A Flock of Ill Omens (2 page)

“So what should I do? I mean, the deputy said to get a flu shot...”

“No!”

That would go down on the short list of least comforting things Sid had ever heard. Her mellow brother was not inclined to overreact. “Why not?” She said it slowly, subconsciously trying to calm him.

He peered behind him, then got up and walked away. She heard his office door close. “I
just think they maybe rushed the latest vaccine. I'm not comfortable with the batch that's out there right now. I don't think it will do you any good. Tell your friends not to get it, either, at least for a few weeks, so they can make an assessment whether it's working.”

“Okay. So no flu shot. What
should
I do?” Sid asked.

“Get inland if you can. Stay
many
feet away from any dead birds. It will spread between species fast. You're young and healthy, so you should be okay, even if you get sick. So try not to panic.”

Right
. It was the first time in her memory that talking to her brother had made her feel worse, rather than better.

1.2. Nathan Drake:

Boulder, Colorado

Planning the Zombie Apocalypse

A zombie apocalypse? Seriously? Just shoot me now.

Nathan didn't say it out loud. These things were planned by committee and he'd piss off a good portion of his graduate cohort if he let them know he thought they were morons. And he didn't. Mostly. He liked more than half of them most of the time and all but two of them some of the time. And the disliked two were understandable. He dubbed them 'Miss Bossypants' and 'The Squeamish One'. Why Bethany Dunham had gone into Public Health when she didn't want to hear about unsavory life facts–like germs–was beyond him.

“So we have the computer simulation program to show how things should go forward based on the responses people have,” Nathan said. “But what will this look like on the ground?”

“Food dye,” Stig said. “To show where food and water have been contaminated. Kill more people that way.” Stig winked at Shana who wiped her face as if the wink were contagious.

“And the make-up, obviously,” Miss Bossypants said. Others knew her as Jenna. “So people know who the zombies are.”

“We need to give make-up to the undergrads so they can infect other people, too. They have to
look
like zombies if they
are
zombies,” Shana added.

“Though some people just get their brains eaten,” Stig said.

Several people nodded at that and they decided on ‘X’s on foreheads to denote death: red for dead humans, black for dead zombies. How the word spread through normal public health routes was also part of the test, so they would evaluate how well they could teach undergrads to kill zombies. Or 'die'. Evacuation routes and how many people the grad students managed to herd to 'safe zones' would be the primary outcome—whether there were enough to 'repopulate'.

The Zombie Apocalypse was a project of Nathan's PhD cohort to challenge teams of first year master's students for disaster preparedness. It was a rite of passage: people in their last year before orals set up a fun new challenge for people in their first year of a graduate degree in Public Health. Every class got to do both ends, provided they finished with a PhD.

“This is killing you, isn't it?” Shana Newsome leaned over to him, snickering.

“Little bit,” he whispered back.

“It's the same stuff, Nate. Let them make it fun for everybody else. We'll have better undergrad participation with this.”

That was probably true. Undergrads were zombie-crazy. “I just worry the grad students won't take it seriously.”

“You, my friend, need to lighten up. Come have a beer with Stig and me when we're done here.”

Nathan had mostly skipped social situations since his relationship with Gwen Siever had gone bad, but he liked Stig and Shana, so he agreed.

They went to Mountain Sun, because Shana was a beer snob, and ordered a pitcher of something amber. Shana hadn't let up on him about lightening up and Stig was laughing.

“Come on, Shana, gimme a break,” Nathan said.

“You know it's my mission in life to help fun-challenged people learn the error of their ways.” It was easier to take her teasing while she held onto his arm.

Nathan shook his head. Shana would always be Shana, and he was glad of that. He didn't have a full-on crush so much as he wished he was the kind of guy who
could
have a crush on her.

Stig took a large swig and then moved his glass aside, leaning into the table like he was about to share a giant secret. He had forearms the size of hams and they were covered in the same golden-red fur that covered his head and frequently his face. The man perpetually needed to shave and looked like an oversized elf unless he had a river shirt on denoting the joys of whitewater. Then he appeared to be the outdoorsman he was.

“So what about this flu? What if the Zombie Apocalypse turns out to be the real deal?”

Nathan had to bite back his first response–no such thing as reanimated dead. But Stig was right. The flu was a bigger deal to him, too. “With this flu, we really should have gone with the Black Plague.” He was only half kidding. A real life epidemic would be better practice.

“Oh, yeah! Those bird men were totally creepy!” Shana said.

Nathan laughed and shook his head. The medieval doctors with their strange masks were iconic in public health.

“Bring out your dead!” Stig called.

Nathan ignored Stig. “The plague doctors were invented later—symbolic of the plague, but not actually present.”

“Some say,” Shana countered. “Other historians disagree.” The two loved to debate and Nathan liked that she could hold her own.

“I'm not dead yet,” Stig said.

Shana snorted. “You would be if you'd seen those horror contraptions coming at you. Plague doctors, my ass! Increased the death toll, I say—scared people to death.”

Nathan had to agree. They were creepy.

“Seriously, though.” Stig's face was straight again, as if the interaction had never happened.

The reversal caused Shana to burst out laughing again. She was an easy target where laughter was concerned. “We'll be fine here,” Shana said. “Young, healthy population thousands of miles from a coast. Not even any humidity to carry the germs.”

While there was something Nathan loved about Shana's attitude, he wasn't so sure. He was doing a research rotation at Boulder Community Hospital. He didn't work directly with patients, but he heard stuff, and a lot of people had died from the flu already. Shana was right about the population, but they still seemed to have been hit hard. It was elderly and people with compromised immune systems who were dying, but he'd never seen a flu so bad. He figured his career would be better bolstered by studying that than the course of a Zombie Apocalypse.

When they broke into communities for executing the Zombie Apocalypse, Nathan signed up for 'command central'. It was where he saw himself in real life: keeping track of the big picture, coordinating resources. There was a lot to prepare, and because it was less trivial than some of the other tasks in this silly scenario, he managed to feel productive and even like it was good practice.

The event itself was a week away, so in the meantime, he decided to track the flu and all its elements: vaccines distributed, sick days claimed on work records, people checking into
the hospital, and of course, deaths. If he did it well, maybe he could use the material for one of the courses he was teaching. Nathan had access to hospital information through his research rotation and he figured out fairly quickly how to find employee records, which included recorded sick days. It wasn't representative of the whole Boulder population, but it was a good snapshot. The hospital was one of the larger employers, aside from the U.

The number of sick days surprised him. At first he decided he hadn't understood how many people were sick regularly, but a quick examination of monthly trends showed this was a huge jump from the month before, and more importantly, an even larger one from the same month a year earlier. The flu was hitting Boulder hard.

It was curious because the demographics were wrong. They should have fared better than other towns of the same size—certainly better than towns with older or poorer populations—but there was a national flu registry that showed that wasn't the case. Phoenix, with all its retired people, had fewer cases than Boulder. Even Denver was faring better, if he looked at percentages.

“Maybe we
should
be practicing the Black Plague,” Nathan said.

“What?” He'd convinced Shana to be on his team even though she'd really wanted to dress like a zombie.

“Look at these death rates.”

“Hey, you're the epidemiologist. I'm public policy.”

“Which means you have to be able to look at maps like this and decide what policies might help,” he teased. “What do you see?”

“College towns are bad for your health?”

“Right. And does that make sense to you? In any universe?”

“A zombie one.”

To prepare the master's students they'd been sharing the systems used to track epidemics in the past, so her misunderstanding was understandable. “But this is the flu.”

“It's real?” She moved closer and turned the screen to see better. “Only makes sense if they're spreading the virus in the beer. Or sexually.”

Nathan felt his jaw drop, not at her tongue in cheek suggestion of the how, but at the implication.

Shana didn’t catch it.  “What did I say? The beer is fine. We just had some.”

“You said, ‘
they're
spreading’.”

“You know what I mean. It's an expression,” she said.

“But look. This pattern fits human decision better than anything natural.”

“Okay, can we get through the Zombie Apocalypse first and worry about conspiracy theories later?”

He judged her response to be one of fright, more than denial, but she was right that they could get back to it. This wasn't going away. Still, Nathan didn't think it was possible not to continue to worry about it, but the reality was, the zombie exercise might prove to be good practice after all.

1.3. Sarah McGrath:

Portland, Oregon

The Payoff of Double Shifts

Sarah wondered if her feet would ever regain feeling. Sitting had been a really bad idea after her double shift—sixteen hours of nursing was about ten too many. Once her feet started to tingle, she knew she couldn't stand again. Not for days. Thankfully she had four of them off now. And she was home. If she needed him to, David could carry her up the stairs to bed. She loved the look of the old foursquare house they lived in, but there were days the stairs were too much.

For the time being, she'd eat his cooking and let him refill her wine as needed. And change the channel. Some televangelist was shouting about the end of the world.

“Do we need to watch this?” Sarah asked from her sprawled position on the recliner.

He was starting dinner and chuckled like it was a great treat. He patted the remote that sat on the island that divided the kitchen from their main living space; it was out of her reach. “The world's ending, babe. You don't want to miss it!”

“Babe? Isn't that a demotion?” She'd been working at her Montana-raised fiancé's political correctness for almost three years. He was learning, but sometimes these things crept in.

David came over and knelt in front of her. “Lover.
Ma bien aimée
. My chocolate éclair.”

“Stop! The éclair can't be beat! I will forever be your cream-filled, flaky goodness... wait. You did that on purpose.”

He grinned wickedly. “Exactly!” He stood and snapped a hand towel at himself—self flogging was a habit he'd picked up to forestall any lecture. “Besides, Brother Beau will grow on you.”

“Like a cancer?”

“Yes. A lot like a cancer. But like a cancer you like.” He pointed and winked.

Sarah sighed. She enjoyed David's quirky sense of humor too much to stifle it, but the man on TV was likely to give her a rash if she had to keep watching it. And David had left the remote on the counter, so there was nothing she could do about it except complain.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Sid saying she was coming home early—on her way now. Sarah suspected she and David had been a bit too exuberant and in love lately, with their engagement. Sid was probably worried about walking in on them cooking naked. It was a fair concern. They'd done it just two days ago. Grant, their fourth roommate, had had a couple of long shifts and spent eighty percent of his time at his boyfriend Ricky's anyway, so they'd taken advantage of the privacy. Grant claimed to only live with
them
because about two days a month Ricky kicked him out, saying he needed some alone-time. But Sarah knew she and Sid were his best friends. They had fun living together.

Sid's text had an image attached that looked like sand dollars on the beach—really cool, and not remotely a reason to come home from the beach a day early. So Sarah sent it to her computer, which sat on the end table beside her. She opened it up and checked more closely, realizing it was actually dead birds.

“Oh. That explains it.”

“Explains what?” David's mouth was full when he asked, so she turned the computer screen, but reprimanded him. “Swallow that before you come over here. That's disgusting.”

He came a few steps closer then wrinkled his nose. “Not before dinner.”

“Exactly!” They were talking about different things. David was referring to the image, and Sarah, as a nurse, could deal with gross images, but not bad manners. Or snacks before dinner. All their intentional miscommunication added to how much they laughed together. She wouldn't have traded it for anything.

The sky outside was gray and drizzling. It was normal for Oregon in November. And December. And January. Oregon was rainy nine months of the year, but in terms of averages, November was the worst of it. She hoped it wouldn't interfere too much with Sid's eighty-mile drive. The road through the coastal range was winding and rarely in great condition. Rain wouldn't help.

The bright, homey house should cheer her up after the ugliness at the beach. Sarah figured a couple of happily in love roommates was exactly what the doctor ordered, provided she reminded David to keep the PDA to a minimum. And the evangelist. The television was still blaring when Sid came in through the back door.

“…drawing near. It’s clear that the almighty is saying it’s time! The earthquakes that rock the heathen nations, the hurricanes that wash away the signs of greed. The time is upon us! Repent!”

Sarah tried to get up as Sid came through the door with her arms full. Sid shut the back door with her foot and could have used some help, but Sarah's feet prickled so badly when she set them on the floor that she couldn't make herself stand. David was still intent on the television as he tore lettuce into a bowl and was oblivious to Sid's need for help.

“What the heck are you watching?” Sid asked as she dropped her bags on the floor at the base of the stairs.

“Didn’t you hear? The world is ending!” David said, dancing a little as he talked.

Sarah rolled her eyes from her chair and finally heaved herself up, giving her feet a minute to adjust before taking a step to hug Sid.

“I saw this guy for the five minutes I had the TV on in Lincoln City,” Sid said, “but I thought it was just a small town cable limitation.”

“No. He’s everywhere.” Sarah’s tone was one of bored tolerance, but David was giggling.

“He’s a hoot. He’s gone viral.”

“Why?” Sid asked.

“He says the end of the world is coming…” David said, like that resolved the issue.

“Which happens about every six months—like that guy in Florida who spent all his money on billboards a couple years ago.” Sarah stuck a spoon in David's sauce.

He stopped watching the TV long enough to swat her hand. “Yes, but this guy needs everybody’s money to spread the word and people are actually sending it.”

“Why does this please you?” Sid asked.

“It’s like a train wreck. You should cover this.”

“I’ve been trying to avoid tabloids, thanks.”

“No, seriously.”

Sarah shook her head at David's determination to sell them on this story.

“I’ve got other stuff to deal with. That dead bird thing down in Lincoln City…”

“What dead…” David began.

“The picture I showed you,” Sarah interrupted. “Sid sent it.”

“That was Lincoln City? You saw that? In person?”

Sid nodded. “Yeah. Pretty creepy.”

“Why’d it happen? Didn’t look like a spill or anything.”

“Bird flu,” Sid said as Grant came in the front door.

“Welcome home,” he said giving Sid a huge kiss, then coming over to kiss Sarah and David. Sarah obliged and David frowned and avoided it when it was his turn.

They all knew the kisses were platonic. Grant had been in his committed relationship with his partner for more than four years. Longer than Sarah and David had been together, in fact.

“Good thing I already got my flu shot,” Grant said.

“Oh no! Jeff said not to,” Sid said.

“Why not?” Sarah said. She'd gotten an order at work to get the shot herself.

“He just thought they rushed it out—that this one won’t fight the bird thing,” Sid turned to Sarah and David, “so don’t bother.”

“Guess we’ll get another when they get it fixed,” Grant said.

Sarah knew why they’d been so on top of it. Grant had come to her as a brand new nurse nearly four years ago when he found out his new love interest was HIV positive. Compromised immune systems made people pretty eager to get early vaccinations. So did nursing, but she had a little time before they'd require the proof at work, so she would see if she learned anything new about it before then.

Sarah was physically exhausted, but her head still had a committee of trouble-makers shouting absurdities at her when she finally crawled into bed. She let her head fall heavily to her pillow, but knew sleep wouldn't come easily.

David came out of their bathroom shaking his back side and turning in circles. It was his nightly dance, a ritual of theirs. Usually she shouted commands, but tonight her laugh was half-hearted. He lifted the sheet at the end of the bed and kissed her toes, but still only got a smile.

“You okay?” he asked, giving up the play.

She loved him for his concern. She knew some men could be oblivious.

“I'm just worried. You don't think Jeff's warning about the shot was anything, do you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. When do you need yours?”

“They want it by my next shift. If I don't have it, they'll probably give me forty-eight hours.”

“So that's a week, right?” He put his arms around her as he crawled into bed next to her and Sarah rested her head on his shoulder.

“About.”

“Wait until they make you. We'll have better information then.”

She hugged him. “That's why I need you. Permission to procrastinate.”

“And for a little hanky-panky?” he asked.

She grinned. “Maybe a little panky, anyway…”