A Flock of Ill Omens by Hart Johnson

projections that took her breath away. Most major US cities would lose between ten and twenty percent of their population, but the ones that had been hit hardest initially, without a huge intervention, were projected to lose up to two-thirds.
    As she read, she stumbled upon another strange trend. A hospital in Maryland had had to shut down already for lack of providers—doctors, nurses—it seemed everyone had gone out ill and a number had died. The explanation in the Washington Post was a particularly virulent patient who'd had his stomach opened for surgery and some noxious gas had been released, infecting a number of people before they even knew it was there.
    Sid wasn't sure she believed it. It sounded like classic spin. Especially when she ran across a similar pattern in Madison, Wisconsin and Ann Arbor, Michigan, within spitting distance of her parents' house in Toledo. There was no attribution there except the epidemic. It seemed to be spreading out of control in some very specific places. Some of the places she didn't know well, but when she saw Boulder a conspiracy theory began to nag at her and she wondered who'd want to destroy college towns.
    “Is this terrorism?” Sidney muttered out loud.
    “Is what terrorism?” Sarah asked behind her.
    Sidney'd thought she was alone.
    “The medical staff at all these university hospitals—epidemics. You know your fear? About nurses and being forced to get the shot? Looks like a legitimate concern, at least at a bunch of teaching hospitals.”
    Sarah was a lot less shocked than Sid expected. “Makes sense,” she said. “Military. Hospitals. Talk about the best way to make us vulnerable.”
    Sid's chest tightened. “I'm not a good enough reporter for this. It's too big. I'm too green.” Every bit of it overwhelmed her, but she didn't know who to turn to.
    “You want to report it?” Sarah's panicked expression was almost comical.
    “I have reported it. I sent an article to the Oregonian about the strange lack of real investigation about how this got so out of hand and the evidence the vaccine was making it worse. That's what I do. If anybody took me seriously, I might have saved lives by reporting it. Though come to think of it, they paid me, but I never saw the proofs on that. I wonder if it actually printed.”
    Sarah shook her head, uninterested in the logistics of publishing news articles. “If it's terrorists, it's dangerous. I mean, I get what you're saying, but why you? Can't CNN do this? I want you to be safe.”
    “What if nobody else is looking?”
    “This is huge—somebody's looking. They have to be.”
    Somehow, Sid doubted it. It wasn't on the news. Nobody seemed to be linking the pieces together, even the little ones she'd put together. Either nobody was looking, or somebody was suppressing the media. That idea chilled her, largely because it was no longer a world of a few radio or TV stations and newspapers. Suppressing the internet had to be done on a huge scale—that was a lot of power.
    “I have to go to Atlanta tomorrow.” Sidney worried Sarah would be upset at being abandoned, especially with Grant sick now, too, but Sarah gave Sid her own shock.
    “David and I are pretending we have a death in the family. We're going to Missoula for at least a week. It will delay my need for a shot without getting me fired.”
    Sid felt a weight slide off of her. David's family was in Missoula. “Good thinking—nice save, even.”
    “They're mad at work—we're short-staffed—people out sick. But it's not like they can ask you to stay when your mother is dying—or mother-in-law, as the case may be. This trend hasn't hit Missoula, has it? It is a college town.”
    Sid checked the few places that had seemed to have reliable information as Sarah stood waiting. “Not that I can tell. If this is terrorism, it might have been too small a target to make their list. The ones I've seen are really major universities.”
    “I'll open a bottle of wine to pack