Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever
by G. Miki Hayden
"Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever"
by G. Miki Hayden
Copyright 2011 G. Miki Hayden
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved
Syd leaned back in the wooden booth and sipped his beer. He and Heck—Hector—always celebrated their birthdays together since they’d been born only a month apart—nearly 40 years before—and they’d been friends since the age of 10.
“We’re getting on,” said Syd to his buddy.
“You mean we have to be tested pretty soon,” answered Heck.
The two men were different in a lot of ways. Heck was more direct than Syd, and certainly less conventional in every respect. Still, they connected, as friends who differ often do.
“Yeah,” agreed Syd, “but I’m healthy. Really healthy. You are, too.”
Heck lowered his eyelids halfway over two brown eyes, and he smiled, expressing his own special brand of mirthless cynicism. “Those machines’re crap,” Heck said. “The whole thing is crap.”
Syd wasn’t exactly sure what his buddy meant. “Accurate crap,” he answered Heck. “One hundred percent accurate.”
“Nothing in this world is 100 percent,” countered Heck. “Do you see how ridiculous that claim is. Years ago, they said 99.4 percent accurate. Now they say 100 percent. Don’t you find that odd?” He waited with interest for Syd’s response as though he’d scored a telling point.
“They must have made improvements,” Syd answered finally.
“Don’t you ever wonder why it’s a legal mandate to have the test at age 40?” asked Heck. “What’s the advantage to us in knowing how—and when—we’ll die?”
“We can get our affairs in order this way.” Okay, Syd knew he was quoting the public service announcement. “And it allows the different levels of government to plan accordingly.”
Heck caught the waitress’s attention and pointed at their beers for a refill. Syd hoped she’d bring the sizzling steaks soon also. Steak, yeah, a big blowout yearly party for two guys on a budget in a world that didn’t produce enough food for all its inhabitants, much less high-caliber protein of this kind.
“Population control,” Heck said next, as if he’d sorta been thinking about the same thing Syd had.
“If they could just control population growth,” Syd agreed with his friend. “At least the U.S. has a zero pop goal for our population growth rate, but what about the rest of the world? It’s crazy some places—having kids just to watch them die.”
“I mean, the blood tests are for population control,” corrected Heck.
Heck knew how to connect with the anarchist sites online—Syd had warned him time and time again that he was bound to get caught one day and put on a list. Not that it was illegal, exactly, in the country that had been the birthplace of free speech.
“Look,” said Syd. “Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t use the blood tests to control the population because they couldn’t possibly go around and make hundreds, thousands…or whatever number of people…die every year the way that’s predicted. How the hell they gonna do that?”
“I don’t know.” Heck had a stubborn look on his face. “I don’t know because I don’t understand these things and I’m not an expert. But if you trust the bastards, you would be on the wrong side of the argument. They don’t have your interests at heart with the mandated testing. Or mine.”
Syd didn’t understand the ins and outs of the whole thing, either, but he felt that the testing was not only accurate—everyone knew that—but absolutely fair. Mandated testing brought social advantages—prevented the spread of diseases, they were sometimes told—and better allowed for social planning. He saw no malice on the part of their government officials. Here was a technology that even if it made people uncomfortable, worked.
Two weeks after his 40th birthday, in order to conform to the law in a timely fashion, Syd went down to the medical center right after lunch. Currently unemployed as a metal worker because his company hadn’t been able to import sufficient materials from China this quarter to keep the shop open, he was able to come and go as he pleased.
But so, apparently, were others his age. Most work available these days was for basic labor—physical labor—and the jobs were often taken by the younger, more able-bodied kids. But that was right, too, wasn’t it? The kids ought to have their chance for employment, a little life, a little love, maybe children of their own. He’d had that. Syd had a wife and the one allotted child, a 12-year-old daughter named Adrian. Man, he was crazy about that girl. His family meant the world to him.
Syd thought he felt confident and relaxed when they took his blood, but while he sat in the lobby waiting for the blood to go through the machine, his mind began to do all kinds of cartwheels—every `what-if' sprang into his imagination, and he began to shake with fear. He was shaking, actually shaking. He put his hand out in front of him and it visibly trembled. His body was caught in a state of terror and he tried to let out his breath.
Then his name was called and he was buzzed into consultation room number 12 where a pretty girl sat, ready to speak to him. She had the look of health that only the young can have, her skin elastic and unmarred, her hair glossy, and her eyes alive with a depth of feeling, feeling for him… Something bad lay in wait. That she rose and offered him her hand confirmed it. Such kindness only came when a terrible announcement was going to be made.
He sat, almost collapsed, in the seat, and she handed him a piece of paper, saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Mr. Gaines.”
For a moment he couldn’t even read his fate. His mind prevented his eyes from focusing. But then he saw the words, words he didn’t even understand. Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. And the date, July 20th, 2023—only two months from now. From right now.
The girl’s eyes were filled with tears, and Syd wanted to reassure her. But he couldn’t speak.
Then his jaw unlocked and the words spilled out. “But this doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
She compressed her lips and tears filled her eyes. “I know,” she answered. And then she whispered. “I’ve had three of these already this week.” And suddenly her cheeks were wet, and Syd felt an odd mix of disbelief and horror, an incredible sense that humanity itself was doomed.
When he was up to it a few days later, he called Heck and met him at Tinto Square Park where they used to have a weekly game of basketball. In fact, if you’d invited him for a game even the week before, Syd would have answered, “Come on. Let’s do it.” But now he felt too down to even consider running around the court. He slumped onto a green bench made of recycled garbage and Heck slumped alongside.
He was about to tell Heck what the machine had predicted, but Heck spoke first. “They told me I’m going to have acute appendicitis and that my appendix will burst two weeks from now,” said Heck.
Syd stared at his oldest and maybe only real friend. “I’m going to die of a stupid exotic, African disease in less than two months.”
Their eyes met.
“I’ve been digging around the Internet,” said Heck.
“Don’t give me any of your crazy bullshit,” Syd stopped his friend. “No way could they manipulate any of this insanity, even if they wanted to.”
Heck stood up and put one foot on the bench. He seemed to be watching the boys running around the court today, shirts off and slung over their necks to serve as sweat towels.
“Will you at least agree that they might want to?” asked Heck before sitting down again. “This nation can no longer support a growing population. The worst of it has been the so-called entitlements, which is mostly the money that goes to the older class and to those without work. And who’s without work, these days, my friend? It’s us. Get it? You and I, and a couple of million other guys like us are a drain on the system. We don’t contribute. We’re considered used goods, costing the rest of the country more than it can afford. Right? Or not?”
“And you think the government could be that corrupt, that cynical?” On a perfect spring day with only a few wisps of clouds marring a faultless, blue-hued sky, could something like that really be true?
“Yes,” said Heck without hesitation.
“Okay, maybe…” Okay, maybe, maybe they the could be that cynical. “But how? There’s no way in hell…”
“One kind of interesting theory is making the rounds.” And that was all he said for the moment. Heck was obviously waiting to be asked.
“What then?” Though Syd knew the idea was going to be ridiculous.
“Ya know how we heard about someone like a witch doctor or someone like that placing a curse on a guy? He would tell a guy he was going to die. And very soon, the guy would die. End of story.’ Again, Heck waited.
Syd let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Yeah, right—what a dumb, dumb, dumb theory this was.
“Okay, but, not everyone would be susceptible,” said Syd. “And the circumstances—so diverse… how could this theory account for that? It’s totally stupid.”
Heck stood up again and started to pace. “Actually, it’s very sophisticated,” he said. “The complete propaganda—brainwashing—campaign makes everyone believe the machine is infallible.”
“It is infallible,” said Syd.
“See. We don’t know that,” cried Heck. “Some people may have slipped through the system.” He pounded on his chest with a single finger. “And I’m going to be one of them. I don’t believe their prediction. I’m not going to die. They can’t sentence me to die before my time. They can’t do it to me. I won’t let them do it.”
Syd attended Heck’s funeral a week and a half later. The machine had been exactly correct. “One hundred percent,” Syd muttered to himself.
Caged in his sole decent suit on the hottest day so far this season, Syd gave his condolences to Heck’s wife and tried to pretend the tears that he wiped from his face were only sweat. In fact, he was sweating despite the funeral home’s powerful air conditioning, and he wondered if he had a temperature. But of course not yet.
If the prediction of the machine was just a kind of mental curse, a sort of juju superstition, then why hadn’t Heck been able to overcome it despite his seemingly intense determination?
The funeral party went back to Heck’s house and Syd sat on the windowsill and drank a cold beer. A guy came over and stood beside him, Syd wishing he would go away.
“Did you know him well?” asked the man.
“Since we were ten. Thirty years,” answered Syd. He didn’t recognize the other man at all—maybe one of the in-laws or a guy from where Heck used to work.
“I met him on the Internet,” said the stranger. “And we only saw one another in person once. He believed, as some of us do, that the whole thing is a colossal scam.”
“A colossal scam?” Syd let out a short, bitter laugh and chugged his beer. “Then why is Hector in a coffin six feet under now?”
The man looked out the window as if seeking the answer out there in the world. “It’s hard,” he said. “Hard to mentally buck the entire system. Hard to suspend belief in everything you’ve been told all your life. The change required is profound.”
“What about bacteria?” demanded Syd. “What about viruses? What about accidents?”
“I said profound,” the man repeated. “Suppose their words weaken your natural immunities—or even cause you to `accidentally’ step in front of a car. We’re social creatures, deeply social, and we very deeply want to run with the herd.” He looked away from Syd and seemed to be contemplating a far-off place, not here and not now.
“And you beat it?” Syd asked then. How old would he say Heck’s Internet friend was?
“Some have, in fact, beaten it,” answered the man. “But when they do, they have to tear themselves away from their lives because the government…”
“Oh, yes,” said Syd. “The government.”
The man nodded. “So even if I could claim to have overcome the percentages, I wouldn’t say anything like that out loud.” He smiled and Syd just stared at him. “But maybe the world isn’t the way they say it is. Your friend had the courage to at least try.”
The stranger gave Syd an intense look almost the way Heck sometimes had, and then he walked across the room to Heck’s widow, taking her hand. A couple of minutes later, Syd saw the man go out the front door.
Two weeks after that, Syd moved out of his house, checking into a cheap motel with cabins in a fairly remote hunting area in the mountains upstate. He wasn’t trying to outrun the ebola, but to protect his wife and kids. He continued to call home a few times a day to give them his love, but they were talking to a dead man and they all knew it.
Syd thought a lot about what Heck and the man from the Internet had said, and he read the Bible left in a drawer by his bed. He wasn’t quite sure why someone had put the book in there. The language was from another time, and he didn’t understand most of what he saw as a relic of the pre-scientific past.
“They had to explain things somehow in the old days,” he said out loud, only to himself. The Bible, religion, it had pretty much faded away from people's lives these days. Useless things generally dropped away by themselves.
Religion, he supposed, was to comfort you when you didn’t know what was going to happen next. When you did know what was going to happen next, what could comfort you then?
National Tragedy Hits Upstate Region
Shinnecock Highlands, New York, July 21, 2023—New York State deaths have added a count of five victims of ebola virus to the national death count of 74, as reported today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. These five deaths are the first reported in this state.
Transmission of the virulent and 100 percent fatal ebolavirus in diverse geographic regions of this country remain unexplained.
“We see no reason for general alarm,” said Dr. Rosemary Clemeth, chief rare disease epidemiologist at the CDC. “While this is a tragedy, the disease in the U.S. has, in an unusual turn, struck down only older adults among the population, those age 40 and older, to date.”
Dr. Clemeth noted the CDC is working hard to find the means of transmission that would explain deaths from ebola in Florida, Mississipi, Minnesota, and now New York State.
“All precautions are being taken,” stated Dr. Clemeth. “But these viruses are thousands of years old and from time to time they both mutate and travel. We have no reason to believe these outbreaks, though tragic, are anything but isolated occurrences.”
A simultaneous but separate bulletin issued by the U.S. Predictive Bureau noted that to date more than 700 predictions of death by ebola hemorrhagic fever have been made by the department.
Individuals listed by the CDC as dead from ebola in New York State are:
Sydney Gaines, age 40
Claire Tousand, age 41
Tigran Yeritsyan, age 40
Jane Littledoe, age 40
Waukus Littledoe, age 40
“All these local and national fatalities were in accord with forecasts by agency testing,” a spokesman for the U.S. Predictive Bureau told The NY Mountain Press. “Seven hundred and eighteen deaths by ebola hemorrhagic fever have been predicted nationally to date, and testing does not indicate a runaway epidemic over the next four to six months.”
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