The Fever

by

John O'Connor

Disclaimer: Victorious and its characters are the property of Schneider's Bakery and Nickelodeon. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. No profit is intended or wanted for this story.

Summary: An extinction-level plague breaks out.

Note: I actually started this story several years ago, long before the Covid crisis. I put off posting as I wanted to have the story finished beforehand so I wouldn't leave readers hanging. Then the pandemic hit and I held off on posting. Even now, I'm not certain if the time is right but...here it is. I'll try to pose every few days or so.

Chapter 1

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Summary: The Beginning...

Like the old TS Eliot poem said: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The end came quickly.

It wasn't overnight but, at times, my memory sees it that way. It was more like a reverse of the biblical creation of the world. The mythical seven days but, in this case, humanity was all but gone.

Guess it was really was almost overnight after all.

I know the actual outbreak had to be a few weeks earlier since the plague began somewhere and had to grow before it flared out across the planet, wiping out whole populations in it's wake. It was basically some new type of fever and it literally burned people out. Where it came from was never determined - there wasn't time. Thanks to the first major outbreak blazing through the population of Shanghai, most experts seemed to think Asia was the source but they all died before they could do more than make educated guesses. Patient Zero vanished into the mists of lost history.

The first symptoms are a lot like a typical flu bug. Upper respiratory congestion with fatigue that grows quickly accompanied by aches in the joints and along the spine followed by a slowly growing fever. Then it changed to a variation of the hemorrhagic fevers caused by what's termed a cytokine storm. Cytokine is a natural molecular-level response to infection but a storm of cytokine molecules can often lead to multiple organ failure and death. In this case, it's also marked by an extremely high fever.

Victims often fall into a comatose state, usually within a day or so of the first symptoms. If their life functions continue long enough, their internal tissues liquify and slough off, like victims of Ebola. The fever is what kills the infected - it slowly bakes the internal organs until they slough off and, essentially, melt into the body cavity, especially the brain. Naturally, life functions cease. Most never survive that long, outside of early ER patients on life-support who managed to hang on longer before overwhelmed facilities and ineffective resources couldn't help any longer.

I saw this description in the Sunday Times. I didn't know at the time, of course, but it was the last Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times. While I tried to ignore it when I read it, I never forgot it. Hell, I lived it.

After all I experienced, and the inspiration from my father, I feel that I need to set this record down for the future. My name is Victoria Vega. I go by Tori. My father is David Vega, he was a Detective Sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department Homicide Division. He was on path to become a lieutenant and eventually captain - maybe even Chief in time. Holly, my mother, was a high-level business executive with a corporate realty firm. My older sister, Katrina – Trina - a year older than I am, was then a freshman at UCLA. I was a senior at Hollywood Arts - the Hollywood High School of the Performing Arts.

As I set this down, I'll probably go into far more detail than I should but there is so much that is now lost and I'd like to preserve a little of it. At least for a time. So forgive me for being too detailed. Or for leaving things out that were part of my reality before. And forgive me if I leave more questions than I answer for whoever reads this – I'm sure I won't explain things that seem obvious to me but will be lost to you, whoever you are and whenever you read this. Although this is a print journal, I also tend to babble too fast or too much when I'm upset, even when writing.

By the way, the dialogue isn't always going to be word-for-word, just put down as best as I remember what was happening to my world. After all, it has been almost two decades for a lot of it. But the gist is true to my memories of that time.

The time was the end of my senior year of high school.

I recall the day it really went bad, at least when I realized it was going bad. It was a typical Monday morning, I thought, in early May 2014 (by the old pre-Fever calendar). In a few weeks, my friends and I were graduating. I was looking forward to that but was also sad that I'd have to leave Hollywood Arts. I knew, as good as USC – the University of Southern California where I was to start college classes in the fall - was, I wouldn't have the same types of teachers that I loved at HA. Or the freedom and fun.

Everything at school seemed normal but there had been more students absent than normal, beginning the week before. The flu, everyone said. This first sign at HA I didn't recognize as a bad omen - the slowly growing number of student and staff absences had started a week or so before thanks to what was believed to be a late-season influenza outbreak.

That Monday, I was at the Asphalt Café, an outdoor cafe for our school. It was time for lunch with Beck Oliver, one of my best friends, as well as Cat Valentine, my best girl friend, but they both were showing the early effects of the Fever - not that I knew it at the time. I just thought they both had the flu that put my mom and sister in bed. Andre Harris, my best friend, and Robbie Shapiro, our resident nerd ventriloquist, were both out sick. Jade West, my frenemy (friend and/or enemy), was absent too. I supposed she was sick but I couldn't find out since she and I were never really close. This was after the latest breakup between long-time high school power couple, Jade and Beck, so he didn't know anything either.

We all had Erwin Sikowitz's Advanced Theater class after lunch. Sikowitz was one of the most unusual people I had ever met. Looking and dressing like an aging hippy, he had an unorthodox way of teaching, to say the least, but he knew his stuff. He was also one of the best friends a student could have in a performing arts school.

In any high school.

He was my favorite teacher and his class was usually the highlight of the school day.

As he was often late – sometimes on purpose - we talked about what was happening and Beck said, "Didja see the story in the Times yesterday? Scary chiz, man."

"No. I was working on my song for Music Comp. What did it say?" I replied.

Beck described it and I felt a weird chill.

By this point we were in Sikowitz's room about half an hour, waiting for him to show. He was unusual in his entries to the room but never this late. We called class for the day.

I headed to the library to try to work on that song I had to write for my final Music Composition project. Beck said he was going home and offered Cat a ride.

I never saw them again.

The next period, I had American History and Mr. Grimes was sweating badly. He seemed disoriented, coughed frequently and dismissed us early. Starting to feel a little more worried, I left early and drove Trina's car home.

As I said, Trina was home sick, as was Mom. I took Trina's car so I could get to school. I finally had my learner's permit and was about to take the required tests for my driver's license. Technically, it wasn't legal for me to be driving solo, but the fact that Dad was a member of the LAPD and the bigger fact that I was paranoid as hell behind the wheel at that time, kept me from driving too fast and, hopefully, avoid any problems. Mom's soccer-mom SUV was too much for just going to school and Dad's car was… Well, it was Dad's and was sitting in the garage.

The LAPD had dispatched a squad car for him when he had to report Saturday morning. I later saw this was an indication how serious things were but didn't realize it that day. I was just starting to on Monday as I headed home.

When I got home, Mom and Trina were both sleeping so I left them alone after my check. They both had drunk from the water I left on their bedsides, which I took for a good sign. But they still both had noticeably higher than normal temperatures. Chemical, reusable ice packs I applied earlier were melted and I applied new ones and refroze the first ones. Later, when I again checked on them and swapped the ice packs, those seemed to help both of them. I hoped.

Dad had called and left a message on our old digital answering machine that he was working additional shifts due to the growing number of cops who were out sick. I guessed the same was true with the firefighters, EMTs and any other first response teams. (EMTs were Emergency Medical Technicians – basically paramedics who provided on-site emergency care before moving the patients/victims to a local hospital emergency room.)

He did say he was back in uniform, making a joke about smelling like mothballs. He had been in plain clothes since he made detective when I was in middle school. He recently was promoted to Detective Sergeant. Annually, the LAPD had all services wear uniforms for one day a year but that date was several weeks ago. So this uniform detail was just additional confirmation that things were bad.

I got out some soup – Progresso Chicken Noodle, I think - that I could quickly heat if Mom or Trina wanted anything to eat when they woke up. I also slabbed some peanut butter and sliced bananas on bread then covered them in Saran Wrap and put that in the fridge. (Trina and I loved banana and peanut butter sandwiches when we were kids and home sick. That and warm Jell-O when it was still liquid before it gelled.)

I couldn't eat a thing. As I made the sandwiches, I ate a half of a banana and it was all I could do to choke the last of it down.

I was starting to consciously realize that I was really concerned with all the people sick, not just my mom and sister. I checked my email but there wasn't much more than a few spams. The Slap, our school's version of social media, had some new posts but nothing from my friends, just some of the other kids saying they weren't feeling good or had sick family or were scared. The last two I could definitely relate to.

That's when I picked up the Sunday paper. The day before I went through the Times as I usually did - turn to the Arts section, Sports for Dodger reports and the baseball standings and, of course, the comic strips. This time I read the front page Sunday Times article Beck mentioned – and I cited earlier. I finished the article and threw the paper to the side. It was too…depressing.

To try and see if there was anything new going on, I turned on the TV and saw the usual, anonymous (to me) talking heads on the news channels. Beyond the arts, I'd only occasionally watch the local and network news. I almost never watched CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or BBC America. So I had no idea if I was seeing the normal crews or replacements. That idea didn't even occur to me for another day until I started to see other people reading the news.

Regardless, they were blabbing on and on about how to protect yourself from the Fever or how to prevent spreading it - covering up when you sneeze or cough, washing your hands to the tune of 'Happy Birthday' and the other usual crap they suggest when there's a flu outbreak. Ultimately, as far as I saw, none of those did anything at all to prevent the spread of the Fever, given how virulent this disease was.

It was also the first time I'd heard it referred to as the Fever. With a capital F. And the first indication the disease was as bad as it was. Even the Times article avoided the term epidemic while heavily hinting at it. But the BBC actually used the term epidemic as they reported on outbreaks around the globe of varying degrees. Asia and the western Pacific Rim area seemed to be the worst hit so far. But there were reports in the US (of course), Central and South America as well as India and east Africa.

It had to be an epidemic, if not a full-blown pandemic.

A side note…

Even before this happened, I'd already been fascinated by plagues, morbidly so according to Trina. I remember seeing a TNT marathon of The Stand miniseries, formerly an ABC mini-series - on TV when I was a kid. It scared the chiz out of me. But, as a result, the idea of a disease killing so many people so fast while terrifying was still fascinating... I started to read a lot about various real pandemics like the Bubonic Plague - the Black Death - of the Middle Ages which killed off between a quarter to half of the population of Europe - up to 50 million dead. And the Spanish Flu in 1918 into 1919 which killed millions across the globe even as a third of the total population of the world was infected – roughly 500 million people. The last vestiges of the Spanish flu, according to some sources, have survived up until the present day.

By the way, the Spanish Flu seems to have originated in Kansas at an Army training camp and spread initially by the deployment of American troops to Europe sent to fight the Central Powers in the Great World War. Spain got the blame because the Spanish papers, being neutral in the Great War, were the only western country to openly report on it before the Armistice.

Of course, there were other plagues since before the beginning of written history. A couple of examples... The Plague of Athens in 430 BCE, during the Peloponnesian War, which killed up to 100,000 Greeks. Or the Great Plague of London in 1665-1666, killing 20 percent of the population of London.

My amateurish studies included the more recent hemorrhagic fevers like the various strains of Ebola, including AIDS - to an extent. Even though it wasn't as fast as the Fever, AIDS was another I became familiar with. Until the Fever, AIDS was the most devastating hemorrhagic-based fever, given the number of deaths and infections, including how wide-spread it became. But AIDS took decades to do what the Fever did in a few weeks. And AIDS was, as I understood it at the time, essentially, a fatal by-product of viral hemorrhagic fevers

Anyway, as a result, I was scared but morbidly fascinated by the dangers of potential outbreaks of natural plagues like Ebola as well as man-made bugs such as the Super-Flu in Stephen King's original novel The Stand, or the bio-weapon in the movie The Omega Man. Even the newer I Am Legend explored the same idea. The latter two were based on Richard Matheson's truly scary 1950s classic novel I Am Legend. There was also an old Italian version with Vincent Price, The Last Man on Earth which I've seen - of course.

Biowarfare was a real fear in the 1950s through the 1970s – almost as big as the fear of a nuclear war. Maybe bigger. Just look at The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean, who was known more for Second World War espionage thrillers like The Guns Of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare than doomsday sci-fi. It dealt with a man-made plague that would wipe out life on Earth in days that was stolen from a high security lab.

On the other hand, George R. Stewart's Earth Abides, was a late 1940s novel about a naturally-occurring plague killing off most of mankind. His premise was that nature killed of various species when said species overwhelmed their bio-sphere.

Also, there were much older works, The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel from 1901 about the sole survivor of the end of the world and the more famous but less apocalyptic The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, one of his non-Sherlock Holmes works from 1912. Mary Shelley wrote a post-apocalypse novel in 1826, eight years after Frankenstein, called The Last Man. Even with the hokey science of the old novels, all seemed like dark fiction when I was younger. But now they'd become more than just the scary sci-fi novels when I read them as electives in an English class at Sherwood High.

Then I learned about the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention which went into effect, supposedly cancelling any bio-weapon research by the Superpowers as well as any other co-signers, which included most of the world.

At the time of the Fever's outbreak, USAMRIID was working to combat diseases, like hemorrhagic fever, including strands of Ebola and AIDS, and, ultimately, the Fever.

Once I saw the movie Contagion, I was even more fascinated by this topic and wrote a term paper on it for a health class at Sherwood.

Research for that paper led me to read non-fiction books like The Hot Zone - about a near-disastrous Ebola outbreak in Reston, Virginia – and Richard Preston's next book, The Demon In The Freezer about eradicating small pox as well as fighting the anthrax attacks that occurred after the 9-11 attacks. I actually learned a lot about USAMRIID - the United States Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - at Fort Detrick, Maryland which had been in the lead in CBW (Chemical and Biological Weapons) research.

There was an international group - the World Health Organization (WHO) – that worked across borders to combat any communicable infections as well as trying to help those who needed it. And, of course, there was the CDC - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - based out of Atlanta, Georgia, which was at the forefront of infectious disease outbreaks in the United States.

I used that health paper from Sherwood for one of the required, non-show business, social studies classes I took at HA. My friends were stunned that I was so knowledgeable by such a dark subject and fascinated since I seemed to be so much more focused on brighter things like singing and acting. I think even Jade was impressed. Although that was no surprise, given her dark, twisted outlook on life.

Anyway, back to my attempt to put all this down for posterity…

This time of year, most of my favorite shows were all reruns but, to get away from the repetition of the news cycle, I watched them just to keep my mind off how quiet the house was. I had been home alone before, naturally. But, even with Mom and Trina in the house, something about that day was just eerie… Maybe it wasn't just the house...

Needing to hear a familiar voice, I called Dad but he couldn't talk for long. He was very busy but, of course, he did ask about Mom and Trina. Then he told me he'd be home soon and that he loved me. I told him I loved him too. Even though I did, I rarely said that since I was twelve so he paused before telling me good bye.

Later, the local evening news came on. There was a clip from a longer statement by a doctor with the CDC. "The plague, widely known as the Fever, is very dangerous but we believe standard prevention methods will help slow the outbreak. As yet, we do not have a Patient Zero nor is there any concrete evidence to show the point of origin was the Orient. However, we are actively working on a cure as well as trying to determine the true source of this disease. A cure should be available shortly."

A lie. Maybe not intentional but it proved to be one nonetheless. By the way, this and any later statements, as well as specific details, are taken, verbatim, from an old newspaper report – one of the last issues of the Sonora Union Democrat I found months later.

Anyway, right after this, another clip of some Army colonel at USAMRIID. "Contrary to popular opinion, there is no evidence that this is an engineered disease or any evidence of a biological attack from another nation or terrorist group. And I can unequivocally state that this was never a product of any research performed here or at any other American bioresearch facility. It seems to be wholly natural from an, as yet, unknown source."

This was supposedly confirmed by a written statement from Homeland Security that was read by one of the newscasters. That set my mind to rest - not! (I still have a very low opinion of Homeland Security and the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, after a flight I took back from my paternal grandfather's home in Miami a couple of years before. Thanks to those clowns delaying our flight – ultimately for nothing - I got in late and nearly failed a script-writing course project. Not that my sister or my writing team helped any...)

Anyway on the news, the California Department of Public Health just parroted what had already been said regarding supposed pro-active ways to avoid infection.

A written statement from WHO also echoed what the CDC and USAMRIID had already said. Almost word for word.

The statement included their diagnosis that the plague was of natural origin. That brought to my mind the concept from Stewart's 'Earth Abides'– the world occasionally wipes out the majority of a specific species, like rabbits, deer or other animals to save the overall ecosystem from overpopulation which could lead to overfeeding and an even greater loss of all species' individuals. Stewart speculated that the Earth needed to be rid of us. Not as far-fetched in the 21st century as it was in the post-war 1940s, given the abuse of the planet over the ensuing decades.

Anyway, there were more reports of outbreaks in other parts of the country followed by an abbreviated weather report. The sports segment was nearly non-existent - just announcements that the Los Angeles Kings-Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup playoff games were suspended until further notice. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels were also suspending all upcoming games until the outbreak was over. The PGA and the LPGA either postponed or cancelled any upcoming professional golf tournament play. NASCAR and IndyCar races, including the classic Indianapolis 500 (for the first time since the Second World War) were all on hold.

These were all seasonal teams in professional sports.

Nationally, other teams postponed their games.

The Stanley Cup playoffs, the baseball season, professional golf and auto racing never resumed. Not to mention the upcoming football and basketball pre-seasons that never even got started. Same for any collegiate, high school and amateur sports, of course.

The network news at 6:30 was more of the same but, of course, not focused on Los Angeles. Actually, the news anchor - normally the weekend backup which was the first time I realized on-air staff was short-handed - had more about what was happening overseas. Except for a report of an isolated Fever victim in Perth and another in Darwin, Australia and New Zealand were not reporting any outbreaks as yet. However, other western Pacific Rim nations in the Indonesian Archipelago were hit far stronger – ammunition for the Asian source argument.

China's latest government, the third in as many days, was another military junta, according to the newsfeeds. Beijing had called out the Red Army, closed almost every public venue and banned all travel. Shanghai (not surprising) and Hong Kong, as well as Shenzen, were silent. Reports from Hong Kong, Macao and Nanjing were sporadic at best. Taipei, on Taiwan, had gone silent that afternoon.

Videos from South Korea and Japan showed the populace wearing surgical masks or filters but those had become commonplace in those countries years before. Still, no real acknowledgement of the Fever. North Korea was silent – more so than usual - which had some Defense Department people worried, given their strident anti-everyone stance prior to the outbreak. Their growing nuclear capability had already become alarming.

India, Pakistan and a couple of the other nations in southern Asia were fighting even as they were losing their people to the Fever. Fears of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan were higher than ever. Or even India and China over the decades-long disputed Himalayan regions.

Russia claimed there was no emergency in the country. Several other former SSRs were scarily silent, predominantly the Central Eurasian republics.

The European Union was asking for NATO forces to quarantine Fever cities, particularly Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, Naples, and Marseilles – all major Mediterranean ports. This seemed to reflect a parallel to the Black Plague outbreak in the Middle Ages.

Bonn, Munich, Budapest, Sofia – all major air hubs – as well as most of southern Greece and Turkey, were falling silent. Crete, Malta and Sicily were already quiet. Most of North Africa hadn't been heard from for over a day.

Iceland was still clear of any infection. Greenland too. That gave hope that even their warmer seasonal temps - lower than most countries - might help fight the virus.

The British Isles banned all incoming traffic of any kind. The BBC reported enclaves of infection but those areas were all segregated. England was hit worse – whole areas of London, Southampton and Liverpool were cordoned off. Ireland and Scotland were still clear. So far.

Reports from the Middle East were vague as the entire region seemed to be at war both with Israel and with each other. There were unconfirmed reports of nuclear attacks on various Arab capitals, probably from Israeli missiles. The fact that possible nuclear combat was so low on the news was indicative of either some inexperienced editor was ill-prepared to prioritize the news.

Or it just happened and only then did any word come into the newsroom.

Many African cities were silent – including Mogadishu, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Pretoria, Harare and Monrovia. There had been no communication with South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi or Zimbabwe. However, Johannesburg reported only sporadic, contained cases. On the other hand, Pretoria and Cape Town were silent.

Central and South American countries were rocked by revolutions – many fomented by the drug cartels who were trying to take advantage of the growing power vacuums from the collapsing governments. Mexico had already fragmented into smaller drug enclaves. America's southern border was sealed as best as could be – meaning fluid as a clogged sieve.

Canada and Alaska both were supposedly free of the virus. So far. Until the Fever cropped up in Norvik in far northern Norway, which killed any hope that the cold would stop the disease, many in Europe and North America started to migrate north. The capper was the report that Fever also broke out in Trondheim during a near-record low temperature for that time of year. The fears were cemented when a tech in Point Barrow – with temps hovering just below freezing - came down with the Fever.

Again, these details came from my own memory and confirmed by the Sonora Union-Democrat paper I found months later. But, at the time, I was thrust into the severity of the Fever. I couldn't ignore it, thinking it was the flu any longer. It was so widespread and so...deadly...

And of course, most of these statements only enflamed the conspiracy theorists. I don't know if the internet and social media was ever as busy with conspiracists before this. The claims were alternately logical and outlandish. It was the End Days. It was a government lab experiment gone wrong – hey there, Stephen King! It was the Protocols of Zion (written by the Czar's anti-Semitic ministers before the Revolution), the Chinese, the North Koreans, Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Russians, Communist China (the most popular in most paranoid groups), ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Boca Haran, Tamil rebels, the Fourth Reich, Scientology, the Mormons, the New World Order, Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan among other home-grown white supremacists and an amazing array of even crazier crackpot groups out there. Even old, defunct communist terrorist groups came up in new websites - like the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge, the Red Army (Italian, West German and others) and Peru's infamous Shining Path.

Naturally, there were just as many alien invasion crazies. All these ended up spilling from those whack job sites into Facebook, Twitter and even the Slap. All that traffic really made it hard to see that none of my friends had updated recently.

By then Celebrities Under Water was on TV. Of course, it was a rerun featuring Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead (the unintentional irony wasn't completely lost on me even then) and Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother, so, leaving that playing in the background, I logged into again my laptop, checked my email, the Slap, Facebook and Twitter (little new on any of them) then worked on my song project some more. A futile attempt as I kept going back to CNN, MSNBC and Fox see what the news had to say.

Frustrated by the lack of anything of real worth, I tried to get in touch with my friends. Beck was home and lying in bed. He texted me that his parents were sick too.

Cat's text said she was feeling the same but new her roommate, Sam Puckett, was sick too.

Andre, who I actually got on the phone, was sick but managed to take his grandmother to the hospital. He was waiting there to hear from the doctors. He said it was a madhouse and he was currently surrounded by the ranks of the living dead. I didn't find it as darkly humorous as he intended. Especially when he coughed several times as he laughed. I tried to laugh along with him.

"I hope your grandmother feels better, Andre. Call me when you can," I said.

"I will, Tor… Take care and be careful, muchacha," Andre said in an uncharacteristically concerned voice. I know he cared but he was usually so off-beat and, as he said, happy-go-skippy. I again told him I would be.

Robbie texted back a quick note that he was really tired and was going to sleep.

I told all of them all to call or text me if they needed anything. Even just to talk to someone.

I got responses from everyone except, of course, Jade. I was worried, but she rarely bothered to respond to texts, from me anyway. Anyone actually - especially after Beck and she broke up.

I checked on Mom and Trina several times. When they were awake, they only wanted water. With the water, I left a bowl of soup for each of them and jokingly ordered that they better eat it. After I got each of them to agree, I let them go back to sleep. Cold soup was better than no soup.

And Trina even thanked me for the banana and peanut butter sandwiches.

But I was worried. Both had very high temperatures and were sweating profusely. Even after replacing the cold packs.

I mindlessly stared at the reruns on TV. I turned on the shows I liked, all reruns, but didn't get a thing out of them. I was too worried about…everything. At 11, the late news came on but had nothing new from what I'd seen earlier. Spiritually, and even physically exhausted, I went to bed.

Aa I headed up the stairs to my room, I saw the lights of L.A. shining, almost mockingly, beyond the shallow slope of the backyard as they always did.

The normalcy wasn't as calming as you'd think.

Notes: As I noted this story was started in 2014 and almost complete after a year or more of tinkering. For various reasons, most of which I have forgotten, I kept tinkering with it. The basic reason was I didn't have a good closing chapter. I was never satisfied with the end but refused to post this until it was complete. I think I'm finally happy with the end. I hate posting a multi-part story before it's finished. I don't want to be one of so many writers who have a story I'm following that just ends up twisting in the wind.

Using China as the source of the disease was the original intent. The fact that life imitated 'art' is a sheer coincidence. The influence was actually from the movie Contagion which was mentioned in the story. After COVID-19 became a reality, I had considered changing the plague source to Africa where most of the hemorrhagic fevers originated, but, being lazy, I decided to keep this origin intact – like Contagion.

I detest and abhor the 'China virus' bias that was so prevalent a few years or so ago. Part of why I mentioned the Spanish Flu outbreak started in military outposts in the U.S - in Kansas.

The response to the pandemic, especially one as rapidly-spreading as this fictional one, was based on previous outbreaks of various diseases – general flu outbreaks predominantly. Even in the most recent, real-life crisis, masks and social distancing came along late in the process – time which wasn't available in this story.

Recently, real-life, which duplicated the events of the early part of the story to a far, far less fatal degree, finally eased. But still had me hold off as the real-world effects were still too fresh for many. I still wonder if I'm posting this too soon given current conditions.