The Flu 1/2 by Jacqueline Druga Page A

absolutely hated it. And despite the fact that he knew, rain or shine, what day of the week it fell on, Bill always forgot.
    He could have let that one lone bag of garbage go. It could sit outside in the can until the following week’s pick up, but he was neurotic about it, and he was awake. Actually, being awake wasn’t a choice for Bill. He slipped into a violent coughing spell that woke him. No position—sitting, on his side, back, stomach—nothing stopped the cough. His stomach hurt from trying to break it up. Nothing was helping, and, feeling too poorly to just lay there, Bill got out of bed.
    He greased himself down with VapoRub hoping that would break through the mucus factory that was thriving in his head and chest, but it didn’t. The cough medicine didn’t relieve him either. Whatever Bill had was kicking his ass, and he couldn’t recall ever feeling so badly.
    There was a certain amount of dread that went along with the thought of going outside. Thinking that he didn’t want to take his chilled body outside into the cold, Bill doubted that he had the energy to accomplish the task, but he tried.
    As soon as he stepped out the back door, a wave of dizziness hit him. Attributing it to the change of temperature and his poor equilibrium, Bill trudged on. Halfway through the twenty-foot journey, like a car running out of gas, Bill lost all energy.
    What had happened? He barely could move. The small yard looked like a field to him. Everything felt slanted, like a bad amusement park ride. And each step he took caused everything around him to spin more.
    The closer the cans came into focus, the longer it felt it took him to arrive, but he did. Why he bothered he didn’t know. Bill knew, to hell with the garbage can, that as soon as he found something to grip onto and catch his breath, he was going to turn right back around, head into the house, and collapse.
    Bill never made it.
    Hands reaching for the plastic of the trash container, everything went blurry then black. His trembling hands missed right as a wave of panic swept over him, and then Bill fell face forward into the cans.
     
    * * *
     
    Barrow, Alaska
     
    What hit Paul the hardest wasn’t the fact that the flu was in Barrow. He expected that, it was no surprise. What hit him hard were the numbers, numbers that would eventually be the groundwork in calculations made about the devastation of the flu. Was it perfect timing? One day earlier, one simple day earlier, and Winston would have walked out of Barrow giving them a clean slate. One day. How frightening that was to Paul. Twenty-four hours seemed so minuscule in the scope of time, but when dealing with something such as this flu, it was massive.
    It was a small town, but it was big enough to produce terrorizing statistics.
    Barrow, Alaska: Population 4,500.
    It was Wednesday when Paul stood with his team in Barrow. Three full days prior, the first person showed outward symptoms of the flu. An elderly lady, a health aide who used herbal cures, recalled one sick person on Sunday morning, and by the evening she had forty people seeking her help.
    Had the next morning not dawned with even more people sick, she wouldn’t have sought out conventional experts. But she did, because on Tuesday more were knocking on her door, and the ones she had treated earlier had begun to fail faster than she had ever witnessed.
    By Tuesday evening the number of flu victims was too large to ignore. Then Winston Research showed up.
    Numbers had been collected. People suffering, lying in their homes awaiting treatment, some gathered in the school, they were all counted. The flu was full-blown in Barrow, and at that instant in time, that Wednesday morning, reported illnesses had reached a number of twenty-seven hundred.
    It was far from over, far from running its course in Barrow, and Paul knew it, because he knew this particular version of the flu.
    Paul calculated and projected using the figures he had and his knowledge of the