USA Today, December 20, 2014: "With the death toll rising, many families will be mourning the loss of loved ones this holiday season…"

We were sitting in the break room sharing takeout, the first break we'd taken to eat in nearly twelve hours. Sara was picking the pork out of her lo mein, wrinkling her nose as she reminded us for the hundredth time that she was a vegetarian. I think you only screwed up her order because you liked to irritate her, and a part of you still vied for her attention after all these years.

I had never been sure what Sara thought about our relationship. I'd never offered up any information, and she'd never asked; it was just something we didn't talk about. I know that she was your closest friend, and that you confided in her. That when we got into a fight, you'd inevitably end up at her apartment. I'd picked you up from her place countless times, completely shitfaced and sometimes nearly unconscious, after Sara had called that you were ready to come home. And while I knew that her loyalties would always lie with you, I appreciated that whenever we did get into an argument, when we were together or when we were apart – as we were now – she never treated me differently.

"I bet those pigs didn't even suffer," you presently assured her.

"You're joking, right?" Sara asked, regarding you dubiously as she broke an eggroll in half and inspected the inside of it for traces of fish or mammals. "They electrocute them first to render them incapacitated, and then they slit their throats until they bleed to death. That doesn't sound like suffering to you?"

"When I was growing up, we used a captive bolt pistol," I stated casually, just to see Sara's reaction. "Looks kind of like a gun. It's a stunner that uses air pressure to penetrate the skull of the animal with a pointed bolt. Pops right in and out. Destroys brain matter but leaves the brain stem intact, so the heart continues to beat during the bleed. Killed my first pig when I was four. It was a piglet, actually. Maybe about four months old."

I could see you struggling not to laugh out of the corner of my eye as Sara blanched visibly. You took the discarded pieces of pork from the pile she had created on a napkin and held one up with your chopsticks.

"I wonder how old this one was," you said, and then popped it into your mouth.

"You're not right," Sara admonished. One slender finger pointed back and forth between the two of us. "Both of you…are not right."

Sara sat up suddenly with a troubled expression, her eyes on the doorway behind us. We turned to see Finn standing there, one hand on her mouth, the other clutching the doorframe with white knuckles. She removed the hand from her face, her mouth open to speak, but she seemed unable to find the words.

"What?" I asked anxiously, my heart pounding in my ears. "What is it, Finn?"

"Morgan," she said, so quietly I almost couldn't hear her. "Morgan isn't coming back to work. She…she died this morning at Desert Palms."

"What happened?" you demanded forcefully, standing as if to break into action, as if there was something you could do, could figure out, could find a solution for.

"The flu," Finn responded, shaking her head. "She died from the flu. They tried everything, but she didn't make it. She didn't…"

"This can't be," Sara breathed, her lips in a tight line. She almost looked angry, perhaps disgusted; the same expression she'd worn for weeks after you'd been beaten and left for dead in an alley. "She was so healthy. She was so young. She was…Jesus, she was just a kid."

"Oh, my God," you exclaimed quietly. You returned to your chair heavily, sharing a glance with me and Sara.

A deep and wet cough erupted from the doorway, and we all returned our gaze to Finn. She had been sick for weeks, deteriorating each day, struggling to hold out just a little longer so she could stay and help out the team. We could see it on her face, the same realization that I'm sure we were all thinking.

Hundreds of thousands of people had already died. The number was climbing each day. And now a healthy, young woman was dead from a virus that had wiped out up to one million people over forty years ago. If it could happen to Morgan, it could happen to Finn. It could happen to Hodges, to Henry, to Russell, to all the other crime lab and police department employees that were still out sick.

I think that was about the time we all knew just how dire our situation was rapidly becoming.

To be continued...