As Lars stepped back, a blank white light shone on the screen. And then, accompanied by gasps and moans, the first image appeared.
A man’s face was pictured, his skin grey, his lips cracked and blistered, covered with a dried brown sputum. His wide eyes stared into the camera lens.
“Ah,” Lars stated. “The man who spread the flu. Meet Inez Johnson, Eskimo. Dead. Pathology shows he was the first victim. Of course he had been dead in… Dead Horse…” Lars cleared his throat, “for some time before these photographs were made. Had the temperature not been below freezing, postmortem degeneration would have taken place. Aren’t we glad of that? Next.”
The click of the slide carousel accompanied more moans.
“This is the Johnson family.” Lars let out a heavy dramatic breath. “The children went fast. We believe prior to the mother, who was ill as well, when they passed on. Next.”
The next slide seemed to bring forth sounds of relief.
“This is Bill Daniels, reporter. You saw him on the news,” Lars informed. “He looks semi-well, a little pale from the pneumonia and so forth. As he told you, the flu is not deadly. Meet his cohort in Los Angeles… Trevor. Next slide.”
The sounds of disgust were loud as the picture of Trevor showed.
“Taken after Trevor’s death, this photo makes Trevor look as if he’s four hundred pounds. Actually, Trevor weighed about one sixty. A closed-off rectal muscle prohibited the internal bleeding from exiting his body properly, therefore it backed up. Not an uncommon occurrence. Notice the blood around his ears. Had it not seeped from the ear, or had Trevor not expelled the blood orally, he stood a chance of literally exploding. Next.”
Bodies. There was a mound of bodies in what looked like a field.
“This photo is awesome,” Lars explained. “Six hundred and thirty-five people died in one hour at an Anchorage hospital. What little staff they had could only wait and then they deal with the carnage. That photo was where our friend Bill Daniels began his journey. This is what Trevor took to LA.”
The picture changed, and no sounds emerged from the audience. There was no green on the Oakland Raiders football field, only brown and white, a blur of images that close up would have shown nothing more than lined up cots and the sick on blankets wherever they could find a spot.
“A recent picture. Taken yesterday, I believe. These people came to the stadium for help. There’s no one there anymore to give it. Most of them will die there. My guess, they’ll never move them. They’ll just burn down the stadium. There are a few more images. Bill, if you would?”
Patrick turned away from most of the remaining horrific images that flashed across the screen with a nod of Lars’ head. He opened one of his slightly closed eyes to peek at Mick who stood next to him.
The last picture stayed on the screen. A close up of a woman, eyes grey, her bloody mouth open, and her face frozen in a painful scream.
Utter silence. With the lingering of that last photograph not a sound was heard from the crowd. The chirping of the crickets was louder than sounds of breathing that emerged from the people.
Lars walked back to the microphone. “Well… that’s it. Mick? I believe they’re ready for you now.”
Reston, Virginia
“An official ‘shoot to kill’ order is in effect against anyone that crosses our lines. And make no bones about it. If they try to get in I will… shoot to kill.”
Too much heart and soul laced Chief Owens’ words for them not to be taken seriously, and Henry did, as he replayed what he heard Mick say in the raw footage played by the media.
Mick Owens spoke few words but said a lot. So much was conveyed in that broadcast that centered around the happenings in the small town of Lodi, Ohio. Henry knew what Mick was trying to get across. He was trying to tell his people that, yes, things will be tight. Yes, you’ll feel trapped, but you’ll be safe. And in doing so, he let them know that he’d personally see to it, if need be.
Henry saw another message in there, a message of warning. Perhaps the Chief of Police didn’t mean to get that across, but he did. A warning to anyone who even thought about sneaking in.
The news boasted Lodi as the “City of Hope”, a ‘flu-free’ zone in a world so sick. That was right before they ended the broadcast and the picture on the television turned to a fuzzy white.
Half a decade prior, no one would have thought twice about there being nothing being shown on television. But in a world of twenty-four hour entertainment, that snowy transmission on the set said more about the world than anyone realized.
Experts made appearances on the news, talking about rebuilding, restructuring. Henry had to wonder where they derived the title “expert”. In his lifetime, the world had truly flirted with extinction. And the lives lost to the flu barely tipped the scales over the lives lost to violence. In Hong Kong alone, mass hysteria caused the destruction of four residential blocks when the people themselves tried to burn out a reported case of the flu.
The behavior overseas was repeated everywhere. Property destruction, looting… Henry had to admit those sorts of things could be rebuilt. Burnt buildings torn down to make room for new. Bodies buried or burned.
But it wasn’t just one city, one country. It was the whole world. And the so-called experts failed to see one very important thing: You can rebuild a house, but could society be rebuilt as easily?
Henry guessed not.
Not with all that everyone overlooked.
Barring the deaths caused by the flu, there was an important factor that played significantly in starting civilization back up: The economy.
It crashed. There was none. It failed to keep going at all.
Stock markets closed everywhere. There wasn’t a business open. No purchases were being made. No exchange of money, no circulation of bills.
Nobody worked. If they did, they were jobs that were community-oriented, and there certainly was no way for those people to get paid.
No one wrote checks out to the utility companies. Aside from the postal service not delivering the payment, the clerks weren’t in the offices to accept the checks. They were home with the flu or in hiding for fear of it. Those who kept the power lines up and running, maybe they were there; maybe not. Henry guessed if they were still there, it wouldn’t be for long. People just weren’t chivalrous enough to hold volunteer jobs in order for someone to be able to turn on a light switch.