by Hart Johnson
He called Shana because it didn't make any sense.
“I don't know. Ariel Hutchins called and said she had a kid with a sprained ankle caused by running from the zombies and at the hospital they couldn't get in because so many nurses were dead.”
When Nathan pressed ‘end’ on his phone he decided that deserved a few answers from the information desk. It was past visiting hours, so the man at the desk had time to talk to him. Nathan explained who he was and why he was there.
“Uh, no. I haven't heard anything about a Zombie Apocalypse.” The young man leaned forward to whisper. “Sadly, I do know something about dead nurses. We're dangerously low on critical staff. We've put in requests to Denver and Colorado Springs, but they're having similar problems—sick staff and increased demand.”
“So this is the flu?
“I'm afraid so.”
Nathan made an executive decision at that point. The Zombie Apocalypse had to be called off. Doing anything that increased social interaction at this point was a bad idea.
He went back to the lab and broke the news to Shana.
1.10. Sidney Knight:
Portland, Oregon
When We Lose
Sidney spent the afternoon and evening researching the spread of the flu in more detail. She wanted to figure out where the flu was ordinary flu and where it was the bird flu—a more dangerous mutation of the original. But nobody seemed to be tracking that. The CDC website had stopped updating information, best she could tell, so she turned to the Dartmouth Atlas, one of the more reliable sources for stats. Death reports had quadrupled in only a few days and they'd made a set of projections that took her breath away. Most major US cities would lose between ten and twenty percent of their population, but the ones that had been hit hardest initially, without a huge intervention, were projected to lose up to two-thirds.
As she read, she stumbled upon another strange trend. A hospital in Maryland had had to shut down already for lack of providers—doctors, nurses—it seemed everyone had gone out ill and a number had died. The explanation in the Washington Post was a particularly virulent patient who'd had his stomach opened for surgery and some noxious gas had been released, infecting a number of people before they even knew it was there.
Sid wasn't sure she believed it. It sounded like classic spin. Especially when she ran across a similar pattern in Madison, Wisconsin and Ann Arbor, Michigan, within spitting distance of her parents' house in Toledo. There was no attribution there except the epidemic. It seemed to be spreading out of control in some very specific places. Some of the places she didn't know well, but when she saw Boulder a conspiracy theory began to nag at her and she wondered who'd want to destroy college towns.
“Is this terrorism?” Sidney muttered out loud.
“Is what terrorism?” Sarah asked behind her.
Sidney'd thought she was alone.
“The medical staff at all these university hospitals—epidemics. You know your fear? About nurses and being forced to get the shot? Looks like a legitimate concern, at least at a bunch of teaching hospitals.”
Sarah was a lot less shocked than Sid expected. “Makes sense,” she said. “Military. Hospitals. Talk about the best way to make us vulnerable.”
Sid's chest tightened. “I'm not a good enough reporter for this. It's too big. I'm too green.” Every bit of it overwhelmed her, but she didn't know who to turn to.
“You want to report it?” Sarah's panicked expression was almost comical.
“I have reported it. I sent an article to the Oregonian about the strange lack of real investigation about how this got so out of hand and the evidence the vaccine was making it worse. That's what I do. If anybody took me seriously, I might have saved lives by reporting it. Though come to think of it, they paid me, but I never saw the proofs on that. I wonder if it actually printed.”
Sarah shook her head, uninterested in the logistics of publishing news articles. “If it's terrorists, it's dangerous. I mean, I get what you're saying, but why you? Can't CNN do this? I want you to be safe.”
“What if nobody else is looking?”
“This is huge—somebody's looking. They have to be.”
Somehow, Sid doubted it. It wasn't on the news. Nobody seemed to be linking the pieces together, even the little ones she'd put together. Either nobody was looking, or somebody was suppressing the media. That idea chilled her, largely because it was no longer a world of a few radio or TV stations and newspapers. Suppressing the internet had to be done on a huge scale—that was a lot of power.
“I have to go to Atlanta tomorrow.” Sidney worried Sarah would be upset at being abandoned, especially with Grant sick now, too, but Sarah gave Sid her own shock.
“David and I are pretending we have a death in the family. We're going to Missoula for at least a week. It will delay my need for a shot without getting me fired.”
Sid felt a weight slide off of her. David's family was in Missoula. “Good thinking—nice save, even.”
“They're mad at work—we're short-staffed—people out sick. But it's not like they can ask you to stay when your mother is dying—or mother-in-law, as the case may be. This trend hasn't hit Missoula, has it? It is a college town.”
Sid checked the few places that had seemed to have reliable information as Sarah stood waiting. “Not that I can tell. If this is terrorism, it might have been too small a target to make their list. The ones I've seen are really major universities.”
“I'll open a bottle of wine to pack with,” Sarah said.
“That's the best idea I've heard in a while.”
Sid got online to book her ticket, then joined Sarah and David in the kitchen to coordinate laundry schedules. That would be the trickiest piece of all three of them packing at once. The three of them drinking wine in the kitchen made Grant's absence feel like dense fog hovering over them. He was always the most outgoing of them.
“We'll check on him tomorrow before we go,” Sarah said.
Sid nodded, fighting back tears. It was a bad time to be leaving her friends.
When they arrived at Ricky's apartment the next morning, Sid had a hard time choking off the panic. The soup had never been retrieved from the landing.
“Mask!” she ordered, and Sarah handed her one, then put on her own. There were already tears in Sarah's eyes and Sid felt herself getting choked up, too, feeding off of Sarah's dread.
She pushed open the door. The place stunk of sweat and possibly urine. Grant was on the sofa, apparently passed out—unresponsive to their shouts. Sarah handed Sid surgical gloves and she put them on to check his pulse, but couldn't find one. Sarah moved her aside and managed.
“Shallow and racing, but there,” she said. She had a lot more experience finding pulses than Sidney did.
“Go find Ricky,” Sarah said as she headed to the kitchen, probably for a cloth to cool Grant down. Sid had been able to tell he was hot. She should have known that meant alive, but it was hard to think straight when she was this scared.
Ricky was sprawled on the bed, eyes wide open. He looked like he'd been gasping for breath at the end and when she felt for a pulse, he was cold. She doubted he could have gotten that cold unless he'd died the night before.
“He's dead,” Sid called to Sarah.
“Shit. Call 9-1-1, I guess. Grant needs a hospital and Ricky needs a morgue. They can't stay here, at any rate,” she said.
Sidney took off the gloves and pulled out her phone to call, for all the good it did. The dispatcher said there weren't any available units and she doubted the hospital had any room.
When Sid relayed that, Sarah swore, but then told Sid to wait. Sid guessed that meant she knew something to do to help, even if a hospital was more ideal. She shut Ricky's bedroom door and got a towel to shove under the crack. It probably didn't matter, but death germs were something she'd rather avoid. She then put on a new pair of gloves and sat next to Grant to hold his hand. She couldn't hold in her tears thinking the love of his life was lyin
g dead in the next room. So many dreams were gone.
If this was the damn vaccine she had to find out who was responsible. She owed that to Grant.
Sarah returned half an hour later with three bags of what was probably saline. She had a pump to control the speed and the tools to put in an IV.
“Find me something to hang these from,” she ordered.
Sid had to go in Ricky's room for it, but found a coat rack, cleared it of coats, and dragged it back out. It would do.
As she watched Sarah be so efficient it was hard to even remember the party animal she'd been at nineteen–the student who had nearly flunked out of the University of Oregon because it was just too overwhelming, so had transferred first to Lane Community College, then to Oregon Health and Sciences. She'd finished a year behind Sid, but Sid could see the skills she'd learned topped her own in a crisis any day.
Sarah put the IV in Grant's arm and started the drip, then ground some aspirin and soaked it in water that she put in his mouth with a dropper. She had Sid keep freshening the towel with cool water for his head.
“We aren't leaving today, are we?” Sid asked.
“I'm not. Grant and I were friends in grade school. He's my longest surviving friendship.”
Sid knew that. She'd met Grant through Sarah, but while Sarah went off to become a nurse, she and Grant had hung out in Eugene for three more years, building a friendship of their own. Nothing like life's oldest friend, though. Grant had had a rough childhood—a homophobic dad with a misconception he could make his son straight with enough discipline. She thought that was why he and Sarah never talked about the childhood years.
“I'm not going, either,” Sid said.
“You have to. You're flying.”
“I can delay it a day.”
“Well, I'd call and check on that.”
She knew it was true and she didn't really want to drive four thousand miles, so she called the airlines.
“Miss, there are a lot of cancellations. I can get you on later. But I need to warn you, they are talking about stopping air service. I don't know that I'd wait for tomorrow.”
“What is your latest flight out tonight?”
“Eleven twenty.”
“And you're sure it's going?”
“Yes, ma'am. Staff are already checked in at Minneapolis. They fly to Atlanta, here, then back the way they came.”
“Okay, book me on that.”
Sid would have liked another day, but she was as worried about Jeff as she was about Grant. Well, that wasn't completely true. She could see Grant was really sick, and Jeff might have been fine, but until she knew for sure, her imagination would wreak havoc. And with her renewed commitment to find out what all this was about, she felt the headquarters of the CDC might be just the place to find some answers. After all, Jeff had warned her about the shots a week ago. Somebody had to know something. And she certainly wasn't able to get access to them from here.
Sarah's measures weren't enough. Sid didn't think anything would have been enough, but Sarah took it hard, all the professionalism collapsing when Grant's heart stopped pumping. Sid had to call David to come down when it was over. Sarah blamed herself for not knowing more, while Sid blamed the hospital and ambulance system for not coming to get him. David reminded them there was more nefarious blame to go around.
“It's the vaccine. Somebody is killing people on purpose.”
Sid desperately wanted that not to be true, because you couldn't fight an enemy you couldn't see and she felt it placed the burden of figuring it out on her own shoulders, but at the same time, she could see it let Sarah breathe easier. They called again for the bodies to be picked up, but doubted anyone would come.
Were there really dead people stuck in apartments all over the city? It was starting to look like that had to be the case.
Sarah called Grant's mother, but sadly, had to leave a message.
Sid called Ricky's sister, who was devastated, but she said Ricky had been HIV positive for more than a decade. It confirmed Sid’s guess, though it had never been her business, so she hadn’t probed. It sounded like the sister had steeled herself to the idea of Ricky's death years ago, before the cocktail had changed HIV from a death sentence to a chronic condition.
At the house they tried to eat a pizza because it was easy, and Sarah and Sid drank a bottle of wine, toasting Grant and Ricky and crying a lot. Then David drove Sid to the airport. She made her flight after all.
1.11. Sarah McGrath:
In Transit
The Roundabout Path to Matrimony
Sarah cried through much of their packing and the waterworks only increased when David left to take Sid to the airport. By the time David got home, her bags were by the door and she'd crashed, but she kept finding her face wet all the way to Biggs the next day.
David reached for her as he pulled off the freeway. They'd stopped at this truck stop half a hundred times. “Sarah, honey? You want anything?”
“Diet soda.”
He made a face, but went in to pay for gas and get drinks. He said nurses knew better, and it was true. Diet soda was about the worst thing for her. But Missoula was a ten-hour drive from Portland, and she knew somewhere around Spokane she would finally convince David to let her drive. He hadn't slept any more than she had in the last few days, though he hadn't just lost his two best friends, one of them permanently, and who knew how long it would be before she saw the other?
“Do you think Sid's there yet?” Sarah asked as David climbed back in the Subaru and handed her the large fountain drink.
“She would have called if the plane didn't go, so I'm sure she was there before we even left home this morning.”
While it was true that she hadn't called, cell phone service had been hit-or-miss all day. Something was wacky with the towers. It was possible that was the case everywhere so she didn't really trust it as an indicator of Sid getting to Atlanta fine.
“Did it seem... normal in there?” Sarah asked, pointing back at the gas station.
“Little slow. Woulda been more normal the week after Christmas or something, when trucks are staying off the road.”
“That's it. Hardly any trucks. It's too quiet.”
“That's a good thing, right? They hold up traffic.”
He was trying to cheer her up and Sarah let him think he'd succeeded. There was no reason to have him any more worried about her than he already was.
One of the perks of highway 395 in Washington was it went through the middle of nowhere. Sarah spent the next hour regrouping, setting aside her sadness about Grant and her worry about Sid. She'd just walked away from her life in a lot of ways, but a nurse could always find work and David was right there next to her.
In the grand scheme of things, her probable firing didn't matter. They'd take care of family stuff and she'd land on her feet once she had the assurance she could skip getting the shot, or got proof a less dangerous one had arrived. Other than student loans, they didn't have any debt. And David's parents had a huge place and would never kick them out. She'd have to listen to the hints about marriage and grandbabies, but if that was the worst of it, she was lucky.
As 395 merged with I-90 there was an abrupt pickup traffic going both directions. It looked like college students and she wondered if the universities had let out or if students just wanted to be closer to their families with this illness going around. It was the kind of thing that made people reprioritize.
She'd been wrong about David letting her drive at Spokane, but mostly because she finally cried herself to sleep. She didn't wake up again until her ears started popping as they began climbing the Rockies into Montana.
“You mean I missed Idaho?” Sarah said.
“If you blinked, yes. You probably did.”
“How did it look?”
“Lakey.”
She swatted him. Northern Idaho was gorgeous with its myriad mountain lakes, but he knew that wasn't what she meant.
“Everything slowed back
to nearly nothing when we passed through Spokane. I think you were right about college students going home. Traffic reminds me of a heat wave or storm warning, where people have just been told to stay home. You wanna see if you can reach my mom? I told her a few days ago I was going to try to get you to come, but I haven't been able to get them since we decided.”
Sarah got out her phone but it had no reception bars. She normally would have blamed the mountains, but she wasn't sure that was the only problem. They'd just have to be a surprise when they arrived.
Donna, David's mom, was thrilled to see them, not least because David's dad had taken ill. David and Sarah were both relieved his parents hadn't gotten shots, though Donna pooh-poohed them when Sarah suggested the vaccine might be dangerous.
“You know I can't believe those conspiracy theories, honey. I just think our bodies get better at fighting if they have a little practice. Otherwise we would get the shots ourselves.”
It was Sarah's theory, too, or would have been, had she not worked the last few years as a nurse where getting the shot wasn't optional. She'd finally accepted that one of the things David loved about her was that she reminded him of his mom. That didn't have to be a bad thing.
Donna got them settled into David's old room—bunk beds. She knew it was a concession, letting them share a room at all, and it was less old-fashioned than her own parents, who would have separated them, but there was only so much hanky-panky that could happen from different beds. Engaged or not, nobody was treating them like they were married, at least not yet.
After Sarah washed up, she checked David's dad. He was fifty-two and normally in good health, so though his fever was high, it was likely he'd recover. She set Donna up with cold compresses and dissolved some aspirin in water for him to sip. Donna had mentioned he'd been unable to swallow pills, but he needed some help getting the fever down.