The Flu (A Novel of the Outbreak) Read online

  Chris stared at the screen, eyes glued, hands folded.

  Hearing Mick and his mother enter the room, Dustin turned around from his seat on the couch. “It spread,” his voice cracked. “Washington State, Nevada, Utah. They shut those states down. Know that plane that was quarantined in Cleveland?”

  Mick slowly nodded.

  “People are sick on there, Mick,” Dustin spoke with desperation. “It’s in Ohio. Are they gonna close us down, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Mick spoke slowly. “I don’t know what to tell you. Would you feel better if I went down to the station to see what the State Police have heard?”

  Hurriedly, Chris spun around. “I would.”

  “Me, too,” Dustin agreed.

  Mick looked at Dylan. “You?”

  “Yes,” Dylan answered in a whisper. “I would, too.”

  “I’ll be back.” Mick kissed Dylan softly then stepped away.

  “Mick?” She grabbed his hand. “Will you stay now? Will you stay tonight?”

  “Dylan...”

  “Mick. I’m scared.” Dylan’s eyes glanced at the television. “I’m scared of this.”

  “Sweetheart, I understand. But you have to understand...” Mick laid his hand on her cheek, “as much as I want to be your hero, I can’t protect you from this. Not this.” He glanced at the map on the television and his voice dropped to a barely-heard whisper. “I don’t think anyone can.”

  ABATED HOPE

  No matter how dark

  There is always a chance

  A guiding light

  May emerge

  A tunnel with an end

  A guidance

  An answer to a prayer

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lodi, Ohio

  September 2nd

  The cooking bacon hissed loudly as it sprayed grease at Mick when he turned away from the pan for a split second.

  “Oh, son of a bitch. Shit.” He turned off the burner, banged the pan onto the counter and shook his slightly-burned arm. “Goddamn electric stoves. I want my gas range.” Mick shut off the radio as he returned to the stove.

  A unison ‘Hey!’ came from Dustin, Chris, and Tigger, who sat at the kitchen table.

  “Oh, I get blistered and you don’t care. I shut off the radio and you yell. You don’t need to hear that.” Mick opened a cabinet and pulled out plates. “You need to eat.”

  Listening to Mick’s grumbling, Dustin played with the edge of his napkin as. “You’re gonna have to get used to the stove if you’re living here.”

  “I’m not living here.” Mick continued to put the breakfast food on plates.

  “You haven’t left,” Dustin said. “In a while…”

  “I know. I know,” Mick said.

  “So you don’t want to live here?” Dustin asked.

  “I do, but the upstanding moral side of me won’t allow it.” Mick flashed a quick grin and set two plates down and returned to the stove for the other two.

  “Why’d you wake us up so early?” Chris asked. “We don’t have school.”

  Tigger pouted. “I wanted to go to school. I was going to real school, too.”

  Chris looked up at Mick. “Didn’t you know we don’t have school?”

  Mick started to speak.

  Dustin answered, “Of course he knew we didn’t have school, you idiot. He’s the chief of police. If he knows Ohio is shut down, he knows we didn’t have school.” After shaking his head he looked at Mick who joined them at the table. “Did you?”

  Mick grumbled, “Yeah, I knew. But you can’t sleep all day. If I don’t feed you before I leave, you may not eat. So, eat. Now.” Just as Mick started to eat, he finally noticed Tigger. Tigger’s little nose barely reached the edge of the table. “Where’s your booster seat?”

  “I don’t want a booster seat. I’m not a baby.” Tigger started to adjust himself. “Look, I’ll just kneel.”

  “Don’t kneel,” Mick told him. “You’ll...” he cringed at the crash, “...fall. Christ.” He reached down and picked up Tigger. “You okay?’

  “Fine,” Tigger grumbled as he walked across the kitchen and picked up his booster.

  His mind seemingly far off, Dustin ran his fork through his eggs. “Mick, are you not letting us listen to the news because you don’t want us to know the truth?”

  Mick stared for a second. “Dustin, I don’t want you to listen to the news because we’re having a meal. We talk over a meal. And...I give you all the truth about it. I don’t hold anything back from you boys.”

  Dustin shrugged. “I guess.”

  “What do you mean, you guess?” Mick asked. “Didn’t you know Ohio was being shut down way before the whole town did? I tell you so you’re informed; not telling you isn’t gonna help. You just don’t need to start your day out by listening to the updated list of affected areas and horror tales of rioting.”

  “I don’t like the pictures of the rioting.” Chris shook his head. “Did you see it on the news? Did you see what happened in Cleveland? We could see the smoke, Mick. We could see the smoke from Diggins’ Drugstore roof.”

  “What the hell were you doing on the roof?” Mick snapped. “And...I know. I saw it, too.”

  “Is it gonna happen here?” Chris asked. “The rioting?”

  Dustin interjected, “What are you, a moron? That’s insulting to Mick. Of course it isn’t gonna happen here with Mick being the chief.” He looked at Mick. “Is it?”

  “No,” Mick said almost offended. “And Tigger, what the hell is taking you so long with that booster?”

  “It’s too heavy. I can’t lift it.”

  Mick stood up to retrieve it.

  “Mick,” Dustin said, “be honest, all right? Is another reason you don’t want us to know about the flu is because you don’t want us to put the truth together about Mom?”

  Seat under one arm, Tigger under the other, Mick seemed dumbfounded as he walked to the table. “What truth about your mother?”

  “Why she’s still in bed,” Dustin said.

  Adjusting Tigger and strapping him down, Mick responded, “Your mother is still in bed because she was up until four-thirty this morning watching the news and biting her nails to the point that they bled.”

  “She doesn’t have the flu?” Dustin asked.

  “No!”

  Chris spoke up, “We think she does. She thinks she does. Mick...she was coughing last night.”

  “Boys,” Mick looked at each of their faces before continuing. “She was coughing because she’s neurotic. She doesn’t have the flu. Just like she didn’t have the chicken pox for the tenth time. Just like she didn’t have the shingles, or the measles, or the yellow fever. You boys listen all the time. What are the first symptoms?”

  Dustin answered. “Coughing, sneezing, fever....”

  Mick snapped his finger. “That’s the one. Fever. Raging fever if I heard right. Your mom doesn’t have even a hint of a temperature.”

  “Are you sure?” Chris asked. “She has that thermometer in her mouth all the time.”

  “And it reads ninety-eight point six. Trust me.” Tired of the topic, Mick reached about the table, physically directing each of the boys’ forks to their food. “Eat. And can we please talk about something else aside from this flu?” He waited for a response. “Please?”

  The boys all nodded and bobbed their heads in a debatable response.

  “Good.” Mick tried to eat again. “Dustin. Talk about something. Anything, as long as it’s not the flu. You start the meal conversation.”

  “Okay.” Dustin thought for a second, his fork tapping his food as he did. “Got it.” He sat up. “When’s the military dropping off those respirator masks we’re supposed to be wearing when we’re out?”

  Looking up from his food that he thought he was going to enjoy, Mick raised his eyes and just stared at Dustin.

  * * *

  Reston, Virginia

  Somehow, in spite of the nightmare that he faced, in his wilde
st imagination, never did Henry ever expect his little office in Winston Research to be the country’s viral headquarters.

  It didn’t start out that way.

  The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had handled it until the director took ill two days earlier and forwarded all questions and data Kurt’s way until a replacement was found.

  Kurt ended up being the replacement, and Henry his only assistant.

  There were no large teams, no multitudes of people running about. Kurt and Henry did it all. They had the help of Joshua until he had to head back to New York because his wife had come down with the flu.

  The two men pulled day shifts together during high traffic times, off and on, short naps in between. They had become data collectors and trackers, and they were expected to be great predictors. They said they weren’t, but every one of Henry and Kurt’s predictions eerily held true. Henry claimed it wasn’t a great psychic ability, or an abundance of scientific knowledge that gave them the keen foresight as to what would happen. He merely believed it was the historians in them. It was a repeat of history and a long overdue purging of nature.

  The Winston Research office would be considered an archaic set up with no high-tech monitoring boards or abundance of computers. Henry and Kurt were overwhelmed that they were being so heavily relied upon. Requests bombarded them: ‘We need info on this’, ‘Can you send supplies out here’, ‘Can you get through to FEMA, this is important’. Their heads spun, but they both handled it as best as they could, truly believing that at any second the phone would ring and a voice on the end would inform them, “Thanks, gentlemen, good job, we’ll take over from here.”

  That phone call never came. They wanted to blame it on the breakdown of the phone systems in the western half of the country. But cellular phones were still operational so out went that theory.

  Any thoughts that Henry had that they’d be relieved of command were put to rest after he spoke to the President of the United States.

  Possibly it wasn’t the most appropriate response or the most professional, but Henry couldn’t help it when it slipped from his mouth.

  “Wow.”

  On top of a long table, crouching before a huge paper map of the United States, Kurt finished coloring in the rest of the state of Missouri. “Another news conference?” He capped his permanent black marker and hopped from the table.

  “Um, yeah. Last one I’m guessing. For him.” Henry squinted as he moved toward the map. “You finished Missouri. That’s not right.”

  “Yes, it is. Last unaffected town reported the flu.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep. Now, back to what you were saying...” Kurt pulled out a chair and sat down. “Last news conference?”

  “Yeah. He sounds bad,” Henry answered heavily as he too, took a seat. “He’s really sick.” Glancing back at their map, Henry shook his head at the mostly black left half. “You realize we’re hitting the mark.”

  “Yes I do,” Kurt nodded sadly. “Every country, every state in the union has reported and confirmed the flu. God, so fast. One day flu-free, the next…” he indicated the map.

  “Not really, if you think about it. This thing has been in circulation for two and a half weeks. The two reporters are the only ones that we know of that carried this thing out of Barrow.”

  “But this mark has a bright aspect, you have to agree. Three weeks this thing will have run its course. It’ll be done.”

  Henry flipped through the papers. “What experts we have left say LA is now at sixty percent. The first week, most of the people who are susceptible will get it. After that, it trickles on until it runs its course.”

  “How’s the life versus death figures holding up?”

  “Impressively well. I’m gonna predict sixty percent.”

  “Never thought I’d see the day when a sixty percent overall fatality rate is considered acceptable.”

  “It is when you’re dealing with ninety-five percent in bigger towns. Hopefully the rural areas will offset the high death rate when it’s all said and done.”

  Kurt sighed out, “If we bean counters are around to calculate.”

  “Someone has to be around to record this for the history books.”

  “You think that will be us?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Henry played with a pencil as he talked. “I don’t think I want to. I hope I can see this thing through. And if, God willing, my health holds up, I’ll stay until the last town and the last person has seen the last of this flu.”

  Swiveling his chair, Kurt looked at the map. He focused on the white that remained instead of the black areas filled in. “Maybe there’s still hope.”

  “Speaking of hope. You have to get a hold of Lars. It’s going in. Get him ready.”

  After a nod, Kurt stood up. “Do you think he’ll do this? Josh didn’t tell us if Lars said yes or no.”

  “No, Josh didn’t. But he did tell us about this Lars person. And from what I got from Josh, Lars will do it,” Henry said with certainty. “Because Lars Rayburn hasn’t just been waiting for this outbreak to occur. He’s been expecting it.”

  * * *

  Lodi, Ohio

  Lars was a relaxed, ‘go with the flow’ type of person, yet now he felt that every ounce of his reserve patience was gone.

  He didn’t leave his house, nor did he even go for his morning walk. He couldn’t. He had to wait. He could take his cell phone with him, but he didn’t want to chance losing the connection.

  It was funny to Lars. He never used that cell phone. He flat out didn’t believe in them. The only reason that he owned it was because the cute young woman behind the sales counter had an enticing smile. So, he paid his monthly bill, rarely charged the phone, and didn’t give out the number. He knew so little about that cell phone that not only did he have to look in his secret compartment of his wallet for the number to give to the WHO, he had to call the phone company to find out how to charge the battery.

  It was charged. And it wasn’t ringing. He’d set it up so that the phone would be the main link to the command center for the newest viral outbreak.

  How many times did he look at the phone to make sure it was on? How many times did he run a test of the ringer, positive that he hadn’t followed the directions correctly? He’d pick it up, put it down, pace, and head back to that phone.

  Even though he expected the call he still felt a jolt of surprise when it rang. “About goddamn time.” He pressed a button. “Hello?” The phone still rang. “Shit.” He tried another. “Hello?” Lars breathed out. “Yes. Who is this?” He nodded as he listened. “Where’s Dr. Lincoln?” Lars’ face dropped. “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, sir, what do you have to tell me?” Lars blinked in surprise then grabbed at a notepad. “I see.” He scribbled something down. “Yes. Yes. You have my word, I’ll do my best. Thank you.” He knew the call was over, yet it took a moment of staring at the tiny handheld device to figure out what button it was that he had to push to disconnect the call. After some fumbling around, Lars figured it out. He looked down at the notes he’d taken and focused on his handwriting and the other problem he had to figure out as well.

  * * *

  If each question asked of him were a step he took to the station, then Mick felt he walked a million miles. He wanted nothing more than to give the people of Lodi the answers they sought, but Mick told them what he knew, which wasn’t very much. And like he told the residents of Lodi, it wasn’t as if Mick was ill-informed, it was that nobody running it was really well-informed.

  That didn’t help.

  Mick preached calm. It worked...for two days before the Ohio border patrols were set up. The people of Lodi stayed calm, but that was short lived. It had been four days since the television bombarded them with news of the flu, and it only seemed to be getting worse every day. The station was swamped with phone calls and people stopped him on the street. Mick had to admit, as he approached the station, he was not surprised at the small group who gathered outs
ide.

  “Where’s your mask, Chief?” a male voice called from the crowd.

  “Oh. Um....” Mick reached into his back pocket and pulled out the small blue surgical mask. He held it up then stuck it back in his pocket. “Call me a gambler.” Reaching for the door, Mick stopped when the small crowd rushed him. “Hold it,” he said calmly. “Is there something all of you want?” He stared at them, every one of them wearing the masks the Army had dropped off not long before. Like diligent little soldiers they wore them.

  The same man spoke up. “We know you’re doing your job, Mick. But any word yet on when this order is lifted?”

  “Which one?” Mick asked. “I can’t keep track of the orders that have flown into the station from the US government in the last twenty-four hours. I can’t tell you about the recently instituted curfew and restraint orders, but it seems the standard border quarantines for states are three weeks.”

  “Why three weeks?” the man asked.

  “I know as much as you do, and the news says it takes about three weeks for an entire state to be flu free...now if you’ll excuse me, I....”

  “Mick,” a woman spoke up. “Come on. They shut everything down. We have to wear these masks. We can’t walk the streets unless we have them on. We’re prisoners.”

  “Prisoners?” Mick chuckled. “You’re standing here now, hardly prisoners. And Gina....” Mick rubbed his eyes, “think about why they have these rules, okay? I don’t like them any more than the rest of you, but they are for protection. Yours and mine. The less contact people have with each other, the less chance of this flu spreading about. This thing has to be serious and life-threatening if it’s shutting down the world. Minimal contact makes perfect sense. For example, if one of you has the flu, as close as you are all standing to each other, do you really think those little masks are gonna make a bit of difference?”