realized, as I read the journal over again, that I've studied it, taken in details of its killing spree, in the same way that a condemned man might read about the mechanical operation of the gallows. It is both good and horrible to talk with Death when you know he's sitting at your table.
The bird flu is not something that just happened one day in rural China. Every version of the influenza virus, and there are literally millions, regardless of its particular arrangement of hemagglutin and neuraminidase, finds its natural home in the intestinal track of wild aquatic birds. Very rarely does a mutated strain make the jump to the human respiratory system.
Several years back, it was the H5N1 version of the flu that the news told us to fear. We were told rural China, with its millions of chickens interacting with wild migratory birds in abominable conditions, would be ground zero for the worst influenza plague the world had ever seen. Bigger even than the pandemic that wrote the year 1918 on fifty million tombstones the world over.
Few thought of H2N2, for it had already had its time on the world stage back in 1957, and had been eradicated, or so, to our folly, we believed, by the 1968 influenza bug.
Few thought that H2N2, with only the smallest change in its genetic material, could open the door to hell.
We were wrong. My God, we were so very wrong.
A man from the Center for Disease Control had the unfortunate task of addressing my unit at roll call, and anybody who has ever had the misfortune to address a room full of cops on any topic knows what a miserable time of it that poor man had. The containment walls had already been put up around the city, and many of us had lost friends and family to H2N2. It was that poor man's unenviable job to explain to us why, and how, it all happened.
He told us that, like many things that seem to happen overnight, the epidemic decimating our lives was actually a long time in the making.
H2N2 never completely went away when the 1968 version of influenza took over. It survived for nearly seventy years in the colons of a common San Antonio pest, the Mexican grackle. Every November, millions of the birds descend on San Antonio, blanketing the city in bird shit so white and plentiful that you might've actually believed it was snow-that is, if it weren't still 90 degrees outside.
This bird snow was loaded with a virus bomb, brought to us the November before the plague actually hit.
A few people got sick that winter. There were, maybe, 500 cases. All of them minor. None of them even a blip on the radar of those who track coming plagues.
And then, six months later, ground zero exploded. A woman named Reina Villarreal owned a large, weather-beaten home near the Produce Terminal on San Antonio's shallow west side. Ms. Villarreal rented out her spare rooms to ten illegal immigrants from Coahuila, Mexico. These men worked hard, and made little. They spent their days in the Produce Terminal, where almost all of the commercial farms in South Texas sent their harvest for national distribution. They spent their nights at Cattleman's Square, the Tejano music capitol of the world.
These men also ate freely of the chickens Ms. Villarreal kept in her backyard. These chickens ate their feed off the ground, the same ground that the winter before had been blanketed with grackle snow.
Beginning in May, things started happening quickly. On May 3, Southwest Baptist Hospital reported 23 cases of SARS-like symptoms, including scorched lungs, rampant secondary pneumonia, and even the horrible blue footprints of cyanosis.
On May 4, there were five hundred and thirty-three cases reported to the CDC.
On May 7, a state of emergency was declared in San Antonio and the surrounding regions.
On May 13, every one of San Antonio's forty-three hospitals had exceeded their maximum capacity and started turning people away at the door.
On the night of May 17, the military put up the containment walls around the city.
Death was everywhere, and we were locked in with it.
All schools, public and private, were closed by order of the Metropolitan Health District, as were most businesses. FEMA promised to keep the flow of supplies coming into San Antonio, even though most everyone was out of work by that point and couldn't afford to buy anything.
The closing of the schools wasn't a bad thing for Connie. For weeks before the start of her first year, Billy and I had been trying to ease her fears of the big change.
“It'll be just like going to daycare,” I told her, though that didn't convince her. She grabbed me around the waist and told me she wouldn't go.
Then, three weeks after that messy scene, I told her she wouldn't be going to school after all. “Mommy and Daddy will be teaching you,” I told her. “How do you feel about that?”
“That's fine,” she said, and shrugged, like it was no big deal and why was I making such a fuss about it anyway.
But as she walked away, I saw her reflection in the glass door of the oven, and she was smiling.
The little devil.
It was Thursday, May 18, around eleven o'clock at night, less than a day after the military had begun installing walls around the city, effectively locking us into a prison.
Officers of every rank, from every unit on the Department, had been mobilized to help maintain order. I had been teamed up with two Traffic officers. The three of us were working a road block on Highway 90 West, turning back cars that were packed with scared and angry people.
Military helicopters, like giant angry hornets, sprinted up and down the length of the wall, still under construction in some places.
A man's voice, recorded, for the same words were repeated over and over again in the same threatening monotone, warned the scattered crowds not to approach the holes in the wall. The voice warned that deadly force would be used. The message played in both English and Spanish.
The two Traffic officers argued back and forth with each other as to whether or not the military would actually do such a thing. One of them was in the Reserves and he said no way. You'd never get a U.S. soldier to fire on Americans. It would never happen.
In the bluish glow of the floodlights mounted on top of the wall, I could see four young men, teenagers really, being ignorantly defiant the way teenagers feel they have to be, sprinting across an open field to my right. They ducked behind cactus and stands of cedar, but they were constantly making their way toward a gap in the wall.
A nearby helicopter dipped its nose to the ground and raced to the patch of sky above the boys.
A spotlight hit the ground, lighting them up.
The boys kept running.
An amplified voice from the helicopter ordered them to turn around. They didn't.
They were almost to the wall, not stopping, and everyone in the assembled crowds held their breaths.
The helicopter rotated, turning its flank to the boys. The scene was frozen for the thinnest of moments, and then four quick bursts from the helicopter's guns dropped the boys.
The assembled crowds drew in a collective breath. They were quietly horrified. Then, like a wave, a tumultuous roar of protest erupted from their ranks. Angry shouting filled the night. Volleys of rocks were thrown at the helicopter.
I realized then that I was still holding my breath.
A few words about the wall.
If you've ever wondered just how badly the Government can fuck with you if it wants to, look at the wall around San Antonio.
The wall is made up of interlocking plastic blocks, most of which are red, though some are white for no particular reason that I can figure out, and a few, bleached of their color by the ferocious South Texas sun, have faded to a pink the same color as a mountain laurel blossom. In the first few days of the quarantine, the wall was nothing more than hurricane fencing laced with razor wire. In some places, there wasn't even that. But then, and it was done with shocking speed and efficiency, they brought in the interlocking plastic blocks.
Now that it's complete, the wall forms a giant circle around San Antonio. This circle is one 190 miles in circumference. The total area inside the wall is 2830 miles.
Each block is 20 ft high. They are 12 ft wide at the base, 7 ft at the top. Each block weighs 7525 lbs. Each
