Read Online A Flock of Ill Omens by Hart Johnson - Free Book Online

sick people, other than Ricky.”
    It was a good point. And she didn't think Sid knew about Ricky's HIV, so it was even more true than Sid knew. But Sarah was still worried. “Ricky and Grant got the shot a couple days ago, right?”
    “Yes?”
    “What if the vaccine made Ricky sick?”
    Sid took a breath and turned to David. “What do you think?”
    David wiped his brow with a kitchen towel and Sarah saw he was pasty, with a trace of sweat on his brow. “My brother has a friend in the Navy who died last week—Jack posted the obituary today. The bug got their troop. Young, healthy guys.”
    “Oh, geez. I’m sorry,” Sid said
    Sarah stared at David. He hadn't told her this until now.
    “I haven’t talked to Jack or asked about shots. But those guys always get their shots first. The military can’t afford the risk with the close quarters they keep.”
    “Look,” Sid said. “If the vaccine isn’t working, like Jeff said, and if they got hit with exposure they weren’t protected, but that’s a fluke, right?” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself and Sarah knew it.
    “I’m waiting,” Sarah said.
    “For what?”
    “If Grant is still fine on Thursday—last day before there are repercussions—I’ll get my damn shot. But I’m not willing to do it before then.”
    Sid nodded. “Okay. Good compromise. Do you want me to try Jeff again and see if he knows any more?”
    “Would you?”
    “I will. Tomorrow. It’s after eleven there now, and if this is as huge an epidemic as it seems, he probably needs his sleep when he can get it.”
     
    Sarah heard Sid try to call Jeff several times the next morning. David was at work and Sid's open laptop sat on the counter, a sad reminder that she hadn't been able to get through. Sarah sat in front of it, knowing Sid wouldn't mind, and opened her browser window. She wondered what other things Sid had been digging up. If she was pursuing this, there had to be something. She found a strange assortment of sites and Sarah remembered Sid talking about falling down rabbit holes when she researched for an article. That must have happened here. Sarah opened the most recently viewed page.
    It was a map. Sid was a map junkie, as far as Sarah was concerned—very into patterns and trends. She liked aggregated information, where Sarah liked the personal stories. This was a map of the United States in a rainbow of shades—the kind that normally glazed Sarah's eyes over—but this one took her breath away. It was flu deaths per thousand.
    It shocked her for two reasons. First, the numbers were a lot higher than she'd guessed or heard. Not that they were huge, but in many places, almost 1% of the population had died from it already. Even more in a few. From Portland half a percent had. That didn't sound like much but she worked in health care and had had to study prevalence. In a metropolitan area with a million people that was five thousand. A lot. Percentage-wise, about the same as Astoria where Sid said they'd had forty deaths.
    And as flu seasons went, this was still early in the progression. Some of the southern cities had been hit worse—Los Angeles, San Francisco. A lot of California had been hit hard. Washington State also had. Both were a little worse than Oregon, though Oregon was bad enough. All of that made sense to her. If this were an Asian bird flu of some sort, the West Coast was made up of the states closest to Asia, though California, with its better weather, might not be expected to get it as badly as the states farther north.
    The thing that really struck Sarah was that the east coast had also been hit—New York, Massachusetts. Boston had lost a lot of people—nearly 20,000 people.
    Why would the states furthest from Asia be hit even harder than they were? It didn't make any sense. DC appeared to have been devastated—almost 4% had died.
    Sid ran in and looked at the clock. “Jeff never called me back. And when I tried Grant to see if I could