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The Last Buffalo

The Titans were at the end of a long, hot and incredibly bus week; even for them. They'd been to Japan to fight against Brother Blood, they'd had that parade in New York when they gotten back and then there had been those joint publicity shots the JLA insisted on to promote the idea that they all worked together. Meanwhile, the kids were trying to get some school studying done and Robin was worried about his SAT's since Batman was really on his case about them. Thank God it it's Friday, indeed. They were all beat, bushed and flat out exhausted, though a little thing like that wouldn't stop a night out together to unwind relax and chill a bit. They were past due.

"Garth?" Crossing over to where his friend had fallen asleep on the couch in the rec room of the Tower, Robin gently shook his friend's shoulder. "Hey Garth. C'mon, we're all going out to get something to eat. You in?"

Garth barely opened his eyes and almost shook his head. "…Tired."

Understandable. "Okay, we'll be back in a few hours. I'm turning out the lights, all right?" No answer, he was dead to the world. Rob took a blanket from the closet and spread it over Garth. After the last few days Robin was half tempted to stretch out himself but that could wait till after he'd at least gotten some food in him. Flicking the light switch, he went upstairs to join the others.

The dinner stretched to include a movie and afterwards the kids decided to get dessert at an all night diner. By the time they got back to the Tower it was past midnight, a few of the lights were on and Garth was gone from the couch, the blanket left in a pile on the floor. Robin almost knocked on Garth's door as he walked past but then just kept going—if he was tired there was no real reason to wake him, nothing was pressing and tomorrow would be soon enough to see him.

The next morning Dick found out the he was the only one of the group to have spent the night at the Tower; Wally was expected home for something and Roy and Donna had gone off on their own again. He made himself some breakfast, went into the monitor room to check the status of a couple cases he was involved in then ended up getting caught up in answering e-mail for a while. When he looked up it was after one in the afternoon and he was hungry again. He was about to just rummage through the kitchen to see what else he could dig up but something made him wonder why he hadn't seen Garth yet. He wasn't worried or anything, but the place was so quiet it was like he was there alone. Okay, Garth wasn't known for being Mr. Chatty, but you usually at least knew he was around. Maybe he'd left for some reason—but no, a check on the Member Status Monitor showed that he was down in the pool.

Whatever, it was a little odd, that's all. Taking the stairs two at a time the way he usually did, he went down and looked into the water. Sure, there he was, still asleep on the bottom and what was that about? "Garth? Hey, Garth, you okay?" Nothing, no movement, no answer. "Garth?"

Slowly he rose to the surface, still groggy. "You wanted something?"

Robin gave him a quizzical look. "Nah, not really, I just wondered if you were okay."

He nodded then slowly drifted back down to the bottom again, going back to sleep. Strange, but then Garth was Atlantean. This could just be his hibernation cycle or something. It's not like anyone really knew all that much about them and their habits. Sure, Garth tried to fit but, but he was still pretty out there sometimes.

Later that afternoon, a Saturday, Robin was called back to Wayne Manor to join in a special briefing session with Bruce, something involving Wayne Enterprises and a charity thing they were sponsoring next month. Bruce was starting to really insist that Dick get more involved in this kind of thing, the not too subtle hint being that the time would come when he would be expected to be playing a fairly major part and he needed to get up to speed. Dick would rather have opened veins but it simply was what it was and, like it or not, he knew he had no choice—at least not now, anyway. It wasn't until early the next morning that he got the call from Donna. Using his new Ninja, he was at the tower in twenty minutes.

"How bad is he?"

"I'm not sure. Not good."

"Has he been up at all?"

"Not since I've been here so I checked the security tapes—he hasn't moved since he got in the pool last night other than to talk to you for three seconds."

No, probably not good.

They got themselves down to the pool Donna flying and Dick simply running to keep up. Garth was still on the bottom, still not moving much and still looking exhausted. Donna was always the one to look out for the guys and she wasn't one to exaggerate a problem. If she thought something was really wrong, she was probably right. "I just called Arthur and he's on his way over—and he sounded pretty annoyed at the interruption, too."

"Sounds like him." He was a jerk and Robin couldn't stand the man, King or not, but he might have some idea what was going on with Garth. On the other hand, he could well have some kind of responsibility for it, too—he wasn't exactly what anyone would call concerned about Garth's well being most of the time. "Did you call a doctor, too?"

"One's coming over from Star Labs, she's on his way now."

Fifteen minutes later the doctor, a Doctor Grobin, was checking Garth's vitals and comparing them against the recommended normal readings for an Atlantean on her laptop. She admitted, a little self-consciously, that she'd never treated a real Atlantean before. In fact, she'd never even met one before this but she'd studied all the texts and was sure she was up to speed on whatever the problem might be—it wasn't reassuring. Arthur had entered by the sea tunnel and was standing by, for once, and waiting for the results. He wasn't saying anything, just looking at Garth, who was now awake if clearly not feeling too well. Garth returned his look, seemingly embarrassed by is own weakness or some such rot—but then Arthur wasn't known for his bedside manner or sympathy to illness.

"Aquaman, has Garth had his full round of inoculations and immunizations?" The doctor looked up from her clipboard.

"How would I know?"

"You're his guardian, aren't you—or you were for a while, isn't that correct?"

Arthur looked, if possible, slightly disconcerted. "I'm not his damn nursemaid, I don't deal with that sort of thing. The retainers do."

Dr. Grobin clearly annoyed by his ignorance. "Is there any way of getting his complete medical records sent here? Now."

With barely concealed irritation Arthur took the phone receiver off the wall, punched in a series of numbers, spoke in Atlantean to whomever as on the other end and hung up. "They'll be here in a few minutes.

When the fax arrived she looked through them, frowning. "According to this he's never had any immunizations whatsoever." Arthur gave her an even look. It was clear this wasn't in his job description and he wasn't about to engage. "He has a high fever, he told me he hasn't felt like eating and hasn't been able to keep food down for about three days. On top of that he admitted to having some diarrhea. The tests I ran look like he may have a pretty good case of the flu."

Robin was relieved to hear it sounded minor. "Flu? That's not a big deal then—I mean he'll feel crummy for a week or two and then he should okay, right?" Sure, Garth looked like hell now, but everyone did when they had that—you felt like crap for a week or two and then you were over it and about five or ten pounds lighter. Good, no big deal. "Okay, should he stay here or would you rather that he went over to Star so you guys can keep an eye on him—or should he go back to Atlantis?"

"I guess he can stay here so long as someone makes sure that he gets the medicine I'll be prescribing for him. I'd rather not move him if I don't have to and he looks comfortable enough where he is." The doctor seemed a little unsure of herself but the Titans were good about looking after their own. Garth would get whatever he needed.

"If that's all…?" Arthur never was what anyone would call patient. "Fine, contact me if there's any significant change in his condition." He turned, walked down the hall and they heard him dive into the water at the boat dock. So much for parental concern.

Dick and Donna didn't bother to react; the doctor shook her head. "Is he always like that?"

"Pretty much."

"All right, make sure that he eats as much as he can, see to it that he takes these meds and call me if anything worries you—and err on the safe side. Otherwise I'll be back to check on him tomorrow."

The next day Garth seemed no better, but that was the flu for you, you felt awful for a week or so and then you slowly got better. Right? That's the way it worked. Dr. Grobin was back as she said she'd be, took his readings, took a blood sample and made no pronouncements other than to say that he was sick. No kidding. Garth clearly felt terrible, wanted nothing to eat, had dry heaves despite having nothing in his stomach and made a few fast runs to the bathroom. The third day of this Grobin said something about his electrolytes being unbalanced and that she wanted to get that under control, suggesting that he be moved to either the Lab or back to his home. He was too sick by this point to care one way or another and so, because it was closer, he was taken to Star Labs and treated in a special water tank there. Calls were put through to the doctors in Atlantis, but they seemed unable to offer any suggestions other than to continue the treatments the surface medics had already started.

A couple more days went by and it was obvious that Garth wasn't making any progress. In fact, if anything he was getting worse. He was weak from not eating and the diarrhea along with the fever and so spent almost all his time fitfully sleeping. It was obvious to Robin that the doctors were more worried than they would admit. Aside from Garth being a Titan and world known as a hero, he was a senior member of the royal family of a foreign country. He was a major player in negotiations between Atlantis and the surface and was instrumental in keeping the antagonism between Shayeris and Posidonis peaceful. He was also one of the voices of reason in making sure things were handled calmly and without undo or unnecessary drama or saber rattling. He was important.

By the beginning of the second week Robin had enough. It was plain that Garth was clearly getting sicker by the day instead of better and he was frightened for his friend. He placed the call to JLA headquarters. "Hi, Wonder Woman? Is Arthur there?"

"I'm sorry, Robin, he left for Atlantis two days ago. Can I help you?"

Arthur left without letting them know? Naturally he hadn't even called to ask about Garth after that one, short visit but that was just him, the jerk. "I'd like to speak to him, is he in the palace?"

"As far as I know, yes, but you may have to go through his assistants. He wasn't feeling well when he left; he told me that he was going to consult with his private physician."

He was sick? "What was wrong with him, any idea?"

"He seemed like he might have the flu."

The flu? Good, maybe it wold make him a little more sympathetic "Okay, thanks, Diana." Okay, maybe it was going around. Well, Garth was in good hands and if he took a while to get over this, a lot of people got sick with the flu and had it linger, that was common enough. Dick was trying to stay positive.

When Dick placed the call, going through the Titans/JLA link he got through to some kind of secretary who promised to pass his concern on to the King but insisted that he wasn't accepting any calls. No, Minister Vulko wasn't available, either but his message would be delivered. Thank you for calling.

After another week the first reports started trickling out of Posidonis. There was an influenza epidemic raging and it was hitting the old, the young and the infirm the hardest. At first the Atlantean government and their Department of Public Health and Welfare insisted that they could handle it and, thank you, but they had this under control. Help from the surface was politely refused and the surface nations shrugged. If they said they were all right and they could deal with it on their own, well then let them.

Garth still wasn't responding to treatments at Star Labs and continued to decline and now he seemed more like he was flat out unconscious instead of merely sleeping and the readings from his vital signs weren't anywhere near what they should be. He was moved to a smaller tank where his meds could be even more closely controlled but the effect was marginal, at best.

A few days after that the first death reports started making their way to the surface but any questions were deflected with assurances that everything was under control and that while a very few older, infirm citizens had, sadly, been lost, everything was fine.

The next morning alarms in Garth's tank went off as his electrolytes went below the level where he could sustain. His organs began crashing and he was placed on life support for his heart and specialized support to help his Atlantean respiratory system. He was pronounced to be in a light coma and emergency calls went out to the head doctor in the royal palace. The man explained, after a long delay in coming to the phone and over a bad connection, that there wasn't anything he could suggest beyond what was already being done. He was sorry, but he simply couldn't spare anyone to go to Star Labs right now but would do what he could to advise them over the phone. The connection was cut off and attempts to get it back were unsuccessful. After that, things went from bad to worse quickly.

Communications from the surface to anywhere in any of the Atlantean cities became increasingly spotty, finally failing completely within another four or five days.

The JLA had been trying to keep current with the situation but it was made more than clear to them that their 'interference' wasn't wanted and would be not be welcomed. This was their problem and they would handle it as they'd handled every other problem they'd faced over the last ten thousand years. They would be fine, just as they were always fine.

Garth's coma deepened.

Arthur remained incommunicado.

The Atlantean Embassies were manned by skeleton staffs and within a month, were closed with little explanation other than that they would reopen as soon as possible and were sorry for any inconvenience.

Exchange students from Atlantis were told to stay where they were, unless they showed flu-like symptoms, in which case they were to return home at once.

Atlantean ships in surface harbors were ordered back to their homeports and ships at sea were ordered to adhere to a strict no a contact policy with any surface vessel.

That's when they finally asked the surface for help.

"Kal, we have to help them. There must be something we can do—maybe Kryptonian medicine has some answer." Hal Jordan was shaking his head at what they knew was happening but which they seemed powerless to stop. The JLA offered, almost begged the Atlantean government to be allowed in to give whatever aid they could but were repeatedly denied. The League members, or the ones not on assignments, were in the main conference room trying to think of some way to help. They were all angry and frustrated, with no resolution in sight.

"I've already tried that and the Kandorian scientists and researchers are trying—so are the doctors at Star Labs and the CDC but so far they haven't come up with anything which will kill the virus but not destroy the Atlantean immune system at the same time."

"But it's just the damn flu—I mean it's not like an epidemic of cancer f'God's sake. It's just the flu."

Kal knew that but… "They have no immunity to it, none at all, Ollie. It's spread by a virus without even any direct contact, it's a mutant strain which thrives underwater and seems to only affect their particular physiology, no one on the surface is susceptible to it; there have been no surface cases at all reported. They have no defenses to this thing and it seems that isolation isn't a defense. It's in the water they breathe and they don't have filters efficient enough to stop it. No one does."

"It's like when the American Indians were exposed to smallpox." Ollie was slumped in his chair. He'd just spoken to Roy and the kid was pretty upset about Garth—it wasn't looking good for the kid.

"But a vaccine…"

"It's too late for that, Hal." Kal wanted to do something, anything to help but, "If they'd asked us a month ago, maybe we could have done something, we might have had the time to develop a serum or effective treatment but…"

GL wasn't accepting that there were helpless—they were the JLA, for the love of God. "Christ. How many are sick? I mean what are the projected losses?"

Batman turned to face them, spinning his chair around from where he'd been looking out the window. "The estimate they sent us this morning—which they admit is just guesswork— was that forty-seven percent of the overall population is dead and another thirty-nine percent is sick with no hope of recovery. That's eight-six percent of their people either dead or expected to be within the week and the epidemic isn't over—new cases are coming in every hour. This doesn't include people who are just holed up in their homes so it's probably over ninety percent either dead or going to be. And people are still getting sick, the numbers are going to go higher."

Flash came in just in time to hear the Bat. "Jesus…there has to be something we can do. Arthur's one of us, so's Garth, we have to…"

J'onn finally spoke up. "Arthur died a week ago. They just released that a few minutes ago. Evidently the palace withheld it because they were afraid that their population, or what's left of it anyway, would panic if they found out the King was dead and the heir apparent was sick and in isolation on the surface." The League members looked at him, the size of the catastrophe coming home to them.

Wonder Woman looked up. "Has anyone heard how Garth is doing today?"

Kal just shook his head. "It's just a matter of time."

Another two weeks and the death tallies stood at an estimated ninety-six percent of the Atlantean population, with another two or tree percent expected to die within another month. Their government was suspended, as were all services. Schools and almost all businesses had closed weeks before and the few survivors were in shock.

Prince Garth, Tempest, had quietly died without regaining consciousness ten days ago in Star Lab with Robin beside him. Because attempts to contact his mother—or anyone—in Shayeris were unsuccessful, he was buried privately on Titan Island with just his close friends to pay their respects.

Kal went down to Atlantis, made a tour through the different cities and came back with his report. He'd found only eighteen survivors, people who for some reason had natural immunity to the mutated strain of influenza which had wiped out virtually the entire Atlantean race in less than two months from the first reported case to the present. The cities were deserted and though there had clearly been a major effort to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of bodies, their facilities were simply overwhelmed and vast numbers lay where they died. Out of a sense of common decency, Kal had gathered all he could find and enacted a mass burial in the Laurentian Abyss at a depth of over twenty-five thousand feet then sealed them in with marble, engraved with an explanation and the date. They'd be undisturbed there.

He went back to the underwater cities and, with the permission of the few survivors he found. Working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Lourve and the Prado, along with the Museum of Natural History and the British Museum he rescued as much of the finest art, literature and historical and scientific collections he could find. They were brought to the surface, stabilized to surface conditions and temporarily distributed to the best museums in the world. Finally a permanent complex was built to house the astounding collection, the lines to get in setting records and hours were extended to handle the crowds. Recordings of Atlantean music were catalogued and made available for download.

Now that there was no longer any way to reject the requests, a number of scientific expeditions, legitimate and otherwise, sent deep sea submersibles down to explore the abandoned cities. Wood's Hole and Jim Cameron had competing documentaries, both initially shown at IMAX theaters and later offered on special DVD's. There was a craze for all things Atlantean and their fashion, architecture and design stylings were everywhere. The number of books written warranted their own section in the large book store chains. When some of their technology was analyzed, entire industries sprouted up to take advantage of the new concepts in hydroponics, submersibles, streamlining and ecological ways of maintaining sustainable fishing and mining in the oceans. When it was announced that the Atlanteans had found how to harness the currents to provide an unlimited source of energy several millennium ago and that their still existing machinery testified to how well they'd made it work, there was major and permanent damage done to both the oil and natural gas industries. Finally, the area where they had their desalinization plants were discovered, found to be simple to use and manufacture and suddenly the problem of not enough fresh water for the world became less immediate.

"But I don't understand; Garth and Arthur both knew how much these discoveries could have helped the surface, why didn't they say something? They were both in the position to bring these to us—why didn't they?" Donna read over the reports without anger, just sadness.

Robin didn't even look up. It was still too much for him to really take in, and he'd been foolish enough to think there wasn't much he couldn't deal with and then just move on. The loss of an entire race was beyond his ability to absorb—at least now. It was too soon. "He wanted to, Garth did. He was just getting their council to agree to negotiations and talks when... They wanted to start trade and cultural exchanges, but…" But they ran out of time.

"But he and Arthur knew that they were exposed to surface infection, why didn't they get inoculations. It seems like such a basic idea." Dick just shrugged. Who knew? Maybe they just didn't think about it, maybe they didn't think anything would happen, maybe they thought that because they'd spent so much time on the surface they'd be okay. Perhaps they assumed their doctors would be able to handle anything that might happen. Who knew?

"Some scientist, some geneticist was talking on TV yesterday and he was saying that he doubts that there are enough Atlanteans left to sustain the population but they've given DNA samples in case some new technology exists some day to help. It's such a stupid waste…" Donna was close to tears. "I keep thinking it could happen to us, to the Amazons because we've been so isolated for so long. Mother is ordering that all the women have every inoculation available."

"That's good." Dick couldn't think of anything else to say. The handful of survivors were being kept in seclusion, most of them were in shock and it would be a long time before they'd be ready to join surface society—if ever.

Ten thousand years and they'd been brought down by their own arrogance and lack of foresight. Stupid, stupid waste.

Finally Dick couldn't stop himself. He stood up and moved towards the door, picking up a glass on the table and smashing it through the window. "It was just so fucking pointless."

Donna didn't say anything, just let him go.

1/29/07

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