Читать книгу Earth's New Beginning: The Sleeping Death Contagion - John Gleed - Страница 10

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 living person within fifty miles of Voi.