a prescription for what you think might be the best medicine for the situation. I’ll drop by later this evening by your place and pick it up.

-Sure, but come to my house, not at the office. I just got a notice today, banning me from going to work during this plague because I’m over 65 years old. I’m afraid for the health of my son. We’ll be waiting for you this evening.

-I’ll drop by, don’t worry.

What I was afraid of, had mostly happened. I had, willing or not, contaminated other people, and they were weighing down on my soul. I tried to count the number of people that I had come in contact with, and the number came up quite high. Besides the two that had already died, there was the Chief of Staff from the Tropical Disease Hospital and his guard and nurse, the ladies from the pharmacy, the clerks from all of the shops and supermarkets, and my family doctor. Any of them could have gotten the disease and passed it on further. As far as the Chief of Staff was concerned, I wasn’t that deeply concerned, since the dude knew what the risks were when he had signed up for the job of fighting unknown weird bacterias or viruses. But the others were innocent victims.

I was hoping that being in remission, I was much less likely to infect other people. I had taken care to wear a face mask and some leather gloves that made me look like an assassin everywhere I went, so I would not leave a trail of my diseased gunk on all the items I touched. I had even washed my “cash” stack of money with soap ,since they were made of plastic, which had elicited a hearty laugh out of my daughter, which saw me “laundering the profits” like a mobster. I was trying to detach myself inside of my mind from the people who were not close to me, because I was a little bit of a misanthrope. I now knew all of the theoretical data about this killer virus, and I had understood that the fight against it was going to take a long time.

Yet, when it came to Mariah and my former student, “The Zeppelin”, the feeling was different. I had known both of them for too long of a time, over twenty five years, so I could not ignore their suffering. I had been a very good friend with her now-departed husband, a very talented engineer that could fix anything you could toss at him. He had died twelve years ago, strangely, to a respiratory failure as well. His son and prodigal English student of mine, “The Zeppelin” as I like to call him due to his overflowing layers of blubber, was a general time waster and major nerd, a couch potato that spent all of his time on intellectual pursuits rather then moving his ass anywhere. But just like his old man, he was quite adept at tinkering with electronical stuff, and a major computer geek. He was my to-go man when it came to upgrading or installing new stuff on my computers, or whenever I wanted to purchase a new technological item. Since we had been close for many years, I was quite worried about his infection.

I left towards Mariah’s place. I took a cab, since it was much quicker to get from place to place using professionals, and I hated driving anyway. The traffic was a nightmare all over the capital city, so I favored the cab for jobs like these. Only my daughter was hogging my SUV. I also had a large combo van that I had purchased for vacations, but it was parked at the countryside, near my hillside mansion. The “chalet” I had built near the forest that I had inherited from my grandparents. I had come into the possession of the forest after the communist regime had died, and all the stuff they had confiscated had been given back to their rightful owners. The chalet was my “soul retreat”, where I went each summer to get away from the noise and pollution of the city. At the chalet, I could focus on writing my novels without anyone disturbing me, which worked wonders for my word count output rate. After half an hour in the cab, I arrived at Mariah’s place, where she opened the door to welcome me.

-Get inside, you Greek! And take your shoes off! Go wash your hands! And keep your face mask on. Do you want a glass of Martell? I know you like that stuff. I’m so fucking tired after listening to all of those idiots at the office blabbing on about their problems. Every hypochondriac suddenly has the virus, and knows better than the doctors how to treat himself. Of course, because he read it online. My son keeps on telling me to retire for years now, and I don’t know why the hell I do not listen to him anymore. I’ve been practicing medicine for forty years and I’ve never seen such a craze!

-Ok, sure, but how’s the Zeppelin doing?

-He’s in his room, as usual. He’s being a bed potato at this moment, and keeps whining that he’s missing his favorite anime.

-Can I go see him?

-Sure, suit yourself, but you know what to expect…

-Damnit lady, fuck the virus, let me see your son!

I stepped inside the Zeppelin’s Man-Cave, and I found him lying inertly in his huge-ass bed. For him, it was only a “regular” sized bed, if you were to ignore his 150 kilos of copious blubber.

-Greetings there, Hindenburg. What’s wrong with you? Did you get hit by the Monsoon and your ovaries caught a cold? You said you were stronger then the Gibraltar Rock, but I see you are as strong as a jellyfish bone. I had bigger expectations from you!

-Ah! Sensei! No fair! I got the plague from Mom, most certainly! I have not even left the house in the last three months, there’s no other way I could have contacted this shit except through her. I have no idea why she’s unphased. I’m burning up 39 C, and this cough is killing me! This is the work of the Illuminati for sure! They want to dispose of all of us from Anonymous! The aliens have helped them engineer the virus for sure!

-You’re still going on about that nonsense, you failed sumo wrestler? I thought you would come down to earth more once you got sick, but I see the disease had only aggravated your numbskullery. I’m afraid we might have to put you down soon, if you don’t recover. You’ve been obsessing over conspiracy theories and aliens ever since I’ve known you, outside of poking at tech gadgets. You have not grown up a bit!

-Yes, yes, it’s good that you’re mature enough for all of us, Greek. You’re too cynical for even a little bit of fantasy to pass you by. I have no idea why people still buy your crappy books!

In order to avoid a new clash of “ideologies” with the Zeppelin, I left to talk with Mariah in the living room. She wasn't looking to rosy herself either, but I attributed the whole thing to her work overload. She was doing a full round everyday at her office, and had to put up with a lot of stupid people every day. I admired her for her mental resilience. If I had been in her position, I would have probably gone Postal on their arses a long time ago. I stayed for another half an hour trading insides about treatment methods with Mariah, picked up my prescription, said my farewells and hot condolences to the Zeppelin, then went home. I had a tough night ahead of me.