California’s ongoing plague problems are how I know for certain that the pandemic was manmade. Supposedly, Texas was hit by a form of bubonic plague that mowed down the population like a wheat thresher. It spread too fast for anything but a droplet-based transmission—person-to-person by way of sneezing or coughing—and it was resistant to all known antibiotics. Welcome to fourteenth-century Europe, where the Black Death was everybody’s least-favorite neighbor. Only that’s not possible, because that’s not how bubonic plague works. Bubonic plague is carried by rat fleas, transmitted by rat fleas, and spreads slowly, since rat fleas are notoriously unreliable about when they bite you. Pneumonic plague is droplet-based, but that’s not what killed Texas. Bubonic plague that wasn’t bubonic plague killed Texas, and that means it wasn’t bubonic plague at all. It was something somebody built in a lab, and I’m sure its creator won the Terrorist Science Fair before letting it out of the vial.
The Texas plague killed horses, cattle, goats, and most dogs, by the way. Texas may be the last place in this country where it’s safe to sleep outside without fear of your neighbor’s abandoned Rottweiler. Thanks, Texas plague. Thanks a lot.
As the only veterinarian in Pumpkin Junction, California, my practice covered basically anything that people wanted to bring me. Mercy Neely, Swiss Army veterinarian. If someone had a sick cat, dog, or other standard pet, I was their girl. If they had a horse that needed gelding, a cow that needed a checkup, or a flock of sheep that needed their shots, that was also me. I did parrots, reptiles, and anything else animal-like that happened to need medical attention. I examined an African praying mantis once; I extracted a mousetrap from the stomach of an escaped boa constrictor; I euthanized an emu with a broken leg. My practice was boring more often than it was interesting, but it was always vital. I was the only game in town.
I guess I technically still would be, if I’d stayed.
I’d been out at the O’Shea place the Sunday before the pandemic started, giving the goats their yearly exam. With thirty of the things in the flock, it was easier for me to go to them. The barn was hopping with fleas, and I must’ve been bitten a good thirty times before I finished for the day. Three days later, I got sick. You can’t be a California vet and not know what’s endemic to the population; I know bubonic plague when I see it. I diagnosed myself, gave myself an illegal prescription for tetracycline, doped myself to the gills, and went to bed. Not, sadly, before hanging a sign with a cute little hand-drawn rat on my door. “Doc’s got the PLAGUE!”
I even slept through the quake that leveled half the damn state. Remember, kids, vets get the good tranquilizers.
I like to think that there were other survivors in my home town. The pathogens that hit California seem to have caught and killed almost instantly, and I went to bed for six days starting two days before the pandemic came out to play. I like to think that some people made it through the sickness, saw the sign on my door, and decided that there was no point in checking. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, but I would see them again when I got to Grants Pass.
Most of all, I like to think that I was exposed along with everybody else. I didn’t miss infection because I was locked in my little room over the office; I missed infection because I had a natural immunity. In a healthy population, naturally immune parents tend to have naturally immune children. Maybe Dan didn’t make it through, but if I was naturally immune, there’s a chance that Linda was, too. There’s a chance that she’ll be waiting for me at the end of this road.
Wishful thinking, but hell. Everybody’s allowed a little wishful thinking after they’ve survived the end of the world.
The dogs roved ahead of me as we walked through the dimly lit store, never ranging more than about ten feet away. It wasn’t just because they felt the need to protect me, although that was a part of it; the last six people we’d seen had been armed, and had taken shots at my little pack before I had time to tell them not to. When I left Pumpkin Junction, I had six dogs in my personal escort. They’d been picked off one by one, and the three I had left were the ones who’d figured out that hiding behind the human was the best way to survive.
Brewster was the most timid of the three, despite also being the largest. He looked back at me, buffing uncertainly. “It’s okay, Brewster,” I said, in a soothing tone. I was only half-paying attention to his unease. My eyes were too busy crawling over the shelves, noting the things we needed, the things we could use, and comparing them to the wagon’s carrying capacity. If I hitched Midnight alongside the Tweedles and walked for a while, we could manage another few hundred pounds of kibble; that would probably get us all the way to Sacramento, where we could—
A gun hammer was cocked behind me. A very small sound, but one that had come to hold a great deal of importance in my life over the past year. It was the sound of someone who might decide that my surviving the pandemic was just a fluke that needed to be corrected.
I stopped in my tracks, raising my hands to shoulder-height. Brewster hunched his massive head down, a growl rumbling from the bottom of his throat. I could hear the other two dogs moving up ahead, still uncertain and unwilling to approach the stranger. “I’m sorry,” I said, voice calm and level. Never be the first to show panic. Never let them think that you might be an easy target. “I didn’t know this store was yours. If you’ll just let me gather up my animals, I’ll be on my way.” Please, I prayed silently, please let me gather up my animals. I lost two goats to a man who saw them as fresh meat on the hoof; I lost my second riding horse to a man who fancied himself the Lone Ranger and decided that an old gray mare would do just fine as Silver. I’m sure one of her legs was broken before I’d even made it out of the valley that he took her from me in. The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be.
“Turn around, miss. Real slow, no sudden movements.”
Male; middle-aged, probably one of the white-collar workers who’d packed this sort of business park before the pandemic; artificially polite, which was a natural development under the circumstances. Even when you were the one holding the gun, it paid to be polite. Next time, the gun might belong to someone else. I turned as I’d been instructed, not dropping my hands or making any effort to avoid meeting his eyes. Confident without being challenging, that was the goal. Once you’ve stared down a bull that smells cows in estrus, you can handle anything humanity has left to throw at you.
The man behind me looked almost exactly like I would have expected, even down to the stained, slightly tattered white dress shirt. Even a year after the disaster, people still dressed like they expected the old world to be called back to order any second. The poor bastards. They’d been domesticated, and they didn’t even know it.
“Those your dogs?” he demanded. The skin of his left cheek jumped and fluttered in a nervous tic, making it look like he might jitter apart at any moment.
“Yes,” I said, not lowering my hands. “They’re also my horses, my goats, and, if you’ve been inside the wagon already, my birds. They’re well-fed and not a threat to you.”
The pistol he had angled towards my chest wavered, almost perfectly in time with the tic on his cheek. “Are you some sort of farmer?”
“No. I’m a veterinarian.”
Shock and relief chased each other across his face for a moment before he lowered his gun, saying, “Miss, I’m going to need you to come with me.” He hesitated, finally adding, more quietly, “Please.”