Patrick looked even more confused than Mick. “How do you know about this?”
“It’s what I do. I work on plagues and viruses. I monitor them in the world’s deadliest plague region. I watch for anything that can become pandemic. Because if something is going to start it will start in the region in which I work. But no one expected it to begin in some igloo-intensive community in Alaska, that’s for sure… but it did.” Lars took a breath and leaned against the table. “By the time it was discovered, it had crossed the boundaries into populated areas. It broke free. If you think this is the first time this flu has surfaced, think again. This is the fourth outbreak. Only difference is, all four previous outbreaks took place in very isolated locations and were contained and stopped.”
“So you know this flu well?” Mick asked.
“I should,” Lars answered. “Not only was I on site for the last two outbreaks, I… I had this flu. And if you’re curious as to why I didn’t die… I should have. I didn’t because I implemented a theory I came up with during my studies of the second outbreak. It’s that theory, it’s my survival, that brings all this here.”
After looking around the gym that increasingly became packed with equipment, Patrick had to question, “If your theory is so good, if your plan is so foolproof, why isn’t the rest of the world trying it?”
“It’s too late, too big,” Lars shrugged. “It’s very tricky, the plan. And it’s not a method easily executed, so don’t kid yourself. It’s not a matter of just giving an antiserum; there are steps. And it’s the steps that have to be taken that make it impossible to deliver it to large regions.”
“Hence Lodi,” Mick said. “Population thirty-five-forty.”
“Exactly,” Lars nodded. “The town is small enough to try it on. And the proper supplies can be brought in for a population this small. So we’re going to try it. The CDC wants to see if it will work. Not that it will make much of a difference for the rest of the world, but there’s hope for at least one town.”
“Lodi.” Mick breathed out. “What will you do?”
“As I said, there’s a protocol,” Lars explained. “First, every single person will be given a flu vaccine. This is a special vaccine, designed for various strains of swine flu, because that is what this flu is primarily based upon. This will shave the communicability rate from ninety-five percent down to seventy-five percent. Next, everyone must be informed about every detail about this flu, including symptoms and so forth. That is extremely vital. See, if you get it, in almost all cases, your blood turns to poison. Once that poison stars affecting your organs, there is no turning back. But… like with me, I was able to stop that poison. It can be stopped. Only,” Lars exhaled, “only if caught within five to ten hours of the first symptoms.”
Patrick smiled at the news. “So if the person gets to you early with the flu, you can save them.”
“From turning septic, yes, blasting them immediately with high doses of antibiotics,” Lars answered. “They still stand a risk of succumbing to the pneumonia. But it’s not as high as succumbing to septicemia.”
Raising a clenched fist in excitement, Patrick nodded. “I feel better already.”
“Don’t,” Lars stated. “That’s not a big time frame. The smaller you are the faster septicemia claims its victims. Mick, here, if he caught the flu, he could push the ten hours post first symptom. You, Patrick, better see me within seven. Seven hours is not a lot of time.”
Mick understood. “But, Lars, with this plan, he still has more of a chance than anyone else, right?”
“I’m hoping,” Lars responded. “That’s why I’m doing this. Right now Lodi doesn’t really see what this flu is doing. How can they? The biggest worry today was why did the video store close, yet thirty miles away in Cleveland a mother holds her child in her arms, and her worry is, what will she do the next day when her child dies?” Lars’ voice was laced with sadness. “I want to keep the video store worry going. I don’t want some mother in Lodi feeling what that mother in Cleveland is feeling. If I can stop it, I will.” Lars stood. “But we have to move fast on this, extremely fast. Finish setting up and hopefully tomorrow morning start injections. We have a window of opportunity, and I don’t want it to shut on us.”
Mick’s head shook slightly in confusion. “I don’t understand. What window?”
“Window meaning before it gets ahead of us,” Lars said. “I want to get prepared before the flu strikes here.”
“It has already,” Mick told him. “Mr. Carlson has—”
“No.” Lars stopped him. “Mr. Carlson has allergies. I checked him. There isn’t a single case of flu in Lodi.”
Patrick blinked in surprise. “Not a single case?”
“Nope. Why do you think we’re doing this? We’d pull in Seville and some other Medina towns, but they have the flu.”
Slowly Mick’s hand raised as he stared at Lars. “Are you telling me, four miles away they have the flu, but we don’t?” Lars nodded. “Is there any way of stopping us from getting it at all?”
“The flu has to run its course,” Lars explained. “It will lose potency, but it still has to die out.”
“But… is there any way to stop it from running its course through Lodi, sparing us?” Mick asked again.
Lars chuckled. “Mick, you’d have to keep anyone, and I mean anyone, from coming in. And short of putting up an iron wall around Lodi, there’s no way to do that.” His smile faded as Mick walked away. “Mick, where are you going?”
Mick turned around, walking backwards quickly as he spoke. “That flu is not getting in here, Lars. Not in Lodi. Because I’m putting up that iron wall.”
If Diggins’ Drugstore didn’t have apartments on top of it, it wouldn’t have been the highest point in town. It wasn’t that high, but it was high enough for Mick to see what he waited for.
Arms crossed, staring east, Mick listened for the sounds of it first. A familiar sound, faint and rolling in louder. And then he saw them. The sight reminded him so much of that first night at the funeral home for Sam’s viewing, the dancing lights. But this time they moved straight, right down the highway, four wide, hundreds deep. Mick watched them approach Lodi and spread out. East. West. North and South. A few would ride in to access the riverbanks.
A small town needed the protection only a strong iron fist could deliver. The call for help was made, and with a vengeance it arrived.
Mayor Connally waddled some as he walked, but it wasn’t a bad back or legs, his age, or his weight problem. He wrestled with his blue robe tying it to cover those smiley face boxers he wore as he made it down his steps.
Rudely awakened, Mayor Brad Connally called it. Finally asleep after dealing with his wife’s obsession over the news and paranoia over the virus, rest was welcome; he didn’t even mind that odd Hell’s Angels dream he had for some obscure reason. He did mind the single hard knock on his front door that stirred him, and the loud, deep resonating call of his name that snapped him awake.
“Mayor Connally?” Mick yelled out.